Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did that School. Board member who was trying to help out a donor by moving their house from Lewis to WSHS get their way?

Yes. And that School Board Member was Sandy Anderson for the folks in the back.

THIS NEEDS to be discussed more.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the Lewis and West Springfield folks need to consider my post from yesterday. Reposting here (it is on page 77).

Here is what I think is going on with Lewis.

The county cannot officially make Lewis an ESL school (that would be illegal), but through their actions they seem to be pushing it that way.

They slightly shrank the boundaries with this latest map. This could reduce the population further (on track to be around 1450 in a couple of years). Remember, in both 2005 and 2015 the boundaries of Lewis (Lee) were made smaller and the enrollment fell from over 2100 to its current 1539.

At Lewis they stick with a woefully underperforming IB program and have shrunk the language choices to a minimum. They put in a STEM program at Edison next door. All of this allows (and incentivizes) families who live within the Lewis boundaries to pupil place to other schools. These are typically families with more resources that can provide their own transportation and likely get more education support at home.

The end effect is Lewis having more high-needs students and fewer advanced students. This theoretically allows the county to focus on high-needs students while more advanced students transfer to different schools to access more advanced courses. They must think this will make the job for Lewis administrators and teachers easier. The problem is that right now they don’t appear to be getting those high-needs students to perform very well (only so much a school can do without proper influence from the home), and it is doing a disservice to advanced students who have to stay at Lewis (fewer advanced courses, fewer instances of those courses).

If they had addressed this 10-15 years ago they may have been able to avert Lewis from becoming a pariah. At this point Lewis is so far down the high ESL / high poverty line that the thought of moving any students to Lewis is seen as cataclysmic. I think all of this explains why no students are being moved to Lewis.

This is the only explanation I can think of. Why else would they hold on to IB at that school?

If that logic is true, then it is completely inequitable to all the other FARMs and ELL kids at the large high schools like Annandale, Falls Church, Justice, etc, which have larger ELL populations than Lewis by the raw numbers. Why do Lewis ELL kids get special small private school treatment?

To some degree it is a tipping point. Once you are below a certain enrollment number AND have a high ESL population it becomes hard to keep the advanced classes populated (or a variety of languages). So if the county can get advanced students to transfer to other schools that, in theory, simplifies the task at Lewis.

Annandale and Falls Church fell under 2000 students this year, but just barely. Justice is just below 2200. Herndon is still over 2000. So they should still have a decent number of advanced students just based on the higher numbers. So those schools may still be very capable of supporting both ESL and advanced students. (Note: sometimes ESL students are advanced, just looking at general needs).

Mt. Vernon is down to 1755, so it is quickly becoming a problem like Lewis (only 1539 students). Poor and small.

Annandale will get more kids with Bren Mar Park moving back to Annandale from Edison. This is undoing part of an earlier redistricting of kids out of Annandale in 2011.

Falls Church will get more kids with Sleepy Hollow Woods moving from Justice to eliminate the Mason Crest split feeder. Not sure how they feel about getting moved into Poe, though.

Justice is losing Sleepy Hollow Woods but picking up a small area in Lincolnia now at Annandale that fought out a move from pre-STEM Jefferson to Justice (then Stuart) decades ago. Justice enrollment will keep going down if some of the immigrant families are forced out or leave voluntarily.

All of these schools are healthier than Lewis. Annandale has a great principal. Falls Church is getting a major renovation. Justice has some wealthy areas the Lake Barcroft/Sleepy Hollow area to go along with the poorer areas. Lewis just gets treated like dirt year after year. So does Mount Vernon.

Justice losing Sleepy Hollow woods will hurt the school tremendously. Those kids attend Justice whereas Barcroft has most attend private school.

Justice would benefit from a second middle school feeding into it but that will not happen.

This change also pushes on capacity at Falls Church with the move.

Sleepy Hollow Woods and part of Columbia Pines used to go to Belvedere before Mason Crest got built. Then they got moved to Mason Crest but stayed at Glasgow and Justice.

