Reply to FCPS's "Obvious Elephant in the Room" - Does the West Potomac Expansion Foster Intolerance?

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Reply to "FCPS's "Obvious Elephant in the Room" - Does the West Potomac Expansion Foster Intolerance?"

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[quote=Anonymous]Corbett Sanders says the reason for the WestPo expansion is the student projections in the CIP - not security concerns. She can’t cite security as the reason for her massive addition because then they would have to get rid of trailers and mods at all the schools.  But her argument is based on false facts. The CIP projects that WestPo alone will add 150% of the # of students that all 4 high schools serving Tyson’s Corner will add in the next 5 years (250 students for WestPo alone, 100 students collectively for McLean, Langley, Madison, and Marshall). This is demonstrably untrue based on their own documents. It’s made-up numbers to give cover for a corrupt decision, imho.

Regarding the cost of the addition — $36M for the extra seats is far from cheap. “Renovations” and “additions/capacity enhancements” are 2 totally separate concepts in the CIP. Those high schools that get “renovations” are updating the entire school, not just adding seats. That is why they cost $100M+ these days, and those schools have been waiting in the renovation queue, which is now on a 37-44 year cycle. An “addition/capacity enhancement” is basically adding seats to accommodate new growth, outside of the normal renovation queue. The schools getting an “addition/capacity enhancement”  get to jump the line, but only to remedy overcrowding. There are only three additions planned in this CIP (WestPo, Justice, and Madison). The other two additions - at Justice and Madison - are only in the $19M range and they are Just adding seats, not updating the entire school. WestPo is an outlier. No addition/capacity enhancement in the history of FCPS has ever cost $36M.  Exacerbating the problem, WestPo has added a lot of “while we are at it’s” and is now looking more like a “renovation” rather than a straight line addition of seats.

What is more unseemly  ... Last year the entire addition for WestPo was budgeted for $16M. This year it is $36M. That’s $20M quietly moved around by FCPS towards WestPo in the last 12 months.

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