Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We need the school board members to stay out of boundaries so they can be redone objectively instead of politically/catering to the loudest voices. There isn’t enough money to just keep adding capacity at favored schools (not to mention ignoring other schools).

Were school board members simply more enlightened roughly 15- 20 years ago when the South Lakes HS boundaries were redone? Why is that much harder to do these days?

The Hunter Mill rep on the School board at the time was from Reston/South Lakes. He fought very hard to get kids from other schools reassigned to South Lakes.

So he pulled it off, but there was a lot of bitterness about the process and later School Board members are more interested in their future political careers and aren’t as willing to take the flak.

Also a school like Lewis hasn’t had a similar champion on the School Board. The Lee/Franconia member for the last decade or so was from Edison. So is the new one.

That's why the status quo now is flawed. Any school on a downward capacity trend or lower end of population will never again be able to compete against the huge 2800+ student schools. Year after year it'll be less and less likely that they will have a parent run for Board and represent their best interests, or they will be outnumbered in voice and survey results. Once the downward spiral begins the school can't recover without external intervention from an independent party.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The interesting thing with Centreville expansion is that the Centreville enrollment is dropping by about 100 students per year and soon will have an enrollment of about 2200… at about the time they are midway through expansion.

So 2200 students in a school built for 3000. A couple hundred Chantilly kids seems to make sense for a boundary adjustment to relieve that school.

Where did all the Centreville/Liberty MS kids go? Right after Covid, the enrollment almost instantly drops by 100 per year for the pyramid.

Every single person at at Chantilly( especially students) will scream bloody murder and fight tooth and nail to make sure there aren't any boundary changes. Most students like the current student body size, they just want a bigger building and smaller class size( i.e. more teachers). We have a very engaged student body is that is fighting hard for a reno and boundary changes only undermine the likelihood of that. Please don't talk about our school on this forum when you probably have never stepped foot in Western Fairfax or left your McLean/Langley Bubble.

DP. Chantilly isn’t in the renovation queue. Centreville is, and is already scheduled to get an expansion to 3000 that should leave it with hundreds of extra seats according to the latest projections.

If they could move 200 McLean kids to Langley, in many cases against their wishes, they can move some Chantilly kids to Centreville. Both schools would then have about 2550 kids (vs 2200 at Centreville and 2900 at Chantilly).

Mclean should not have been rezoned. It, like Chantilly, is far overdue for a reno/expansion. And if Chantilly isn't in the reno queue now, then it needs to be. We will do whatever it takes to get on there. the 40 year cycle is ridiculous and our building is crumbling. The school Board needs to add us and get a bond for us.

I listened to a bit of last week’s school board CIP session, and Rep. Lady did mention wanting to get McLean in the queue. I’ve found her/her office to be very approachable, and you may want to reach out to her with your McLean-related concerns.

You were responding to a Chantilly poster, not to a McLean poster.

Lady was responding to Ricardy Anderson wanting to jump the 2008 queue and get three of her Mason District schools prioritized instead. Lady said if that were going to happen, McLean should get added, too.

And then staff and other board members jumped in and said they understood the plan was to finish renovating all the schools in the current queue before they develop a new one (even though FCPS departed from the 2008 queue when they built additions to South Lakes, Justice, Madison, and West Potomac).

So ultimately all Ricardy and Robyn are probably saying is these schools should be highly ranked when the next queue comes out, but then staff said there’s been no urgency about developing a new queue because it will be another decade or so before they get through the existing queue.

I guess Lady could press staff harder to come up with a new queue sooner rather than later so people know where their schools stand rather than leave them in limbo for another decade. But nothing gets done quickly in FCPS when it comes to facilities, and half the things they end up doing make little sense.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The interesting thing with Centreville expansion is that the Centreville enrollment is dropping by about 100 students per year and soon will have an enrollment of about 2200… at about the time they are midway through expansion.

So 2200 students in a school built for 3000. A couple hundred Chantilly kids seems to make sense for a boundary adjustment to relieve that school.