Thru proposed to move that area back to Belvedere, and people said they wanted to stay at Mason Crest. I was surprised they didn't want to go back to Belvedere, which has a well regarded AAP program. Now Thru has proposed to move them to Poe and Falls Church, which the rest of Mason Crest attends.

It works from a capacity perspective. Poe has plenty of space. The "Boundary Review Scenario Explorer" still shows Falls Church as having a program capacity of 1957, but it's nearing the end of an expansion that will increase its capacity to 2500. Scenario 4 increases Falls Church's enrollment but still leaves it under 2200. There may be more growth later if parts of Merrifield get redeveloped as proposed but right now it seems like it should be fine.

I agree with you that the kids in this area are more likely to attend public school than kids in Lake Barcroft, but Justice would pick up a smaller area in Lincolnia now at Parklawn/Holmes/Annandale that is more similar to Sleepy Hollow Woods than Lake Barcroft.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I doubt the whole Oak Hill would go to KAA. But maybe Emerald Chase goes to South Lakes and the rest of Oak Hill go to KAA.

Remember currently Emerald Chase kids (and Bradley Farm kids south of West Ox) go to Westfield. Moving them to KAA won’t give relief to Chantilly.

I don't take it for granted that Thru and the school board will do what makes sense, but what makes sense is to send Emerald Chase to KAA with the rest of Oak Hill in order to keep pyramids aligned (and, assuming the Franklin Middle School kids get redistricted for Carson, to eliminate a split feeder).

I agree. The school board has an opportunity to build an actual school pyramid with no split feeders with just making a few changes. I hope they don’t find a way to screw that up.

From last night's meeting:

Centerville had three split feeders (Bull Run, Powell ES and Union). They fixes ZERO of these split feeders
Robinson had one split feeder (Oak View). They DID NOT fix this split feeder.

Why are they 'fixing' some split feeders and not others? This was never about fixing split feeders.

Look at the Region 4 BRAC feedback. They request for Powell and Union to be reverted. They were sending Powell kids to Willow Springs, which is further away, and the Union Mill shift meant moving Fairview kids to Bonnie Brae to make room.

Pretty much all the BRAC notes were to put things back the way they were. The school board is going to hate both scenarios.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I doubt the whole Oak Hill would go to KAA. But maybe Emerald Chase goes to South Lakes and the rest of Oak Hill go to KAA.

Remember currently Emerald Chase kids (and Bradley Farm kids south of West Ox) go to Westfield. Moving them to KAA won’t give relief to Chantilly.

I don't take it for granted that Thru and the school board will do what makes sense, but what makes sense is to send Emerald Chase to KAA with the rest of Oak Hill in order to keep pyramids aligned (and, assuming the Franklin Middle School kids get redistricted for Carson, to eliminate a split feeder).

I agree. The school board has an opportunity to build an actual school pyramid with no split feeders with just making a few changes. I hope they don’t find a way to screw that up.

From last night's meeting:

Centerville had three split feeders (Bull Run, Powell ES and Union). They fixes ZERO of these split feeders
Robinson had one split feeder (Oak View). They DID NOT fix this split feeder.

Why are they 'fixing' some split feeders and not others? This was never about fixing split feeders.

Because this map version is highly focused on feedback from the BRAC. The Thru guy at the meeting last night made that very clear. He didn't sound happy about it either.

It seems like some regions focused on only fixing splits (and are using that to justify moved folks further away from their current schools (aka Sangster) and others only on neighborhood comments. I'm sorry, but this whole thing is an absolute joke. I wonder how many "Split feeders' were actually 'fixed' overall.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I doubt the whole Oak Hill would go to KAA. But maybe Emerald Chase goes to South Lakes and the rest of Oak Hill go to KAA.

Remember currently Emerald Chase kids (and Bradley Farm kids south of West Ox) go to Westfield. Moving them to KAA won’t give relief to Chantilly.

I don't take it for granted that Thru and the school board will do what makes sense, but what makes sense is to send Emerald Chase to KAA with the rest of Oak Hill in order to keep pyramids aligned (and, assuming the Franklin Middle School kids get redistricted for Carson, to eliminate a split feeder).

I agree. The school board has an opportunity to build an actual school pyramid with no split feeders with just making a few changes. I hope they don’t find a way to screw that up.

From last night's meeting:

Centerville had three split feeders (Bull Run, Powell ES and Union). They fixes ZERO of these split feeders
Robinson had one split feeder (Oak View). They DID NOT fix this split feeder.

Why are they 'fixing' some split feeders and not others? This was never about fixing split feeders.

They started out proposing to fix the lopsided split feeders (where fewer than 25% of the students fed from an elementary school to a middle school, or from a middle school to a high school), but excluded the situations where the split feeders themselves were located in the area with the under 25% split. They excluded those situations because, if they reassigned those areas, they'd end up with schools located outside their attendance areas.

So that meant they were only dealing with a subset of split feeders from the beginning.

Then, people complained about a lot of the proposed "fixes" to the split feeders, either because they were fine with the existing split or the proposed solutions did things like moving kids who lived within walking distance of a school to a different school or pyramid.

So now they are left proposing to fix a smaller number of lopsided split feeders if people didn't object and it still kind of works from a numbers perspective. Same thing with the various "attendance islands' they were initially proposing to eliminate.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did that School. Board member who was trying to help out a donor by moving their house from Lewis to WSHS get their way?

Yes. And that School Board Member was Sandy Anderson for the folks in the back.

Wow.
Even if this does not affect you personally at all, the corruption of this shpuld be highlighted. In no world does it make sense to move kids from an underenrolled school into an overcrowded school

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I doubt the whole Oak Hill would go to KAA. But maybe Emerald Chase goes to South Lakes and the rest of Oak Hill go to KAA.

Remember currently Emerald Chase kids (and Bradley Farm kids south of West Ox) go to Westfield. Moving them to KAA won’t give relief to Chantilly.

I don't take it for granted that Thru and the school board will do what makes sense, but what makes sense is to send Emerald Chase to KAA with the rest of Oak Hill in order to keep pyramids aligned (and, assuming the Franklin Middle School kids get redistricted for Carson, to eliminate a split feeder).

I agree. The school board has an opportunity to build an actual school pyramid with no split feeders with just making a few changes. I hope they don’t find a way to screw that up.

From last night's meeting:

Centerville had three split feeders (Bull Run, Powell ES and Union). They fixes ZERO of these split feeders
Robinson had one split feeder (Oak View). They DID NOT fix this split feeder.

Why are they 'fixing' some split feeders and not others? This was never about fixing split feeders.

Because this map version is highly focused on feedback from the BRAC. The Thru guy at the meeting last night made that very clear. He didn't sound happy about it either.

I can see why- it seems like THRU was a massive waste of time and money. Most of their suggestions were reversed and now we're going with a low fewer minor changes made by someone else (BRAC).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I doubt the whole Oak Hill would go to KAA. But maybe Emerald Chase goes to South Lakes and the rest of Oak Hill go to KAA.

Remember currently Emerald Chase kids (and Bradley Farm kids south of West Ox) go to Westfield. Moving them to KAA won’t give relief to Chantilly.

I don't take it for granted that Thru and the school board will do what makes sense, but what makes sense is to send Emerald Chase to KAA with the rest of Oak Hill in order to keep pyramids aligned (and, assuming the Franklin Middle School kids get redistricted for Carson, to eliminate a split feeder).

I agree. The school board has an opportunity to build an actual school pyramid with no split feeders with just making a few changes. I hope they don’t find a way to screw that up.

From last night's meeting:

Centerville had three split feeders (Bull Run, Powell ES and Union). They fixes ZERO of these split feeders
Robinson had one split feeder (Oak View). They DID NOT fix this split feeder.

Why are they 'fixing' some split feeders and not others? This was never about fixing split feeders.

