Reply to Tired of Name Changes/Bad Planning

Forum Index » Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)

Reply to "Tired of Name Changes/Bad Planning - Vote NO on School Bonds"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If FCPS and the School Board were responsible and really committed to community engagement, that's the dialogue they would encourage.  Do we want more schools with over 2500 students?  Are we prepared to have some students in trailers longer if we build a new school?  How important is it to make full use of schools with extra capacity like Mount Vernon and Lee?  What disparities, in terms of class sizes, are appropriate between schools in high ESOL/FARMS areas and those in wealthier areas?  Should we keep spending money busing kids to AAP centers and TJHSST?  Is IB worth the extra costs?

None of these questions really are discussed openly, either among School Board members or with the public.  You end up with a system that caters only to special interests, and the middle gets the declining share of what's left, at least until they flee for Loudoun.   [/quote]

Voting against the bond would do nothing to foster community engagement or address the issues you mention. Quite the opposite: voting it down would worsen the very capacity problems you claim to be concerned about.

You say "[n]one of these questions really are discussed openly." Where are you getting that from? How many school board meetings, staff meetings, and working groups do you attend? How many times have you actually raised your questions with the board and the staff? What examples can you point to of the community organizing on one of those questions and bringing their concerns to the board, only to be dismissed? Of course they're paying attention to these things. You might not like what they're doing about them, and they may even be doing the wrong thing. But their handling of those issues has nothing to do with renaming Stuart, and I have yet to see any evidence otherwise. Public comments like "it took up a lot of our time" and "it was a tough choice" don't actually imply that other agenda items got ignored; pushed back a little, maybe, but not ignored. Stop trying to blame every problem on the Stuart renaming.

Your swipe at "special interests" reveals what you're really up to, and that's punishing the board for allowing various boogeymen--limousine liberals, social justice warriors, NAACP, etc.--to score a political win, even if it was on what should have been a non-issue (refusing to allow schools to be named after traitors), and even if it means denying hundreds of millions of dollars for improving our 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