Reply to Is there any VA school distric that is NOT a dumpster fire?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Second FCCPS. It's a much smaller district too. Is the new high school finished yet?[/quote]

Yes, the high school is finished and it's beautiful. There will be construction going on nearby for the commercial developments for a few years, though.

We are in Falls Church and love it. Teachers are almost universally great, leadership is great, and I feel like everyone is very responsive to parents and kids. That said, the downsides are:

- fewer offerings than some bigger districts in terms of electives, activities, and foreign languages
- small student body (this has upsides -- easy to make sports teams!! - and downsides -- hopefully you can find your crowd in a class of 175 kids or so.[/quote]

This is what I hear from FCCPS parents.  We seriously considered moving there and I talked to a lot of people.

Great for your kid if it's great for your kid.  If it's not great for your kid, no options.

Everyone is in your business.  Very cliquey.  Some people love that.  Some people don't.

The locations of their middle school/high school are not ideal.  On top of the highway, in the middle of commercial development, on the far edge of falls church city, with terrible parking.  If one of your goals is to be part of a walkable community, that's not doing it.

It's also very homogenous, which is on purpose.  They separated themselves from Fairfax however long ago to get away from the students that are harder to serve.  If you're the type that cares about these things.[/quote]

I have to disagree with your final two points. The location of the MS/HS are fine - and will be even better when there is commercial development there. Yes, it would be better if it were smack dab in the middle of the school, but a solid 30-40 percent of kids at the schools (I would guess) live within a 20 minute walk of the schools.

It's not that homogeneous and is becoming even less so. 30-40 percent of the kids in my 5th grader's class are nonwhite and that's been consistent every year. Most people do have educated parents who care about education, but that's why they moved to FCC in the first place (and many are willing to live in smaller houses and/or condos/apartments to be there).[/quote]

3 percent African American
8 percent on free and reduced lunch

Please.[/quote]

I guess Hispanics, Asians, mixed race students don't count? The dashboard I see says 72% are white. I bet that's higher in the high school and lower in the elementary schools (based on what I see). The district is becoming more diverse.

It's very homogenous in that people move there who prioritize schools. If you don't want to be in a school system where parents prioritize schools, definitely go somewhere else. If your priority is finding the exact right mix of races and income level based on your personal criteria you can do that. But OP asked a different question.[/quote]

The original statement was FCC spun off to get rid of students who are harder to serve.  Which is a fact based statement.  This is what happened and the legacy of it is abundantly clear today.

Also, lots of parents prioritize schools and don’t have good options to move to a very expensive area.  Get some perspective.[/quote]

I think folks are painfully aware that a child’s education is a service that is available for purchase.  Parents, as consumers, can either pay for that education directly (private school) or indirectly (by choosing a school district in which to live, where the cost of the education is embedded in the real estate price), or they can provide that service themselves (homeschool) or partially by themselves (a combination of homeschool with a la carte private schooling via co-ops, tutors, and dual enrollment).

Because educational services are directly or indirectly purchased (or provided by the parents), parents expect to get back what they invest in resources and time, which translates to the folks that invest more expecting more. And it turns out that educational outcomes correlate highly with parental affluence.  Depending on your perspective, this is either the expected result (its economics 101) or raises troubling questions of educational equity, or both! In either case, I have yet to meet a parent that doesn’t prioritize getting their own children the best possible education.

Accordingly, I suspect folks are very aware that more affluent people can consume more educational services and therefore achieve higher educational outcomes.  This may occur, in part, by those parents being willing to pay more to live in an area with higher performing public schools. By doing so, they must be aware that they have shut out less affluent families from enjoying those schools.

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