Because this map version is highly focused on feedback from the BRAC. The Thru guy at the meeting last night made that very clear. He didn't sound happy about it either.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Robinson Pyramid kept all four of their split feeders. Clearly fixing split feeders was not the larger FCPS priority.

At the risk of sounding ignorant because I live in the Robinson pyramid and thought I was reasonably informed about schools here--what split feeders do you mean? Don't all students at the five schools feeding to Robinson go to Robinson?

The presentation last night showed that Oak View is Robinson's only split feeder and it will remain so in Scenario 4. It does, however, eliminate the attendance island.

Centerville had three an they kept all three.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the Lewis and West Springfield folks need to consider my post from yesterday. Reposting here (it is on page 77).

Here is what I think is going on with Lewis.

The county cannot officially make Lewis an ESL school (that would be illegal), but through their actions they seem to be pushing it that way.

They slightly shrank the boundaries with this latest map. This could reduce the population further (on track to be around 1450 in a couple of years). Remember, in both 2005 and 2015 the boundaries of Lewis (Lee) were made smaller and the enrollment fell from over 2100 to its current 1539.

At Lewis they stick with a woefully underperforming IB program and have shrunk the language choices to a minimum. They put in a STEM program at Edison next door. All of this allows (and incentivizes) families who live within the Lewis boundaries to pupil place to other schools. These are typically families with more resources that can provide their own transportation and likely get more education support at home.

The end effect is Lewis having more high-needs students and fewer advanced students. This theoretically allows the county to focus on high-needs students while more advanced students transfer to different schools to access more advanced courses. They must think this will make the job for Lewis administrators and teachers easier. The problem is that right now they don’t appear to be getting those high-needs students to perform very well (only so much a school can do without proper influence from the home), and it is doing a disservice to advanced students who have to stay at Lewis (fewer advanced courses, fewer instances of those courses).

If they had addressed this 10-15 years ago they may have been able to avert Lewis from becoming a pariah. At this point Lewis is so far down the high ESL / high poverty line that the thought of moving any students to Lewis is seen as cataclysmic. I think all of this explains why no students are being moved to Lewis.

This is the only explanation I can think of. Why else would they hold on to IB at that school?

If that logic is true, then it is completely inequitable to all the other FARMs and ELL kids at the large high schools like Annandale, Falls Church, Justice, etc, which have larger ELL populations than Lewis by the raw numbers. Why do Lewis ELL kids get special small private school treatment?

To some degree it is a tipping point. Once you are below a certain enrollment number AND have a high ESL population it becomes hard to keep the advanced classes populated (or a variety of languages). So if the county can get advanced students to transfer to other schools that, in theory, simplifies the task at Lewis.

Annandale and Falls Church fell under 2000 students this year, but just barely. Justice is just below 2200. Herndon is still over 2000. So they should still have a decent number of advanced students just based on the higher numbers. So those schools may still be very capable of supporting both ESL and advanced students. (Note: sometimes ESL students are advanced, just looking at general needs).

Mt. Vernon is down to 1755, so it is quickly becoming a problem like Lewis (only 1539 students). Poor and small.

Annandale will get more kids with Bren Mar Park moving back to Annandale from Edison. This is undoing part of an earlier redistricting of kids out of Annandale in 2011.

Falls Church will get more kids with Sleepy Hollow Woods moving from Justice to eliminate the Mason Crest split feeder. Not sure how they feel about getting moved into Poe, though.

Justice is losing Sleepy Hollow Woods but picking up a small area in Lincolnia now at Annandale that fought out a move from pre-STEM Jefferson to Justice (then Stuart) decades ago. Justice enrollment will keep going down if some of the immigrant families are forced out or leave voluntarily.

All of these schools are healthier than Lewis. Annandale has a great principal. Falls Church is getting a major renovation. Justice has some wealthy areas the Lake Barcroft/Sleepy Hollow area to go along with the poorer areas. Lewis just gets treated like dirt year after year. So does Mount Vernon.

Justice losing Sleepy Hollow woods will hurt the school tremendously. Those kids attend Justice whereas Barcroft has most attend private school.