Where did all the Centreville/Liberty MS kids go? Right after Covid, the enrollment almost instantly drops by 100 per year for the pyramid.

Every single person at at Chantilly( especially students) will scream bloody murder and fight tooth and nail to make sure there aren't any boundary changes. Most students like the current student body size, they just want a bigger building and smaller class size( i.e. more teachers). We have a very engaged student body is that is fighting hard for a reno and boundary changes only undermine the likelihood of that. Please don't talk about our school on this forum when you probably have never stepped foot in Western Fairfax or left your McLean/Langley Bubble.

DP. Chantilly isn’t in the renovation queue. Centreville is, and is already scheduled to get an expansion to 3000 that should leave it with hundreds of extra seats according to the latest projections.

If they could move 200 McLean kids to Langley, in many cases against their wishes, they can move some Chantilly kids to Centreville. Both schools would then have about 2550 kids (vs 2200 at Centreville and 2900 at Chantilly).

Mclean should not have been rezoned. It, like Chantilly, is far overdue for a reno/expansion. And if Chantilly isn't in the reno queue now, then it needs to be. We will do whatever it takes to get on there. the 40 year cycle is ridiculous and our building is crumbling. The school Board needs to add us and get a bond for us.

I listened to a bit of last week’s school board CIP session, and Rep. Lady did mention wanting to get McLean in the queue. I’ve found her/her office to be very approachable, and you may want to reach out to her with your McLean-related concerns.

Anonymous wrote:We need the school board members to stay out of boundaries so they can be redone objectively instead of politically/catering to the loudest voices. There isn’t enough money to just keep adding capacity at favored schools (not to mention ignoring other schools).

Nope it is one of their responsibilities.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We need the school board members to stay out of boundaries so they can be redone objectively instead of politically/catering to the loudest voices. There isn’t enough money to just keep adding capacity at favored schools (not to mention ignoring other schools).

Were school board members simply more enlightened roughly 15- 20 years ago when the South Lakes HS boundaries were redone? Why is that much harder to do these days?

The Hunter Mill rep on the School board at the time was from Reston/South Lakes. He fought very hard to get kids from other schools reassigned to South Lakes.

So he pulled it off, but there was a lot of bitterness about the process and later School Board members are more interested in their future political careers and aren’t as willing to take the flak.

Also a school like Lewis hasn’t had a similar champion on the School Board. The Lee/Franconia member for the last decade or so was from Edison. So is the new one.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The interesting thing with Centreville expansion is that the Centreville enrollment is dropping by about 100 students per year and soon will have an enrollment of about 2200… at about the time they are midway through expansion.

So 2200 students in a school built for 3000. A couple hundred Chantilly kids seems to make sense for a boundary adjustment to relieve that school.

Where did all the Centreville/Liberty MS kids go? Right after Covid, the enrollment almost instantly drops by 100 per year for the pyramid.

Every single person at at Chantilly( especially students) will scream bloody murder and fight tooth and nail to make sure there aren't any boundary changes. Most students like the current student body size, they just want a bigger building and smaller class size( i.e. more teachers). We have a very engaged student body is that is fighting hard for a reno and boundary changes only undermine the likelihood of that. Please don't talk about our school on this forum when you probably have never stepped foot in Western Fairfax or left your McLean/Langley Bubble.

DP. Chantilly isn’t in the renovation queue. Centreville is, and is already scheduled to get an expansion to 3000 that should leave it with hundreds of extra seats according to the latest projections.

If they could move 200 McLean kids to Langley, in many cases against their wishes, they can move some Chantilly kids to Centreville. Both schools would then have about 2550 kids (vs 2200 at Centreville and 2900 at Chantilly).

Mclean should not have been rezoned. It, like Chantilly, is far overdue for a reno/expansion. And if Chantilly isn't in the reno queue now, then it needs to be. We will do whatever it takes to get on there. the 40 year cycle is ridiculous and our building is crumbling. The school Board needs to add us and get a bond for us.