The Colvin Run mom obviously is a staunch Republican who overall has nothing but disdain for FCPS and the School Board. Gather the only reason she replies to virtually every post is she can't bear the idea that some people might not jump at the chance to attend Langley. It's clearly super important to her sense of self-esteem.

Anonymous wrote:So much for the snippy Colvin Run mom checking out of the thread…

What are you talking about, rude McLean mom?

So much for the snippy Colvin Run mom checking out of the thread…

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:GFCA and MCA have both done and shared a lot of analysis with Tholen about future growth in the Langley pyramid and in Tysons (which feeds into McLean and Marshall).

FCPS admits its enrollment projections are based on a simplistic methodology that only takes into account new developments if the developer has broken ground, regardless of whether the county has approved the developments or paid the county proffer money. The Tysons development in particular is going to add hundreds more kids to Marshall and McLean.

Tholen listens but is incredibly passive as if it’s all out of her hands. When an MCA member asked her point blank why FCPS isn’t planning now for an addition to McLean, she just smirked and talked about the 37-year renovation cycle, ignoring the other high schools like Justice or Madison where FCPS has built or is building additions outside the renovation cycle.

Great Falls and McLean and the Langley/McLean pyramids have a common interest in replacing Tholen with someone who will fight for fair funding and adequate seats at their pyramid schools, whether it’s Kent Gardens ES, Cooper MS, or McLean HS. Tholen doesn’t have it in her to challenge Jeff Platenberg or other School Board members.

The main point of contention between them is that, when push comes to shove, Great Falls would rather see McLean remain overcrowded than risk overcrowding Cooper or Langley to the point where others would push to move Cooper/Langley kids into the Herndon pyramid. But Herndon doesn’t have much excess capacity of its own and it’s only due to the negligence of FCPS and the School Board that the communities at times get pitted against each other.

If someone can get that message out, whether Republican, Democratic, or Independent, we can get rid of ineffective School Board members like Tholen and start to make some progress.

I'm sorry - the bolded is just completely false. Langley stepped up and urged McLean to send kids to Langley to help alleviate McLean's overcrowding. What did we hear from many of the McLean parents? Complaining and whining. Many of YOU didn't want your kids to go to Langley. Fine. We offered. Not sure what it is you want us to do for you. We agree you need an addition. Beyond that, we've offered space and many of you turned your noses up. Maybe next time don't look a gift horse in the mouth?

Langley wanted some additional kids to avoid losing more teachers (after years of declining enrollments) and getting relegated to a lower VHSL division, which almost happened but for an appeal.

They hand-picked the neighborhoods they wanted and objected to moving areas that might actually bring Langley above capacity and Tholen went right along. The GFCA then said that was the best of all possible outcomes.

As with any boundary change, some in the impacted neighborhoods were unhappy while others were pleased or indifferent. But it clearly wasn’t a comprehensive solution, McLean remains overcrowded, and it’s Marshall and McLean, not Langley, that will have to accommodate all the kids coming from the new Tysons multi-family housing.

None of this is good planning or in on any way aligned with all the “equity” and “One Fairfax” talk that Brabrand, the School Board, and Jeff McKay love to prattle on about.

Just admit the whole dynamic created a Lord of the Flies dynamic and stop pretending Langley parents are so noble and generous. They absolutely gamed the situation, aided and abetted by a flaky, hypocritical School Board member who lives in Great Falls and didn’t want to upset any of her rich neighbors.

Question: why on earth would ANY school community advocate to move areas which might cause their school to be above capacity?? Do you even hear yourself? JFC. Get off your high horse and quit blaming Langley for the SB's failure to give McLean an addition.

It appears you're conceding the same point that you previously claimed was "completely false."

One might think that, knowing that a neighboring school was currently overcrowded, advocates for Great Falls might have been willing to accept the possibility of future overcrowding years down the road as an acceptable risk. But they were not. The GFCA was clear that they opposed rezoning areas slated for additional growth to Langley and wanted to put a limit on the number of housing units redistricted. And those were the people Tholen and her colleagues accommodated. We won't forget next year.

Hoo boy. Did you vote for Tholen? Because I didn't - and I'm the PP. Knock yourself out next year, but guess what? Those of us disgusted with those of YOU who insist on "voting blue no matter who," won't forget next year, either. Do you ever take even an iota of responsibility for the clowns YOU voted for?

Anonymous wrote:She wants to use public office to punish those snooty folk in a top pyramid— but put her own kids in Madison.

And confused one group of “snooty” folk with another.

You can’t make this stuff up.

