Reply to Any Information on West Springfield or Lake Braddock and Other Options in Eastern FFX County

Forum Index » Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)

Reply to "Any Information on West Springfield or Lake Braddock and Other Options in Eastern FFX County"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Are you in the Lee HS district? We have the same concerns. We love our house, neighborhood, commute, proximity to shopping and entertainment, everything - except the high school.

We don't plan to move, and will likely take our chances with Lee HS, but are doing our research on private schools and even homeschool options.

Many parents in our neighborhood are doing the same - or moving when the kids near HS age.
[/quote]

It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more middle-class or upper middle-class families moved or transferred their students out of Lee the lower the scores sank. This has not been a handful of moves or transfers, but [u]hundreds[/u]. Going forward, if people kept their students at Lee you would see a quick turn around in the scores. They won't ever be as high as Langley or West Springfield because the demographics won't support that, but they would certainly improve from where they are now. FCPS allowed this to happen through poor boundary management (the last two boundary changes to affect Lee took wealthy students out of the school) and through its liberal pupil placement policy.

Lee is the smallest high school in FCPS so there are many opportunities for students to participate. If your student is motivated then they will do fine at any FCPS school. Your student's individual scores may greatly exceed the Lee average as my students did (and I wish he was a little bit more motivated). [/quote]

About a decade ago South Lakes was down to 1350 students and seeing a lot of higher-SES flight.  The local School Board member fought like hell to have kids from other areas redistricted to South Lakes. Parents in the areas getting redistricted complained bitterly, but South Lakes has over 2400 kids now and one of the top 3 IB programs in the county.

In the 80s and early 90s, Marshall came close to being closed, with fewer than 1400 kids and parents at Langley who repeatedly fought off multiple efforts by FCPS staff to redistrict part of Langley to Marshall.  The School Board sided with the Langley parents. What turned Marshall around was private investment in the Tysons area, which led to new subdivisions getting built in Vienna and Dunn Loring that fed into Marshall.

The point is that there's no single formula for turning around a school.  If redevelopment around central Springfield brings more people there, Lee will improve.  If that doesn't happen, the School Board will have to redistrict part of West Springfield and/or Lake Braddock there to shore up the school.  Otherwise, it will just be a school that people who have more money find ways to keep their kids from attending. [/quote]

My fear is:

a) The School Board does not have the fortitude to make boundary changes that would help Lee.
b) There is no appetite or market for significant redevelopment in central Springfield that would help Lee. The only significant project on the horizon is the mall property and development there would be apartments and condos. And with our luck the Board of Supervisors will make the developer set aside a number of affordable units even though the the high school already has a 55% F/R lunch rate.

My earlier point was that it would be a good start just to keep the students that currently live within the Lee boundaries as opposed to seeing them move or transfer.[/quote]

It doesn't help that you have a school board member who won't push for boundary changes and doesn't mind all the pupil placements out of Lee to the AP schools.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics