Reply to Tell me more about the School Board election process

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Reply to "Tell me more about the School Board election process"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Has anyone announced that they are running against Anderson, Meren, or Frisch yet? Either as a Democrat trying to get the D endorsement (seems unlikely without a primary) or as a R or I. [/quote]

They all have opponents:

https://www.vpap.org/localities/fairfax-county-va/elections/[/quote]

Thank you! Also how in God’s green earth has Karl Frisch raised nearly $200k?? WHO likes this guy that much??!?[/quote]

His funds come from out of state.

Mostly west coast/California.

He also gets financial support from nqtional donors.

He has very lottle support from fcps parents and local families.[/quote]

No one cares what I think but I feel like you should only be able to fundraise from your own constituency. I feel like people who live out of state don’t know about our local issues by not sharing our lived experience here & I really don’t think their funding should be able to influence our election. [/quote]

I don't care who donates to them as long as they're responsive, and Karl Frisch always has been.[/quote]

So, you wanted the dog park instead of a school.  Got it.[/quote]

Honestly yes. My kids went to Shrevewood and it was so overcrowded - this new school in Dunn Loring will finally ease overcrowding in the nearby schools as Tysons and West Falls Church develop. I don't care about the dog park, but I like this new school site better than Oakton.[/quote]

Key Word - "WAS" overcrowded - it no longer is overcrowded and neither are the schools that are around it.  This project is a $60 Million waste of money that Karl Frisch is fully responsible for.  Elected officials should be good stewards of tay payer money.  I wonder if any school board member in history has wasted more money than Karl.

Think of the addition that McLean High or Chantilly high could have had with this money.   [/quote]

The issue was that the money was originally earmarked in a bond for a "Fairfax/Oakton elementary school."  I'm sure Frisch had John Foster jump through some hoops to make the case that an elementary school in Dunn Loring was still a "Fairfax" elementary school.

In comparing, while re-allocating the money to McLean and Chantilly (assuming there is no need to build another ES in Fairfax/Oakton, though Mosaic sure is awfully big for an ES) would have made far more sense, it probably would have required more work on the part of county staff to justify.  And they'd rather throw $60M in taxpayer money at a school that isn't needed at that site than actually work through how to adjust their plans and build more sensibly.

This is primarily on Frisch, but every other Board member who went along with his nonsense deserves to be voted out as well.  These people are total nitwits and anything but good stewards of county resources. [/quote]

Yes, this.  And all of you just glossing over where the *new* site was chosen... there were PLENTY of families in Fairfax who are displeased because the school was NOT built on the "dog park."  My child attends Mosaic and it's huge. Way too huge for an elementary school.  It's not just about the physical building, which they are renovating (although, interestingly, not increasing the capacity, just making better use of space). It's about having a school so huge -- and the challenges that creates in terms of creating a sense of community, in terms of logistics for things.  Every school wide event is an enormous challenge, with no parking, so many families that they need security, no elbow room, etc.  Most Elementaries don't have that, so they end up with a LOT more PTA Bingo nights, ice cream nights, fun family nights, etc. But Karl wouldn't know or care about that since he isn't a parent and apparently cares more about dogs and / or their loudmouth nimby owners than our children. [/quote]

Meh, Mosaic is on the bigger side, but it's not some huge outlier, there's 115 FCPS ES with a smaller design capacity, but there's also 26 with a larger design capacity. The average FCPS ES has a design capacity of ~900, Mosaic at 1,038 is ~15% bigger than your average ES. *shrug*[/quote]

Well, I’m glad you can just shrug it off.  Clearly you don’t have children at Mosaic. If the average ES is 900 children, then that’s yet another FCPS problem. I’ve lived all over the country and no where else has that been considered acceptable in terms of school size for tiny children as young as 5. There are all sorts of complications that it causes, not to mention being very overwhelming for small children.

And we were all told enrollment would be declining, but now there are several large residential developments in the works, so even worse. But you all got your dog park, so you win! [/quote]

An elementary school of 900 students is not unreasonable.  It is not a problem as long as staff is appropriate and space is adequate.  And, it is not overwhelming for small children as they are not roaming the halls.
signed: former Kindergarten teacher[/quote]

The average elementary school size is 479 students. Looks like we have another lying activist trying to gaslight parents once again. [/quote]

Wow.  Definitely not an activist.  Just a former teacher with experience in three school-not including Fairfax county where I live now.  The smallest had over 400 students and the other two were close to 1000.
When I taught in the school with the smallest population, it was a much older neighborhood and there were empty classrooms.  It was an older school, and I suspect it once had a lot more students than when I was there.

Do you understand what "average" means?  It pretty much means that half are above that and half below that.  
Do you know that there are rural schools that are still pretty much one room school houses?  Let's apply just a little common sense here--I happen to live in a neighborhood with 1000 homes--all walkable to the elementary school.  An adjacent neighborhood (mostly walkable) has about that many homes, as well.  Lots of young families.  Can you do the math?

Now, if you live in an area with houses on very large lots and spread out over miles, the schools are likely to be a little smaller.  And, if you live in a rural area, they are likely to be much, much smaller.
[/quote]

You described the median, not the mean (average).  For a former teacher you are misinformed.

In any event even if one were to assume the median size for an ES in the county was 900 kids it wouldn’t mean that was ideal, only that schools are big.  You definitely seem like an apologist for Karl Frisch, who has been a terrible School Board member and was ready to leave his seat on the board vacant before he got defeated in a primary for the House of Delegates.  It’s only because he has no sense of shame whatsoever that he’s crawled back and asked for another term on the School Board (not because he cares about education - he doesn’t even have a college degree - but because it may well be his primary source of income). [/quote]

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