I guess it's ok to confuse one "snooty" group with another, but not ok to confuse one black woman with another.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Remember the school board supported Tholen.

If you want her out, at-large has to go as well.

Omeish did not support Tholen. People may have other reasons to dislike her, but she was the only one to challenge Tholen.

Keys Gamarra and Sizemore Heizer rubber stamped Tholen. Mind you, Keys Gamarra had blocked Strauss years earlier, claiming there should be no boundary changes until there was a county-wide review “with an equity lens,” only to go along with Tholen’s less equitable non-solution that leaves McLean overcrowded and Langley under-enrolled and with only expensive SFHs in its catchment area.

Omeish has been clear since her campaign that what she wants is to nuke the boundaries and remake all schools by demographics.

Although during the vote she was careful to say that wasn’t the reason lol.

Omeish opposed Tholen's scheme because she wanted a broader review of Tysons-area HS boundaries so that space could free up at Marshall again for IB pupil placements.

Keys Gamarra called me during the 2019 election asking for support. I treated it as an opportunity to lobby for an addition to McLean. She went off about how there needed to be a county-wide boundary study and how the McLean parents who'd been saying negative things about Herndon needed to be taught a lesson. She then admitted she was talking about Langley parents who'd spoken ill of Herndon at a meeting with Janie Strauss at Forestville ES in June 2019, and that she had a hard time recalling the difference between Langley and McLean. Your tax dollars at work, folks.

Sizemore Heizer said all the right things during her campaign and has since been useless.

There's no reason for McLean families to support any of them again.

Who are you?

*she'd

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Remember the school board supported Tholen.

If you want her out, at-large has to go as well.

Omeish did not support Tholen. People may have other reasons to dislike her, but she was the only one to challenge Tholen.

Keys Gamarra and Sizemore Heizer rubber stamped Tholen. Mind you, Keys Gamarra had blocked Strauss years earlier, claiming there should be no boundary changes until there was a county-wide review “with an equity lens,” only to go along with Tholen’s less equitable non-solution that leaves McLean overcrowded and Langley under-enrolled and with only expensive SFHs in its catchment area.

Omeish has been clear since her campaign that what she wants is to nuke the boundaries and remake all schools by demographics.

Although during the vote she was careful to say that wasn’t the reason lol.

Yep. If she could get away with it, she's socially engineer all school boundaries. Vote her out.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DP

Looks to me like Shouse Village wanted to go (back, as I think they had been a few decades ago) to Langley.

That Herndon community where the golf course used to be piped up during the comment period to ask the school board to move them from HHS to Langley since they were changing boundaries anyway.

It is right that Langley parents aren’t in the position to “offer a gift” of seats at LHS to McLean residents. That’s the school board’s authority. It’s also quite clear that McLean parents don’t gaf if growth pushes great falls out of Langley.

In the end, however, it’s the school board that told McLean years ago that they would get an addition and not have to leave.

It’s the school board that dissembled to McLean in late 2018/early 2019 about not re boundary ing some apartments from McLean to Langley (as reminder—they were in the process of overhauling boundary policy to prioritize racial and class mix in schools and disregard neighborhoods— and to allow themselves to change boundaries every three years. They were going to change all the boundaries in the county once the policy was done)

It’s the school board that surprised everyone with the switcheroo at the last minute to go against staff rec for the boundary.

I think we can all agree that with growth in Tysons and the existing overcrowding, McLean needs the addition. We can all agree that the school board has mishandled pretty much everything they’ve touched.

We can be annoyed at GF or McLean parents, but we don’t elect them.

It’s the school board that needs to be held accountable for their constant failure and malfeasance.

I would agree with this. No one has said McLean doesn't need an addition. And yes, I grew up here when Shouse went to Langley and now I have kids at Colvin Run - as I said earlier, we (and many other families) are thrilled that Colvin Run is no longer a split feeder and all the kids go to Langley. That was common sense, even if certain McLean parents continue to whine about it. Eliminating split feeders and islands is good policy. Everything else FCPS has touched, however, has turned to crap.

DP, but there was nothing “common sense” about expanding Langley when it was below capacity and then expanding its already huge boundaries so that even more kids who live closer to other high schools end up attending Langley. That’s wasteful and inefficient.

Tholen can trot out the usual platitudes about the benefits of eliminating split feeders but we all know FCPS creates as many split feeders as it eliminates, and that she’s done nothing about more lopsided split feeders in Dranesville than Colvin Run.

Sorry to hear you think everything else FCPS has touched has “turned to crap.” I might have thought Langley parents would be more appreciative.

