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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]My kids are at Wolftrap and majority of Wolftrap students will go to Marshall and some will go to Madison since Wolftrap it's a split feeder. I don't see it as an issue.[/quote]

The majority of Wolftrap kids are zoned for Madison (63%), not Marshall (37%).   However, the split is not an issue for you because they'll go to Kilmer, and 85% of Kilmer is zoned for Marshall.  So your situation is different from someone at Stenwood whose kid goes to Thoreau, which only sends 10% of its students to Marshall.  Many of those kids pupil place to Madison to stay with their Thoreau friends, but PP said that she can't do that (presumably, she can't arrange for transportation).

In some parts of the county, split feeders are inevitable, but there's no reason other than inertia that the Kilmer/Marshall and Thoreau/Madison boundaries aren't aligned like Frost/Woodson, Cooper/Langley and Longfellow/McLean's are.    [/quote]

We are in the Wolftrap boundary Madison bound wishing our kids could go to Thoreau so that they could have more friends before going onto Madison.[/quote]

My sense is that the Kilmer students who go to Madison acclimate fairly quickly, because they all live in Vienna and know Thoreau kids from VYS and other activities.  It's not quite as easy for the Thoreau kids, who also live in Vienna, to get sent to Marshall in Falls Church.

But, again, the simplest fix is to align the Marshall boundaries with Kilmer's current boundaries (which would mean that all of Wolftrap goes to both Kilmer and Marshall), and align the Madison boundaries with Thoreau's current boundaries.  I would tell anyone in the Town who objects to getting reassigned to Marshall tough.  Some of them claim that the Town of Vienna has "always" gone to Madison, but part of the Town of Vienna used to be zoned for Oakton.   [/quote]

Why wouldn't they just align the middle schools with the high school boundaries? This makes much more sense and would balance things well too. People would fight over being sent to a different high school. They wouldn't fight as much about being sent to a different middle school especially if it aligns with their high school.[/quote]

It makes more sense to align the high school boundaries with the middle school boundaries than vice versa because both Kilmer and Thoreau physically sit within the Marshall district.   If you align the boundaries as you suggest, people  living next door to Thoreau on Cedar would go to Kilmer.   People would fight over that, particularly if the justification is to kowtow to Town residents who think their kids should go to the same middle and high school.

You don't have that problem if the high school boundaries are aligned with the middle school boundaries, because Madison is within the Thoreau district and Marshall is within the Kilmer district.  [/quote]

Well they've switched the middle schools for many years for the AAP program, so I'm not sure it would matter. Believe me, people will fight against being moved from Madison to Marshall. It's four years verses 2 and there is no AAP program to where you can go to a different school. Maybe they should just make some of those kids around Thoreau go to Cunningham Park and then go to Madison since Marshall will get more kids from Tysons.[/quote]

It's a bit different with the AAP program, since people are often being given an option to attend two schools.   It's another thing to tell families that they can't send their kids to the middle school that's next door to their home because someone in the Town of Vienna thinks their all Town kids should go to the same middle and high school.

Perhaps some people would fight against being moved from Madison to Marshall, but let's be clear about the kids who would be moved to Marshall if the HS boundaries were aligned with the MS boundaries.  The kids who'd be moved would have gone to Wolftrap or Westbriar, and then Kilmer, all split feeders to Madison and Marshall.  So the parents would basically be saying that they object to sending their kids to HS with other kids who'd primarily gone to the same elementary and middle schools.   That would take more than a little chutzpah.

As for moving the Thoreau neighborhoods now at Marshall to Madison, Madison had about 150 more kids than Marshall this year and FCPS is projecting continued growth in Madison's enrollment.  There might come a time years from now where that makes sense, depending on what happens in Tysons, but it seems premature.   You might also expect Marshall families to object to having single-family neighborhoods taken out of their district without getting other single-family neighborhoods in return, based merely on speculation about how many kids living in new Tysons apartments will end up at GCM.

We could keep going back and forth on this, but it seems to me that, whenever the topic of eliminating the split feeders comes up, some people zoned for Madison recoil at the idea of being moved to Marshall, even if it would keep their children with their ES and MS peers.  If I were on the Facilities Staff or the School Board, I'd just shrug and leave the current split feeders in place rather than listen to people complain about getting moved from one good school to another.      [/quote]

When I bought my house in the Wolftrap school district, Kilmer was the AAP center for all of Vienna, so it didn't seem like a big deal to have Kilmer as a middle school. Now that they've moved that program out, Kilmer isn't very enticing of a school to attend for middle with only 15% headed to Madison. Madison is much closer to us and I pay extra money to live in the Town of Vienna which is all districted to Madison, so I would fight to keep Madison as our high school. Stenwood parents do not pay extra money to live in Dunn Loring and all Stenwood children go on to Marshall I believe whereas Wolftrap only has about 40% or less going to Marshall, so it would be easier to fit those children at Madison.[/quote]

I agree with you- in fact some other posters suggest putting town of Vienna Madison designated families to Marshall.  I t would make more sense to keep Vienna within it's own schools- Thoreau- Madision.[/quote]

Neither Thoreau nor Madison is in the Town of Vienna.  Town students attend several middle schools now and in the past were assigned to multiple high schools as well.  FCPS has no obligation to keep Town students at any particular school, and certainly should not sacrifice any operating or transportation efficiencies to do so.  [/quote]

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