Reply to School Boundaries and "One Fairfax"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]NP here. Your analysis is soley based on the capacity. What this school board is trying to do is to add a new criteria based on OneFairfax. That is to rebalance school demographics based on socioeconomic facotr. Herndon and Langley are close but their demogrpahics are compeletly different. So they may try to switch some of wealth great falls area with some of poor Herndon area. Same for West Springfield and Lee. 
[/quote]

The proposed policy--which will likely be passed--is to use socioeconomic factors as the first consideration in a reshuffling.  That comes before proximity, geography, traffic patterns, neighborhood communities,avoiding split feeders,etc.

This is what disturbs people.

And, yes, with this policy, they could ship very poor immigrant kids from Herndon to Langley.  ( I don't think they will do this.)  If they did do this, it will increase truancy, decrease participation in school activities, and almost eliminate almost any family involvement for the kids being transported there.

And, this is the problem with our School Board--they never consider unintended consequences when they make decisions.  They only consider their social activism.  They almost never think about how it will affect the kids in reality.  Their minds are on utopia--not real life.

To me, there is no greater example of their disconnect than when several members were determined to change the name of Stuart to Thurgood Marshall--totally ignoring the fact that there was already a Marshall High School in FCPS.  Tunnel vision.[/quote]

Before any of the factors you mention would be considered, under the revised policy there would need to be a finding that, for example,  a school is overcrowded or under-enrolled.  Only then would factors such as SES and racial demographics come into play as relevant considerations.

Now, granted, virtually every school is either above or below capacity, so in theory the School Board could undertake a massive redistricting to try and adjust demographics under the new policy.  But there is nothing that is stopping them from doing that today, and it has not happened. Moreover, the revised policy specifically states that adjustments should avoid the creation of attendance islands, which also speaks to the lack of intent to create a patchwork quilt of attendance areas.

All the policy really signals is that, when a boundary adjustment is otherwise necessary, the School Board is going to try and avoid increasing the SES and demographic imbalances that already exist throughout FCPS due to housing patterns, zoning, and existing boundaries.

For the life of me, I can’t understand why this bothers people - especially the privileged out in Great Falls - so much.  I understand they have a long-term concern that, if a new high school is built in western Fairfax, they will move over to Herndon. Tough - that high school may or may get built and it is at least a decade away.  Do you plan to mislead everyone as to the School Board’s intentions for a solid decade to try and avoid that result?

[b]And why continue to harp on the Stuart renaming?  Didn’t Thurgood Marshall live in that community? The “Justice” name honors him without creating confusion with the other Marshall HS.[/quote][/b]

Even the night they changed the name, one of the Board members was trying to finesse a way to honor only Marshall.  But, in the early process, the designers of the process did intend to name it Thurgood Marshall.  The example was given as a flaming lack of common sense.[/quote]

Your argument is weak.  If they’d gone ahead and only honored Marshall, they still probably would have come up “Justice Thurgood Marshall” and referred to the school as Justice or Thurgood to avoid confusion with GCM.  According to the school’s web site, Justice is still intended to honor Marshall, along with two other individuals.

I think less common sense was displayed by the School Board when it chose to name schools after Confederate generals after the Supreme Court ordered school desegregation. How could they not have known those names would be considered unacceptable some day? [/quote]

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