Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meren’s end of the year email said that she was recommending moving FMES to Hughes and staying at SLHS. Never mind that moving anyone to Hughes wasn’t in any of the plans.

I suspect that the school board's final map is going to be very different than the maps the parents have been commenting on from BRAC.

We have no idea what the map looks like now. They never updated it after Version 4 even though they showed a new version to parents at that Lewis meeting. Reid refuses to release any new maps until she gives her version to the school board. It's anyone's guess what's been proposed now.

Agreed. The fact that a School Board member sent out an update that included recommendations that we have never seen is problematic.

They should dial this back to 1) Address the Western HS boundaries 2) Dealt with any school that is overcrowded.

Stop there. They could have reasonable solutions that some people would not love, because no one wants to move, but would make sense because they address an identified need.

OK, but in that case they need to have a clear metric for overcrowding.

Changing boundaries based on being over 105% overcrowding in the fall of 2024 doesn't necessarily make sense. Some enrollments have come down this year.

We were specifically told by a School Board member in the past that FCPS only cared about schools over 110%.

Don't use 2025-26 enrollment. The year is almost over and class of 2026 is abnormally huge.

At many of the schools, class of 2026 is 100 to 150 students larger than the 8th grade classes replacing them. I think Chantilly class of 2026 is over 200 students larger than the 8th grade class replacing them.

Use the current 8th through 11th grade numbers to determin overcrowding.

It will paint a very different picture than the 2024 enrollment projections that FCPS is using to justify rezoining.

Looking forward is smarter than looking backwards but a lot of high schools pick up kids from K-8 private and parochial schools so a comparison of 11th and 8th grade enrollments could be misleading.

We’ve listened to people at one crowded high school say year after year that the enrollment will come down “next year” and it stays overcrowded. They just don’t want to move.

Anonymous wrote:So, parents successfully bullied the SB into letting go of changing anything, right?

It was heroic parents standing up for kids in the face of bully Sandy and the rest of the school board goons.

These parents saved a lot of kids. I wish they could’ve protected them all, and my heart aches for the kids whose lives are about to be upended by boundary changes without any justification.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meren’s end of the year email said that she was recommending moving FMES to Hughes and staying at SLHS. Never mind that moving anyone to Hughes wasn’t in any of the plans.

I suspect that the school board's final map is going to be very different than the maps the parents have been commenting on from BRAC.

We have no idea what the map looks like now. They never updated it after Version 4 even though they showed a new version to parents at that Lewis meeting. Reid refuses to release any new maps until she gives her version to the school board. It's anyone's guess what's been proposed now.

When does she present her version to the board? Early January?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meren’s end of the year email said that she was recommending moving FMES to Hughes and staying at SLHS. Never mind that moving anyone to Hughes wasn’t in any of the plans.

I suspect that the school board's final map is going to be very different than the maps the parents have been commenting on from BRAC.

We have no idea what the map looks like now. They never updated it after Version 4 even though they showed a new version to parents at that Lewis meeting. Reid refuses to release any new maps until she gives her version to the school board. It's anyone's guess what's been proposed now.

Agreed. The fact that a School Board member sent out an update that included recommendations that we have never seen is problematic.

They should dial this back to 1) Address the Western HS boundaries 2) Dealt with any school that is overcrowded.

Stop there. They could have reasonable solutions that some people would not love, because no one wants to move, but would make sense because they address an identified need.

OK, but in that case they need to have a clear metric for overcrowding.

Changing boundaries based on being over 105% overcrowding in the fall of 2024 doesn't necessarily make sense. Some enrollments have come down this year.

We were specifically told by a School Board member in the past that FCPS only cared about schools over 110%.

Don't use 2025-26 enrollment. The year is almost over and class of 2026 is abnormally huge.

At many of the schools, class of 2026 is 100 to 150 students larger than the 8th grade classes replacing them. I think Chantilly class of 2026 is over 200 students larger than the 8th grade class replacing them.

Use the current 8th through 11th grade numbers to determin overcrowding.

It will paint a very different picture than the 2024 enrollment projections that FCPS is using to justify rezoining.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meren’s end of the year email said that she was recommending moving FMES to Hughes and staying at SLHS. Never mind that moving anyone to Hughes wasn’t in any of the plans.

I suspect that the school board's final map is going to be very different than the maps the parents have been commenting on from BRAC.

We have no idea what the map looks like now. They never updated it after Version 4 even though they showed a new version to parents at that Lewis meeting. Reid refuses to release any new maps until she gives her version to the school board. It's anyone's guess what's been proposed now.

Agreed. The fact that a School Board member sent out an update that included recommendations that we have never seen is problematic.

They should dial this back to 1) Address the Western HS boundaries 2) Dealt with any school that is overcrowded.

Stop there. They could have reasonable solutions that some people would not love, because no one wants to move, but would make sense because they address an identified need.

OK, but in that case they need to have a clear metric for overcrowding.

Changing boundaries based on being over 105% overcrowding in the fall of 2024 doesn't necessarily make sense. Some enrollments have come down this year.

We were specifically told by a School Board member in the past that FCPS only cared about schools over 110%.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meren’s end of the year email said that she was recommending moving FMES to Hughes and staying at SLHS. Never mind that moving anyone to Hughes wasn’t in any of the plans.

I suspect that the school board's final map is going to be very different than the maps the parents have been commenting on from BRAC.

