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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]For the Kilmer / Thoreau issue they need to modify so that Wolftrap splits at the middle school level - those assigned to Madison go to Thoreau and those assigned to Marshall go to Kilmer.  They would then move the &lt;5 percent group you reference at Kilmer to Thoreau and those students would feed into Madison.[/quote]

Why? They did what you said and also eliminated the split at middle school. All of Wolftrap now goes to Thoreau then Madison, which addresses your point about Thoreau to Madison consistency. Why do you say they need to split Wolftrap? That community is clearly very against the middle school split, as opposed to the Town of Vienna people at Westbriar who like their split. [/quote]

I live in the community and have students attending Marshall and there has been no outreach to gather input from the community - push by current Wolftrap families is not the same as community input that involves those with students at other levels,  not in school yet, or previously had students there.  [/quote]

People with kids already at Marshall won’t bad-mouth it but families with younger kids jumped at the chance to attend Madison. They live in Vienna, the Madison-bound parents constantly talk up Madison, and it’s a slog to get to Marshall from the Wolftrap area (unless you go well out of the way you have to go through the heart of Tysons).  [/quote]

Both Madison and Marshall can be challenging to get to during rush hour from the Buehlah / Clarks Crossing / Meadowlark area - with a few minutes time difference on average with outliers here and there. What is occurring is vocal families that have moved into the area over the last five to 10 years want a school that is less socio-economic diverse (Marshall: 15.89% English Learner versus Madison 6.11%; Marshall: 20.78% Free/Reduce Fee Lunch versus Madison 10.26%; Marshall: 39.95% White (Not Of Hispanic Origin) versus Madison: 58.11%).  There is strong pride for Marshall by those that are attending and have attended Marshall from impacted neighborhoods and those families are, for the most part, happy they ended up there instead of Madison.  Marshall is a great school and unfortunately families with children at Wolftrap ES currently have become confused with the constant chatter about Madison being so great.   There will always be a few families that want to go to Madison as it is more a sports oriented school and their AP program but those are outliers.  [/quote]

Nah, this is nothing new.  Given a choice, most families at Wolftrap long would have opted for Madison over Marshall given a choice, but for years Marshall's enrollment was so low that it never entered anyone's mind that they would move kids from Marshall to Madison.  Also, Madison had not been expanded, so it didn't have the 2500 seats it now has (and which, to some degree, FCPS needs to justify, since it expanded Madison outside the renovation queue and ignored other schools like Annandale and McLean).

So it's not like those who moved into the Wolftrap/Kilmer/Marshall over the last 5-10 years behave any differently than their predecessors.  They just see an opportunity that wasn't previously available.

People with kids there are generally satisfied with Marshall, but it's in Falls Church rather than Vienna, it has IB (less popular), traffic through the heart of Tysons is still worse than Maple Avenue (as congested as Maple can also get) and its sports teams aren't the same caliber.  That's not irrelevant in Vienna, which is a very sports-oriented area.

In "real life," Madison and Marshall families generally are respectful of each other's schools, but more than one Madison family from the Wolftrap area asked us if our kids felt safe at Marshall.  It's seemed passive-aggressive, since they'd sent their kids to Kilmer, and about 85% of Kilmer feeds to Marshall.   [/quote]

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