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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If anyone questions the nearly unified community opposition to the boundary review I strongly suggest that you drive through the neighborhood that is getting moved from McLean to falls church high. Pretty much every house has a yard sign opposing the move.[/quote]

All that shows is one neighborhood that should have never been zoned to McLean (it’s far away) being unhappy about the prospect of being moved. It doesn’t say the rest of the FCPS community is opposed to changes.[/quote]

It’s an example of what’s happening across the county at nearly every location with a proposed move. Gatehouse has been getting deluged by angry constituents, and if anyone said otherwise just know they are gaslighting.[/quote]
That’s not the case. We live in an area with a lot of recommended changes and I haven’t seen a single sign. It doesn’t mean the county is unopposed to change, but the outrage at TLES is on a different level. [/quote]

It’s not just Timber Lane not wanting to get moved from McLean to Falls Church.

It’s families at Lemon Road living next door to Marshall not wanting to get moved to McLean.

It’s families at Shrevewood not wanting to see their school turned into a new split feeder to Marshall and McLean.

It’s families at Westgate who live next door to Westgate not wanting to be moved to Franklin Sherman.

It’s Westbriar families wondering why they are being moved from Marshall to Madison, with the Wolf Trap area at Marshall potentially left isolated from the rest of the Marshall attendance area.

There’s a reason why the whole area near the McLean/Marshall boundary is the biggest “hot spot.” The FCPS/Thru proposals affecting those schools were incredibly sloppy and the bigger issue is the lack of attention to the needs of Kilmer MS in the Marshall pyramid and McLean HS. [/quote]

Thru + Reid 's staff did show incredibly sloppy work as seen in the prior post.  Add to it 'forgetting" new Falls Chuch HS capacity and targeting capacity at 105%.  [b]Westgate is closer to Mclean than Lemon Road but there was no boundary change in drafts between those 2 sites. [/b]

MOCO is similar in scope to FCPS and the way changes in MOCO are happeneing or proposed differs dramatically from FCPS.   Regions are geographic and optional/magnet programs will be geographic.  https://bethesdamagazine.com/2025/06/25/mcps-leaning-toward-regional-programming-model/     Nothing like the Marshall in Region 5 with Westfield .

MOCO also has a new schools opening, did a spreadsheet on program transfers for HS.  FCPS does not provide this and the entire junk from Thru ignored program location https://go.boarddocs.com/mabe/mcpsmd/Board.nsf/files/DJVQ56678E2B/$file/Attachment%20D%20SY2025%20Student%20Enrollment%20Countywide%20Programs%20250724.pdf[/quote]
The base population at Westgate is much bigger than Lemon Road because Lemon Road has a large number of AAP students from Shrevewood and Westgate. The SPAs are outdated because Westgate just added a bunch of new townhouses, but at the time of the Kent Garden study, it was 246 vs 356 high school students from Lemon Road vs Westgate. The reason it was moved over Westgate is that it kept the capacity numbers balanced.

The problem with Lemon Road and Westgate is you have one half of their boundaries staring across the street at Marshall HS and the other half of their boundaries within walking distance of McLean. They either need to keep them split feeders, and balance them so more than 20% is going to McLean/Longfellow. Or swap around some SPAs so that one school takes everything off RT-7 and the other takes the half closer to 267.[/quote]

People tend to focus on high schools because they are more important to families, but the machinations involving the McLean and Marshall pyramids are heavily driven by the purported overcrowding at Kilmer MS in the Marshall pyramid (118% without modulars last year; 153% with modulars, and projected to go up over the next five years).  If you look at FCPS's capacity dashboard, it shows big fluctuations in Kilmer's program capacity, from 1272 seats in 2021-22 to 1023 seats last year.  I'm not sure if there's ever been an explanation as to why the program capacity declined so much, but it had a big impact on the latest Thru Consulting proposals.

With respect to Lemon Road and Westgate, I'm not aware of any large number of McLean parents at those schools complaining that they are 20% of the enrollments vs. the magic 25% used by Thru Consulting.  There are things that could be done to adjust those percentages at each school, but they would likely displease some folks.  And trying to eliminate the split feeders entirely so that all of Westgate feeds to Marshall and all of Lemon Road feeds to McLean, or vice versa, means splitting the Pimmit Hills neighborhood, which has fed entirely to Marshall for decades, between Marshall and McLean depending on proximity to 267 vs. 7.  As always, it would be useful to know what problem we're trying to solve, and whether it's really a problem, here before imposing changes on families. [/quote]

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