We have no idea what the map looks like now. They never updated it after Version 4 even though they showed a new version to parents at that Lewis meeting. Reid refuses to release any new maps until she gives her version to the school board. It's anyone's guess what's been proposed now.

Agreed. The fact that a School Board member sent out an update that included recommendations that we have never seen is problematic.

They should dial this back to 1) Address the Western HS boundaries 2) Dealt with any school that is overcrowded.

Stop there. They could have reasonable solutions that some people would not love, because no one wants to move, but would make sense because they address an identified need.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meren’s end of the year email said that she was recommending moving FMES to Hughes and staying at SLHS. Never mind that moving anyone to Hughes wasn’t in any of the plans.

I suspect that the school board's final map is going to be very different than the maps the parents have been commenting on from BRAC.

This is what worries me. We haven’t been the target of any changes so far and our middle and HS are both a little under capacity. But who knows what changes they might push through if there are cascading effects from some of the WSHS/Lewis stuff?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meren’s end of the year email said that she was recommending moving FMES to Hughes and staying at SLHS. Never mind that moving anyone to Hughes wasn’t in any of the plans.

I suspect that the school board's final map is going to be very different than the maps the parents have been commenting on from BRAC.

We have no idea what the map looks like now. They never updated it after Version 4 even though they showed a new version to parents at that Lewis meeting. Reid refuses to release any new maps until she gives her version to the school board. It's anyone's guess what's been proposed now.

So much for Reid's commitment to transparency. She's such a phony.

Anonymous wrote:So, parents successfully bullied the SB into letting go of changing anything, right?

Bless your heart. Reid hired consultants who were deeply incompetent and once that became clear it became a free-for-all.

They could have gone big or gone small, but they just went stupid.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meren’s end of the year email said that she was recommending moving FMES to Hughes and staying at SLHS. Never mind that moving anyone to Hughes wasn’t in any of the plans.

I suspect that the school board's final map is going to be very different than the maps the parents have been commenting on from BRAC.

We have no idea what the map looks like now. They never updated it after Version 4 even though they showed a new version to parents at that Lewis meeting. Reid refuses to release any new maps until she gives her version to the school board. It's anyone's guess what's been proposed now.

Anonymous wrote:So, parents successfully bullied the SB into letting go of changing anything, right?

Hardly.

So, parents successfully bullied the SB into letting go of changing anything, right?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think they are going to pick a handful of changes, make those, and punt the rest to another year due to funding issues.

Yes. The problem is they aren’t making these decisions before the maps are due. Reid needs to know if the scope of changes has to be within a certain transportation budget, but that rule is still unclear. Now she’ll deliver a map with no transportation considered and the board will hem and haw over it and then they’ll push through some haphazard version.

Fix Coates. Fix Parklawn. Figure out what’s going on with Kimer. Figure out how to open your new high school. They’re biting off way more than they can chew and it’s going to crumble the closer they get to that self imposed January deadline.

They were enamored of doing a county-wide review that "hadn't been done in 40 years." They didn't bother to figure out what had been done over the past 40 years, why they might not have done a county-wide review for decades, and what ground rules had informed the prior county-wide reviews.

If they'd looked at what had been done over the past 40 years, they'd have known there were multiple boundary adjustments over the years, so any inflated claims that no one had looked at boundaries for 40 years were nonsense.

If they'd considered why there hadn't been a county-wide review for decades, they might have realized that their predecessors had realized that the county had become too big, and the schools too varied, to pull one off successfully. It's one thing to change boundaries when, for example, every high school had AP and there were no "academies," or every middle school only had grades 7-8. It's another thing when they've intentionally put different programs in different schools, and then invited families to make decisions about where to live based on those differences. Again, this was never acknowledged.

And, finally, they made no effort to familiarize themselves with the ground rules that had informed past county-wide reviews, one of which was that the scope of changes would be limited in advance to ensure FCPS could continue to provide transportation to grandfathered students as the changes were phased in. Again, this was ignored, and now they are scrambling because they've set themselves to do something that wasn't done in the past (deny transportation to redistricted kids), favors families with more resources, and would be quite unpopular.

This all happened because the School Board members are lazy and arrogant, and the superintendent had no experience with a school division anywhere near the size of FCPS. The incompetence is off the charts and will continue until voters stop electing School Board members based entirely on their party affiliation and not their qualifications.

Anonymous wrote:Meren’s end of the year email said that she was recommending moving FMES to Hughes and staying at SLHS. Never mind that moving anyone to Hughes wasn’t in any of the plans.

I suspect that the school board's final map is going to be very different than the maps the parents have been commenting on from BRAC.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Looks like they did not have enough votes last night to deny bussing for rezoned kids. Very interesting. I'm assuming they will have to vote on it at the next meeting? Sandy Anderson made the motion, and Lady seconded it...other board members had lots of questions that the head of transportation could not answer.

When pressed by Dunne why it would cost $10 mil to bus the grandfathered kids to school, the head of transportation admitted that number was based on using electric busses when the cost was $3 mil less with diesel busses. And then wouldn’t answer why he used electric as the baseline

He used it as a baseline because Reid and Sandy Anderson don't want to transport these kids anywhere. They want kids to go where they are placed via this review and they want parents to shut up about it. So they came up with a fake number to push forward their agenda.

At one point, when I think she realized that she would not have enough votes for her motion, Sandy through Reid completely under the bus by saying something like 'haven't you been telling parents they would not get transportation'? And she was like, I told parents it was a board decision.

Glad to hear that it happened in this way.