Of course it's common sense to enlarge a school if you're renovating it anyway and have the space. It would be foolish *not* to. Look, we get that the boundary issue keeps you up at night, gnashing your teeth, but it is done. You repeating yourself constantly about the same issue is just... exhausting. Try voting for people who don't have a D next to their name next time. And btw - we love Langley. Just hate what FCPS as a whole is becoming, with its constant focus on race and "equity." Glad to be moving on.

I live in Great Falls but on the first reading I see nothing to argue in this analysis.

Looks like a good script for any challenger, D or R, who wants Tholen’s seat next year.

Anonymous wrote:No reason why you should.

Just as GF would be upset at a decision that shoved them out of Langley when all the school board had to do was expand McLean in the first place.

The board reneged on its promises (to expand McLean) and obfuscated to MCA instead of being upfront. Go watch the work session I’m which they shoot down Strauss’ attempt to rezone some apartments to Langley due to their efforts to rewrite boundary policy so that they could nuke the boundaries and remake every school with demographics as the number one consideration. She said to the board about McLean “I have to tell them *something*” because it was unreasonable not to adjust boundary with McLean overcrowded and Langley’s expansion nearly completed.

She even pointed out that this change was “what everyone wanted” (altering demographics) and that she didn’t want to “miss the opportunity”


And here we are.

All because the school board, whom we elect, loves to prevaricate, dissemble, and poorly steward our tax dollars.

Yep. So at the end of the day the planning was bad, the implementation was worse, and Tholen would rather make Platenberg look better and Great Falls feel more secure than look out after her other constituents.

* FCPS staff and Janie Strauss both told McLean they planned to build an addition to the school back in 2014 and 2015.

* The plans were sketched out and Strauss told McLean no one would get moved to Langley until after an addition was built.

* Then Platenberg decided it would be cheaper/easier/whatever to expand Langley more than originally planned (every CIP issued between 2014 and 2017 said LHS would be expanded to 2100 seats; only in 2018 did they disclose it was being expanded to 2350, and then 2370, seats).

* Meanwhile, Platenberg budgeted additions at Justice, Madison, and West Potomac outside the renovation queue (none of those schools was otherwise in the queue for a renovation).

* Part of the FCPS staff justification for expanding Langley to 2370 seats, at a time when Langley had 1922 students, was that Langley could then take on part of Tysons.

* Strauss then proposed a boundary change in late 2018/early 2019 that would do just that, and her colleagues stiff-armed her and said there needed to be county-wide boundary changes "through an equity-based lens" instead.

* The School Board eventually authorized a boundary study in September 2019, just before the election, because they knew the Republicans otherwise were going to win Dranesville and at least one if not two of the at-large seats.

* Tholen got elected and then decided to push ahead with a boundary study during Covid, even though FCPS was losing students and no longer had any confidence in its ability to project future enrollments.

* She then ignored a staff recommendation that, consistent with the original rationale for expanding Langley to 2370 seats, would have moved part of Tysons to Langley, and instead supported an option that capped the number of housing units moved to Langley, consistent with the stated preferences of the Great Falls Citizens Association, which wants to avoid overcrowding Langley at all costs.

* Despite the prior delay in a boundary study because of "equity considerations," the option that Tholen pushed through moved housing units to Langley, the county's wealthiest high school, that on average cost twice as much as the housing units in the area that staff had proposed to move to Langley, and had only half as many URMs.

* This was justified on the grounds that it eliminated an existing split feeder at Colvin Run ES, which it did, yet no action was taken to address other, more lopsided split feeders in the Langley and McLean pyramids.

* Shortly before this happened, the School Board also approved a change to the TJHSST admissions policy, which Tholen and others have acknowledged will add over 100 more students to each of Langley and McLean in the coming years, as fewer students are admitted to TJ from Cooper and Longfellow MS.

* Fast forward, and McLean's enrollment is now at an all-time high, Langley remains hundreds of students below capacity, McLean and Marshall remain on the hook to accommodate all the anticipated growth in Tysons (which FCPS has separately calculated could add hundreds of additional students to each of Marshall and McLean, both of which have fewer permanent seats than Langley), and Tholen has been unable or unwilling to get McLean slated for a permanent addition like Justice or Madison.

It is a series of screw-ups that collectively are an epic failure of good FCPS planning or sound oversight, and Tholen and her School Board cronies should be reminded of that failure until they either get their act together, are replaced on the School Board, or resign.

No reason why you should.