Justice would benefit from a second middle school feeding into it but that will not happen.

This change also pushes on capacity at Falls Church with the move.

Anonymous wrote:Did that School. Board member who was trying to help out a donor by moving their house from Lewis to WSHS get their way?

Yes. And that School Board Member was Sandy Anderson for the folks in the back.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I doubt the whole Oak Hill would go to KAA. But maybe Emerald Chase goes to South Lakes and the rest of Oak Hill go to KAA.

Remember currently Emerald Chase kids (and Bradley Farm kids south of West Ox) go to Westfield. Moving them to KAA won’t give relief to Chantilly.

I don't take it for granted that Thru and the school board will do what makes sense, but what makes sense is to send Emerald Chase to KAA with the rest of Oak Hill in order to keep pyramids aligned (and, assuming the Franklin Middle School kids get redistricted for Carson, to eliminate a split feeder).

I agree. The school board has an opportunity to build an actual school pyramid with no split feeders with just making a few changes. I hope they don’t find a way to screw that up.

From last night's meeting:

Centerville had three split feeders (Bull Run, Powell ES and Union). They fixes ZERO of these split feeders
Robinson had one split feeder (Oak View). They DID NOT fix this split feeder.

Why are they 'fixing' some split feeders and not others? This was never about fixing split feeders.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Reading some of these comments sounds like there are school board members being ‘anonymous’ trying to defend rationale for pushing this redoing of boundaries. Telling WSHS families to ‘just stop’ when the data shows kids moving from Lewis to WSHS when there is an overcrowding issue makes no sense and moving Sangster kids to LB for really no reason.

I bet too that if WSHS parents had a vote they’d rather the kids being moved in scenario 4 than taking in the Lewis kids—prove me wrong.

Not on school board. No one knows how many potential Lewis to WSHS students are in that cluster. It’s all speculation based on nonsense.

Of course no one knows. The point I think some WSHS parents are trying to make on this, however, is that we've seen this play before. It is the same thing that happened with Daventry. The Daventry parents 10 years ago argued that they just would be moving in a handful of kids by moving from Lewis to WSHS. And now there are a LOT of kids coming from that neighborhood. We can't tell you how many because FCPS staff doesn't make that info available.

It can start as 9 kids and end up at 40 or 50 real quickly. Also, the idea that you'd move current WSHS kids out to make room for Lewis kids, when Lewis is already underenrolled just boggles the mind.

Yes, and that's why they should be looking at how many household units they are adding or subtracting. I don't know the numbers, but if there are 100 townhomes in the small area that is moving from Lewis to WS, it doesn't really matter if there are only 10 high school kids there now. There is the potential for there to be 50 or so with that many housing units.

It is the reality that the people who live in those townhomes move when their kids are middle school aged, pupil place to a different school, or go to private. I live in this community - I know. They won't move if they can go to Irving/WS. They are lovely townhomes - large and some with garages.

Adding 100 and losing 400+ townhomes.

Why add to an overcrowded school at all?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Man, I know they really want to keep the boundary review conversation to one thread, but I sure do wish everyone talking about the Springfield high schools could have their own thread. A lot of passionate conversation to be had there... And I want to hear what other people around the county are thinking about the new scenario!

I agree. Maybe break this boundary discussion by region 1-6 like the FCPS.

You could start a thread on "Website Feedback," explain that FCPS is broken into six regions, and ask if there could be separate threads for the boundary changes affecting each region.

I've noticed Jeff allows more overlapping threads on the MCPS forum relating to boundary changes on the horizon in MCPS than he does on this forum, probably because some of the earlier FCPS threads got particularly nasty.

Anonymous wrote:Man, I know they really want to keep the boundary review conversation to one thread, but I sure do wish everyone talking about the Springfield high schools could have their own thread. A lot of passionate conversation to be had there... And I want to hear what other people around the county are thinking about the new scenario!

I agree. Maybe break this boundary discussion by region 1-6 like the FCPS.