Reply to Is Western high school going to be sought after?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We attended the 2PM session. The principal is very charismatic and engaging. Really, all the speakers were energetic and had a visionary vibe.  The facility feels more like a college - lots of windows, adaptive and indoor/outdoor spaces. The pods are set up to be integrated disciplinary spaces-not typical FCPS. The robotics, maker and science labs are way beyond what is standard. The pool is great, my kid is a swimmer so really nice.  They said they are doing three pathways: Aeronautical Engineering and Aerospace, AI and Robotics. The school/facilities are set up to be a magnet school and while the admin is very committed to a traditional HS experience (they played sports and did band etc), its clear this will not be like other schools. I loved it.[/quote]

I was at the 10 Am session. Nothing was said about a magnet school or gave me the impression that they were thinking a magnet school. They are trying to use the existing pods in an interesting way. They discussed having integrated type classes where there would be cross curriculum overlap between science, English, and history subjects. they mentioned having 13 pods and how the pods can handle 120 students. It is unclear if they plan on using the pod design for the rest of the school. They did not even mention the pathways in our session.

[b]There was 0 discussion on the renovations or what they think the school would look like in the future. 
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Their original statements were that they anticipated spending $30-50 million on renovations, but I can't recall if that included the renovations for the fields.

The draft CIP that came out last week budgets an additional $51.8 million on renovations, including $18.4 million on modifications to the athletic fields.  So that's some real money going into modifications to the main building and the two shells.

They also need to take down the misleading statement on FCPS web sites that the Western acquisition would save FCPS $280 million compared to building a new school.  That was based on a $430 million estimate to build a new school minus the initial $150 million purchase price for KAA.  Even if you assume the $430 million estimate was a good faith estimate, the purported savings are now down to $228 million and will likely continue to decrease over the coming years.    [/quote]

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