Reply to How did Herndon/Westfield HS go from top to bottom?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]McNair/Coates parents have got to stop asking Floris/Oak Hill/Fox Mill parents to join them in Hutchison. We aren’t some prized commodity for the special interest of keeping Hutchison HS academically competitive to magically fix the demographics. They continue to advance invalid talking points that simply are illogical.

1). They do instigate valid proximity concerns that Forestville kids that are only 2 miles away Herndon HS go there instead of Langley.  But turn the other cheek and demand taking Oak Hill ES kids 6 miles away instead of Southern Clearview/Herndon ES kids just across the street. Hypocritical. 
2). Promote false claims that FCPS won’t allow ~60 percent or so FARMS high schools when there are FIVE already in FCPS, namely Mount Vernon, Annadale, Falls Church, Lewis, justice. This is 20 percent of FCPS high schools, and represents intentional actions by the Board of Supervisors/School Board to do so. 
3). Call us UMC residents in Oak Hill racist/classist. The Fox Mill/Floris kids are still going to a pretty high FARMS South Lakes and that number would only increase when the new housing projects get completed. About 35 percent black/hispanic as well. In fact the selfish ones are you all who think you get to dictate which school “fails”. Remove Fox Mill/Floris from South Lakes, it falls in the same situation Hutchison will be in. There are too many poors and too few advantaged kids to satisfy everyone in this region of Western Fairfax,

To this end there has been an exceptional amount of wishcasting by such individuals that more than anything seem rooted in their own insecurities and projections than the Oak Hill area kids. [/quote]

The need for a new high school has been discussed for a long time.  Its biggest proponents originally were from the Floris/Fox Mill/Oak Hill area.  They knew that western Fairfax had fewer high schools than other parts of the county (compare the proximity of Herndon to Westfield with the proximity of Langley/McLean/Marshall in eastern Fairfax or the proximity of Madison/Oakton/Fairfax/Woodson in central Fairfax) and that this had led them to be redistricted more often than any other part of the county.  The original goal of the high school was to accommodate future growth in western Fairfax and put an end at last to the frequent reshuffling.

There were delays moving forward.  In the interim, there was still growth in western Fairfax, including a big increase in low-income Hispanics in Herndon and higher-income Asians in Chantilly.  And one of the potential sites for a new high school went away when the county sold a large tract in Herndon that is now the King Abdullah Academy.  The need for the new school has not gone away; in fact, substantial additional growth is anticipated near the Silver Line extension.  But the concern over how the boundaries might be adjusted if a new school were built has increased, with two groups of parents vocally trying to work behind the scenes to avoid any future reassignment, especially if the school were to be built near Hutchison ES:  (1) some parents in the Floris/Oak Hill/Fox Mill areas, who oppose being reassigned to a new school with kids from Hutchison; and (2) some parents in Great Falls, who oppose being moved out of Langley to Herndon if part of Herndon is moved to the new school (let's call it "Western HS").

If, and it is still an "if" at this point, a new school were built near Hutchison, there are two competing approaches to assigning students to the new school.  The first would prioritize moving the students who live closest to the new school, which would clearly entail moving students from Hutchison and Coates ES to the school, and might also encompass moving students from McNair, and some or all of Clearview, Dogwood, Floris, and/or Herndon.  The second would prioritize moving students who in some cases live slightly further from Hutchison, but in more of the overcrowded pyramids.  That might entail moving students from Hutchison, Coates, McNair, Fox Mill, Oak Hill, and part of Floris.

Each of these approaches will be preferred by some and opposed by others.  The first approach would concentrate poverty at Western HS from the school's inception, which is something FCPS has never done when opening a new high school.  The FARMS rates at such a school would immediately be among the highest for a high school in the county.  The school might struggle to remain accredited, and higher-income parents who had been comfortable sending their kids to Herndon, Westfield, and South Lakes might balk and quickly leave, driving the FARMS rates up higher.  And, by pulling so many kids out of Herndon, this approach would ensure that both Forestville ES and Great Falls ES would be reassigned from Langley to Herndon, which would trigger opposition from some of the most well-financed political operatives in the county in Great Falls.

The second approach, on the other hand, would be more balanced demographically.  The students from Hutchison, Coates, McNair, and parts of Floris, Fox Mill, and Oak Hill would be attending a school closer to their homes than their current schools (Herndon, Westfield and South Lakes).  In addition, the school likely would open as an AP school and offer Japanese language courses (as they were phased out at South Lakes with the Fox Mill reassignment).  In addition, by moving less of Herndon to the new school, there would likely be fewer Langley students reassigned to Herndon, which would somewhat moderate the certain opposition of Great Falls parents to being reassigned.  These reassignments might also facilitate the reassignment of other schools from Centreville to Westfield, and from Oakton to South Lakes, which might moderate overcrowding at those schools.  On the other hand, some students would be reassigned to schools with more SES diversity than their current schools, and some (in particular, from the Oak Hill area) might have a slightly longer commute to Western HS than to Chantilly.

Looking ahead, it is at least as likely the School Board will opt for the second approach as the first approach.  They will not be want to be accused of concentrating poverty at a single school (it is one thing for them to fail to address concentrations of poverty that developed over time at schools like Lewis and Justice; it is another thing altogether to intentionally concentrate poverty at a school from the inception). Nor will they want to deal with the headache of worrying about a new school's retaining its accreditation almost from the day it opened.  They may perceive some benefit in the first option because the parents in those feeders may be less likely to vocally oppose their decisions but, on balance, the adverse publicity that they would receive if a school board that has constantly touted its commitment to "equity" concentrated poor kids at a single high school at a much higher level than the surrounding schools is likely to outweigh the perceived benefit.

If they selected the second option, they would, of course, need to be prepared to address the impact on other schools.  They would still be in a position to reassign part of Langley to Herndon, which would provide students at Forestville ES (and, potentially, part of Great Falls) with a shorter commute and align with their equity goals.  The impact on Westfield would likely be neutral.  Pulling Fox Mill and part of Floris out of South Lakes would still leave South Lakes demographically balanced, with schools like Sunrise Valley, Forest Edge, Terraset, Hunter's Woods, and potentially all of Crossfield, along with the higher levels of poverty at Dogwood and Lake Anne.

And, of course, if there was simply too much difficulty finding land, or too much opposition to a new school, they could back out.  In that case, the primary beneficiaries would be schools in other parts of the county that would benefit from earlier additions or renovations (Western HS, if built, would chew up much of the capital budget for several years), and those at high schools in western Fairfax might all face overcrowding at the same levels that Centreville, Chantilly, and McLean have been facing in recent years.  Of course, some of the money that was freed up could be spent on schools in western Fairfax as well, but they'd run the risk that they were perceived as having kicked a gift horse (a new school) in the mouth, and therefore disfavored when it came to the reallocation of those funds.  And, of course, neighborhoods in western Fairfax could still end up getting redistricted, but it would be to existing schools such as Westfield or Fairfax with some surplus capacity, rather than to a new one. [/quote]

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