Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:South county started today. Lines around the schools. 4 doors and 2000 kids. Have to take everything out of backbacks. Kids were 20 minutes late to class. Completely unsustainable and totally unnecessary.

The 1st day is always the worst. It’ll be better by the end of the week.

Last year our school had it for three weeks and it wasn't better by the end of those three weeks. At this point there are no laptops to take out and my dc was still 30 minutes late to first period due to kids getting flagged~and before Gatehouse asks her bus was on time.

Someone with a kid who is missing a substantial amount of school should contact the state. These students aren't going to meet the required number of instructional hours if they miss 30-60 minutes of class a day. That's a loss of accreditation.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DC's bus was late yesterday, which caused DC being very late for the 1st period after passing the screening detector. So daddy decided to drive DC to school. They got stuck in the traffic for quite a long time. Are more parents trying diving and dropping their high school kids today? But fortunately, DC arrive school earlier and got 12 minutes before the first period.

If you don't normally drive your kid to school, you may just not know how congested it is around the high schools.

I’m driving DD to school. We were 12 minutes early yesterday, so left 10 minutes later today. Not sure she made it to class on time. I thought that Rocky was bad, but Chantilly is exponentially worse. And their dismissal protocol is every man for themselves.

Rocky run kiss and ride in the morning was a well oiled machine last year. You need to lower your expectations. CHS has 3 times as many students.

Never thought I would say this, but I think Westfield handles this better, by separating out bus traffic from car traffic. Chantilly can do the same thing. Buses go in/out through one of the entrances (bus only during start/dismissal times) and cars do it through the other. Currently, it's a giant mess starting well before the Poplar Tree intersection, because you have cars, buses, and pedestrians, all attempting to turn into more or less the same space.

And there is no kiss and ride type of deal at dismissal. You park, the kids cross into the parking lot to find you, and then you pretty much sit there until at least some of the buses have exited the lot. Since the administration is highly regarded, I expected better, frankly (an impression not helped much by the teaching. One of the teachers posted a video of her teaching, and it is DREADFUL; it's DD's favorite subject, but I suspect, not for long).

The school issued chromebooks are not waterproof nor are they issued in a waterproof case of any kind.

How are the students to pull them out and be ready to walk thru the detector when they are standing outside in the rain.

And I would like to hear what the specific schools WITHOUT long lines are doing differently so Westfield admin can be informed on how to fix this disaster.

Per an email from my Westfield kid-arrived at school before the doors opened at 7:40, waited over 30 minutes in the rain, was late to class. Door had one metal detector. Said hundreds of kids were standing in the rain waiting before the doors opened. This was the not-bus door.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DC's bus was late yesterday, which caused DC being very late for the 1st period after passing the screening detector. So daddy decided to drive DC to school. They got stuck in the traffic for quite a long time. Are more parents trying diving and dropping their high school kids today? But fortunately, DC arrive school earlier and got 12 minutes before the first period.

If you don't normally drive your kid to school, you may just not know how congested it is around the high schools.

I’m driving DD to school. We were 12 minutes early yesterday, so left 10 minutes later today. Not sure she made it to class on time. I thought that Rocky was bad, but Chantilly is exponentially worse. And their dismissal protocol is every man for themselves.

Rocky run kiss and ride in the morning was a well oiled machine last year. You need to lower your expectations. CHS has 3 times as many students.

Anonymous wrote:Why don’t they just do it on random days so the kids don’t know when. Like every week, 2-3x a week. Then at least every day wouldn’t be impacted but if kids don’t know when it will be, they would still be deterred from bringing contraband.

This is a great idea. Makes a lot of sense. It made me think of when I was in FCPS way back when, the security guys knew the smokers and general trouble makers, what they could do is copy TSA and pull kids out to be scanned.

Anonymous wrote:Westfield kids also don't have laptops but some of the bus riders missed almost the whole first period-thats over an hour in line.

+1 ~45 minutes in line for my bus rider and the bus was not late. It's not ok for students to miss 30 minutes of first period-not to mention it's disruptive for the teacher and other students trying to teach/learn having kids constantly coming in and needing a minute to get themselves ready for class. I'm all for safety but this is not that.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:South county started today. Lines around the schools. 4 doors and 2000 kids. Have to take everything out of backbacks. Kids were 20 minutes late to class. Completely unsustainable and totally unnecessary.

Westfield had 2 doors total for 2800 kids.
My dc said there was only one metal detector at their door.

I thought they were supposed to have installed more?

Parents would not know because there has been zero communication from high schools on this topic.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DC's bus was late yesterday, which caused DC being very late for the 1st period after passing the screening detector. So daddy decided to drive DC to school. They got stuck in the traffic for quite a long time. Are more parents trying diving and dropping their high school kids today? But fortunately, DC arrive school earlier and got 12 minutes before the first period.

If you don't normally drive your kid to school, you may just not know how congested it is around the high schools.

I’m driving DD to school. We were 12 minutes early yesterday, so left 10 minutes later today. Not sure she made it to class on time. I thought that Rocky was bad, but Chantilly is exponentially worse. And their dismissal protocol is every man for themselves.

Anonymous wrote:For schools doing weapon detectors, could the bathrooms at least now be all open?

Seriously this issue needs a whole new thread. One of the richest counties and kids can't use the bathroom all day because they are locked due to troublemakers. the ones that are open are packed.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:South county started today. Lines around the schools. 4 doors and 2000 kids. Have to take everything out of backbacks. Kids were 20 minutes late to class. Completely unsustainable and totally unnecessary.

The 1st day is always the worst. It’ll be better by the end of the week.

Last year our school had it for three weeks and it wasn't better by the end of those three weeks. At this point there are no laptops to take out and my dc was still 30 minutes late to first period due to kids getting flagged~and before Gatehouse asks her bus was on time.

Anonymous wrote:Its too bad washingtonpost gutted their metro staff. They used to have dedicated school reporters who would be on this debacle. Now FCPS Admin just get away with no one publicly shaming their incompetence.

In my experience reaching out to a WaPo reporter about VMPI, they will actively ignore FCPS stories until other outlets break them and make them big news.

Traffic on southbound Route 28 is not that bad in the morning actually. Northbound is terrible.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DC's bus was late yesterday, which caused DC being very late for the 1st period after passing the screening detector. So daddy decided to drive DC to school. They got stuck in the traffic for quite a long time. Are more parents trying diving and dropping their high school kids today? But fortunately, DC arrive school earlier and got 12 minutes before the first period.

If you don't normally drive your kid to school, you may just not know how congested it is around the high schools.

Also, it might depend on PP's location and traffic before arriving at the high school. For example, kids going to Westfield from Coates area are would confront heavy traffic no matter which way they go. Same with Franklin Farm kids to Oakton. Ever been on I66 in the a.m.?

people going to westfield have heavy traffic in all directions regard less of neighborhood. the loudoun county traffic on lee road past cox farms and on route 50 is insane.