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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My heart breaks for the 859 elementary students, 364 middle school students, and 474 high school students who are being forced to move as part of this messed up review.

I hope that they find happiness after their mental health has been sacrificed on the altar of Sandy Anderdon’s misguided comprehensive review, and may we have the wisdom to shutdown the ongoing five-year reviews before they can do further harm to thousands and tens of thousands of additional students.[/quote]

I feel upset because the process was a disaster that did nothing to fix the larger issues in the county and ended up being controlled by the parents with the loudest voices because the school board refuses to do what they think is actually best for the county. The moves don’t address any of the real issues and are pretty much happening only because the school board can’t afford to throw up their hands and say “Well, that accomplished nothing.”

I am not worried about the mental health of the kids moving, they are moving with friends and will be just fine. Kids move every day for a variety of reasons. Most don’t move with another group of kids that they know.

But the School Board needs to actually make choices that might be unpopular to address over crowded schools. They won’t but that really is their job. I don’t think their original motives for starting this made sense. They should have started by looking at every school that was over  crowded and made adjustments to move kids from over crowded schools to decrease that issue. That is it. And some families would not have been happy with the moves, which sucks, but if it makes sense to move SPAs from an over crowded school to the school next door that has space, then that is what should have happened. [/quote]

If you watched the meetings 2 summers ago, you would know that their original motive for doing this was Equity and One Fairfax.  Most people weren't paying attention back then.

It is all there on video if you watched any of the earlier work sessions.

They stated explicitly that they wanted all of the rezoning done under the umbrella of One Fairfax.  Anyone who doesn't believe this, go watch the videos from summer 2024.

If their goal was to fix overcrowded schools , then they could have easily have done it using the old policy 8130, without any of this mess

All they needed to do under the old policy was say that they were going to address overcrowding at all schools over a certain percentage, such as 105% or 110%, then limit the rezoning scope to those schools.  Under the old policy, they would have started the process with the understanding that there would be generous grandfathering with bussing, like they always did with rezoning under the old policy.  There would have bedn pushback, but FAR less than this mess.  It would have been so much cheaper, with less time and money spent.

The schools that were most over crowded, such as Coates, would have already been rezoned, with relief in Fall 2025.  The overcrowded middle and high schools would have been adjusted.

WSHS would probably have ended up with the Sangster split feeder and Shannon Station moved to Lake Braddock, since it would have been based on very concrete numbers and those two neighborhoods to LB are blaringly obvious solutions.

With very flexible, extensive grandfathering and transportation provided, the push back would have been much less under the old policy.  But the school board rep wanted to go big, rezoning several neighborhoods from Lewis into WSHS and an entire elementary from the other side of the boundary into Lewis, for a big equity bussing experiment.  The others were all so enamored by all the One Fairfax equity calls, the untruth that there were no major boundary adjustments in over 40 years, and the buzz words that this would be "transformational", that they threw out the practicality and efficiency of the old policy 8130 with zero pushback, so they could do something dramatic and monumental.

They started this process saying it would be county wide, rezoning with equity as the primary concern, and [b]no grandfathering for high school students[/b].  This immediately and justifiably got parents everywhere organized with furious pushback.  [u]This decision back in summer 2024 to announce they were not grandfathering high school students and would not provide bussing is what doomed the entire process. [/u] Dr. Anderson called it right from the start.

They followed the outcry by suggesting grandfathering for most high students but no bussing, then only certain grades, again with no bussing.  This brought on more and more upset parents.

Then they changed the goals from equity to equitable access, attendance islands, split feeders, transportation savings and neighborhood proximity/cohesion.

No one in FCPS would define "equitable access" and they refused to fix any "equitable access" items first.  AAP middle school centers in every school, the glut of failing unwanted IB programs, massive transfers out of some high schools and residency fraud in others, language program disparities ALL should have been addressed by FCPS [u]before[/u] starting this process if equity and equitable access were going to be the pillar of rezoning.

They put the most logical reason, attendance islands and split feeders as a priority reason, but failed to acknowledge that most people living in one knew exactly what schools they were zoned for when they bought their houses, and with rare exception, did not want to be rezoned, at least not if it was being done "just because" so the school board could claim success on a county wide rezoning.  There would have been less pushback if the school board either kept the old policy 8130 and just did targeted adjustments based on a hard enrollment percentage, or did a county wide rezoning of only attendance islands and split feeders, with the stated goal that every high school pyramid will have a direct and clean feeder patrern, but only after FCPS unified high school program options and put AAP at every middle school.

They had busses and transportation savings as a top goal, but only moving 1700 students accomplishes zero transportation savings.

They put neighborhood proximity and community as a priority, but everyone defines their community differently, and they didn't actually offer suggestions based on proximity.  If they had focused on proximinity and fixing under enrolled schools with the kids closest to them, Daventry and half of Keene Mill Elementary would have been recommended to attend Lewis high school.  The only thing this proximity and community priority did was to give everyone in the county valid arguments to fight rezoning [i]their[/i] neighborhood.

They screwed up this process from the very beginning and wasted a ton of money doing it.  If they would have left policy 8130 as is, the most overcrowded schools would have been already dealt with and rezoned in fall 2025, with extensive grandfathering and bussing.  If they had listened to Dr. Anderson's warning and announced extensive grandfathering and bussing from the beginning,  they would not have had 2 years of outrage, and universal pushback to their plans.

I am happy that our school is not rezoned, yet completely shocked that it wasn't,  especially not the one most obvious neighborhood. The school board really made a complete and utter $#it$#ow of this process.  They should have listened to Dr. Anderson back in summer 2024.[/quote]

Excellent post. Thank you.

So tired of watching the nonsense in this thread and especially tired of school board members posting here trying to astroturf or gaslight. [/quote]

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