Just as GF would be upset at a decision that shoved them out of Langley when all the school board had to do was expand McLean in the first place.

The board reneged on its promises (to expand McLean) and obfuscated to MCA instead of being upfront. Go watch the work session I’m which they shoot down Strauss’ attempt to rezone some apartments to Langley due to their efforts to rewrite boundary policy so that they could nuke the boundaries and remake every school with demographics as the number one consideration. She said to the board about McLean “I have to tell them *something*” because it was unreasonable not to adjust boundary with McLean overcrowded and Langley’s expansion nearly completed.

She even pointed out that this change was “what everyone wanted” (altering demographics) and that she didn’t want to “miss the opportunity”


And here we are.

All because the school board, whom we elect, loves to prevaricate, dissemble, and poorly steward our tax dollars.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:GFCA and MCA have both done and shared a lot of analysis with Tholen about future growth in the Langley pyramid and in Tysons (which feeds into McLean and Marshall).

FCPS admits its enrollment projections are based on a simplistic methodology that only takes into account new developments if the developer has broken ground, regardless of whether the county has approved the developments or paid the county proffer money. The Tysons development in particular is going to add hundreds more kids to Marshall and McLean.

Tholen listens but is incredibly passive as if it’s all out of her hands. When an MCA member asked her point blank why FCPS isn’t planning now for an addition to McLean, she just smirked and talked about the 37-year renovation cycle, ignoring the other high schools like Justice or Madison where FCPS has built or is building additions outside the renovation cycle.

Great Falls and McLean and the Langley/McLean pyramids have a common interest in replacing Tholen with someone who will fight for fair funding and adequate seats at their pyramid schools, whether it’s Kent Gardens ES, Cooper MS, or McLean HS. Tholen doesn’t have it in her to challenge Jeff Platenberg or other School Board members.

The main point of contention between them is that, when push comes to shove, Great Falls would rather see McLean remain overcrowded than risk overcrowding Cooper or Langley to the point where others would push to move Cooper/Langley kids into the Herndon pyramid. But Herndon doesn’t have much excess capacity of its own and it’s only due to the negligence of FCPS and the School Board that the communities at times get pitted against each other.

If someone can get that message out, whether Republican, Democratic, or Independent, we can get rid of ineffective School Board members like Tholen and start to make some progress.

I'm sorry - the bolded is just completely false. Langley stepped up and urged McLean to send kids to Langley to help alleviate McLean's overcrowding. What did we hear from many of the McLean parents? Complaining and whining. Many of YOU didn't want your kids to go to Langley. Fine. We offered. Not sure what it is you want us to do for you. We agree you need an addition. Beyond that, we've offered space and many of you turned your noses up. Maybe next time don't look a gift horse in the mouth?

Langley wanted some additional kids to avoid losing more teachers (after years of declining enrollments) and getting relegated to a lower VHSL division, which almost happened but for an appeal.

They hand-picked the neighborhoods they wanted and objected to moving areas that might actually bring Langley above capacity and Tholen went right along. The GFCA then said that was the best of all possible outcomes.

As with any boundary change, some in the impacted neighborhoods were unhappy while others were pleased or indifferent. But it clearly wasn’t a comprehensive solution, McLean remains overcrowded, and it’s Marshall and McLean, not Langley, that will have to accommodate all the kids coming from the new Tysons multi-family housing.

None of this is good planning or in on any way aligned with all the “equity” and “One Fairfax” talk that Brabrand, the School Board, and Jeff McKay love to prattle on about.

Just admit the whole dynamic created a Lord of the Flies dynamic and stop pretending Langley parents are so noble and generous. They absolutely gamed the situation, aided and abetted by a flaky, hypocritical School Board member who lives in Great Falls and didn’t want to upset any of her rich neighbors.

Question: why on earth would ANY school community advocate to move areas which might cause their school to be above capacity?? Do you even hear yourself? JFC. Get off your high horse and quit blaming Langley for the SB's failure to give McLean an addition.

It appears you're conceding the same point that you previously claimed was "completely false."

One might think that, knowing that a neighboring school was currently overcrowded, advocates for Great Falls might have been willing to accept the possibility of future overcrowding years down the road as an acceptable risk. But they were not. The GFCA was clear that they opposed rezoning areas slated for additional growth to Langley and wanted to put a limit on the number of housing units redistricted. And those were the people Tholen and her colleagues accommodated. We won't forget next year.

She wants to use public office to punish those snooty folk in a top pyramid— but put her own kids in Madison.

And confused one group of “snooty” folk with another.

You can’t make this stuff up.