Reply to Show me the law that says school boards cannot change boundaries.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote]DP here.

You asked, rhetorically, what difference it makes that Langley is a wealthier school. It makes a difference in that students at Langley have access to a lot of extra-curricular activities that students at other schools do not have. It has also meant that Langley convinced FCPS to allow the school to offer a much wider range of foreign languages than FCPS offers at other schools.

[b]The term "busing" typically is only used pejoratively,[/b] and when it means that kids travel by bus from a lower-income neighborhood to a school in a higher-income neighborhood, or vice versa. But as you note at the beginning of your post, FCPS is currently putting kids on buses for long distances to get them from Great Falls, near the Loudoun border, to Langley, near the Arlington border. This also involves "busing" and its own form of social engineering.

If FCPS were committed to increasing the diversity at Langley, there are any number of things it could do. The easiest would be to redistrict some of the Tysons-area apartments zoned for McLean and/or Marshall to Langley, which has excess capacity and no apartments. That would be quick and expedient, and the kids moved to Langley from those neighborhoods would still have shorter bus rides to Langley than the kids in Great Falls who attend Langley.

The more complicated approach would involve larger redistricting involving more schools. For example, Forestville and Great Falls could be moved out of Langley to Herndon, Aldrin and Armstrong could be moved out of Herndon to South Lakes, and Forest Edge could be moved out of South Lakes to Langley along with some of the Tysons apartments. Most of the students affected in this scenario would end up with shorter bus rides than they currently have, or slightly longer bus rides that would still be much shorter than the current bus rides of students from Great Falls to Langley.[/quote]

Actually, busing is a real term which has real consequences.  It relates to artificially creating socio-economic equity--but nothing artificial works.  It usually involves busing kids away from their own communities.  I've no problem with shifting kids if it is natural and logical.  But, to send kids past other kids and switch around makes no sense.

And, why does Langley get more foreign languages than other schools?  I assume there is a very simple explanation: there is a demand for it.  Lots of schools drop a foreign language because there is not enough interest.  I suspect that if you switch out kids at Langley, it might change what is available because there will not be enough interest to fill those classes.  Who does that help?  This happens in all high schools. And, it may not necessarily be a foreign language, but classes are slotted according to desire and interest in addition to requirements.

From what I read on here, Langley is underenrolled and McLean is overenrolled.  I agree that it would make sense to send some of McLean's to Langley, in that instance--but, I am not familiar with the traffic and local geography.

But, to play fruitbasket turnover just to "equalize" will not work.

I am curious, though, as to what you would do with middle school.  Would you send Forestville and Great Falls to Herndon Middle?  Where would they go?  
Are you the pp who wanted Aldrin and Armstrong at South Lakes because they are in Reston?  You do know that Forest Edge is also in Reston?

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