Anonymous wrote:Here is my suggestion for Emerald Chase:

1. Lobby to stay at Oak Hill along with the Franklin Farm/Navy Island kids being sent there. There is room, I think according to the slides.
2. Go to Franklin along with the Navy Island. Again, I think there is room.
3. Lobby to go to Oakton along with the Navy Island. Chantilly is a non-starter.

I disagree with this gambit. If you want to attend Oakton HS pony up the cash to buy a house in Oakton. I don’t want to be fighting five years from now to keep my Oakton address home zoned to Oakton HS to accommodate “zone stability” for the Emerald Chase vultures.

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think people would be as annoyed with the Emerald Chase folks if they were simply advocating to stay at their current schools. But they are pushing to change both their middle and high school. And they are trying to do it under the guise of their neighborhood being connected by trails to another neighborhood and therefore they should all be kept together. There are many neighborhoods in this county that are connected by trails, but go to different schools. Why are they special? It just feels disingenuous and like a push to get into Chantilly, which is ridiculous because it’s overcrowded. FCPS doesn’t care whether it will be crowded or not when your current elementary schoolers are in high school. They care about right now. The whole thing just comes off entitled and selfish.

+1

Here is my suggestion for Emerald Chase:

1. Lobby to stay at Oak Hill along with the Franklin Farm/Navy Island kids being sent there. There is room, I think according to the slides.
2. Go to Franklin along with the Navy Island. Again, I think there is room.
3. Lobby to go to Oakton along with the Navy Island. Chantilly is a non-starter.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Emerald Chase handled their business poorly yesterday. It’s a bit hypocritical to say “don’t take it out on us, we are not the bad actors” when Emerald Chase basically squashed another part of the county in hopes of getting something for themselves. That’s pretty crappy.

What we want is long-term zone stability, which is why we’re asking for the middle and high school change. We’ve been rezoned over and over and are now facing yet another round for elementary and high school when FCPS isn’t bothering to do anything about the real split-feeder problem, which is Rachel Carson. That means FCPS will likely come back for us again in five years when Carson is expected to be one of if not the most overcrowded middle schools in the county. We want out of the split-feeder system so FCPS will finally leave us alone.

I am having trouble buying the “we are seeking zone stability by asking for a change to both our middle school and high school.” If you were arguing for zone stability you would be arguing for no move at all, like the rest of us.

Anonymous wrote:If you are experimenting with spamming the still open pigeon hole for Region 4, there are at least 2 posts requesting that FCPS do a full residency check before rezoning any schools, using only in zone students for enrollment purposes.

Upvoting those 2 posts would benefit the entire district
.

There are also multiple posts requesting grandfathering of students, tgat would benefit everyone district wide.

Anonymous wrote:
Emerald Chase handled their business poorly yesterday. It’s a bit hypocritical to say “don’t take it out on us, we are not the bad actors” when Emerald Chase basically squashed another part of the county in hopes of getting something for themselves. That’s pretty crappy.

What we want is long-term zone stability, which is why we’re asking for the middle and high school change. We’ve been rezoned over and over and are now facing yet another round for elementary and high school when FCPS isn’t bothering to do anything about the real split-feeder problem, which is Rachel Carson. That means FCPS will likely come back for us again in five years when Carson is expected to be one of if not the most overcrowded middle schools in the county. We want out of the split-feeder system so FCPS will finally leave us alone.

If you are experimenting with spamming the still open pigeon hole for Region 4, there are at least 2 posts requesting that FCPS do a full residency check before rezoning any schools, using only in zone students for enrollment purposes.

Upvoting those 2 posts would benefit the entire district
.

I don’t think people would be as annoyed with the Emerald Chase folks if they were simply advocating to stay at their current schools. But they are pushing to change both their middle and high school. And they are trying to do it under the guise of their neighborhood being connected by trails to another neighborhood and therefore they should all be kept together. There are many neighborhoods in this county that are connected by trails, but go to different schools. Why are they special? It just feels disingenuous and like a push to get into Chantilly, which is ridiculous because it’s overcrowded. FCPS doesn’t care whether it will be crowded or not when your current elementary schoolers are in high school. They care about right now. The whole thing just comes off entitled and selfish.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Emerald Chase people weren’t the only ones manipulating upvotes in Pigeonhole.

Well, maybe the school board should’ve listened to the community before getting to this point. We don’t want unnecessary boundary changes.

I keep hearing the pathetic talking point that there hasn’t been a comprehensive boundary change in 40 years. But they lie by omitting that the boundaries have changed, when necessary, many many times over that time.

Sandy Anderson and Kyle McDaniel and their misguided crusade need to be stopped before they do real damage to families in the county.

If only this were merely the crusade of Sandy Anderson and McDaniel. With the exception of McElveen, all the school board members were solidly behind this countywide review, and they got Reid to blather on about how it would be “transformative.” It’s anything but, yet it will remain a huge and unnecessary distraction for many months to come.

But we should have expected nothing less when we put a childless buffoon with political aspirations like Frisch in a position to chair the board.

That’s fair. Though I’ve heard that Sandy is driving this effort and Kyle is her lap-dancing lapdog.

Committee members, has Thru acknowledged any of your feedback in the maps you are seeing so far?

Knowing that neither the LB pyramid reps nor the SoCo pyramid reps would have recommended that THRU flip a few Silverbrook and SoCo zoned streets to much farther away Sangster and Lake Braddock, in exchange for a couple of Sangster and Lake Braddock zoned streets moving to Newington and SoCo, with zero improvement to enrollment anywhere, I can't help but think that Thru is completely ignoring your input and wasting your time.

An Observation:

It appears to me that this began because the School Board wanted "equity." We know that for years many have been pressing for sending Great Falls to Herndon because "equity." School Board members have commented on it. The leaders of the Fairfax NAACP have commented on it. (one of them lives in that area and has been pushing for this.)

From reading this thread, I think that West Springfield/Lewis is also a target.

The rest of us are residual victims of this boundary study.

The irony: Some of us who were not the targets have become the targets. Now, Great Falls appears safe (and I agree it should be safe) but the rest of us are being "tweaked." And, a few of us, who thought we were safely staying where we currently attend) are now the "tweaked."

I do not live in the Emerald Chase neighborhood --though I am aware of the issues. I suspect that they schemed the responses after reading on here about some neighborhoods who were changed since the original three sets of slides.

My neighborhood is being faced with a ridiculous 'tweak" from THRU. All because they wanted to move Great Falls to Langley. That failed, and now they need to play with the other neighborhoods.

My suggestion: "86" the boundary study. Fix Coates and any other school that is dramatically overcrowded.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t have a dog in the emerald fight, and my house isn’t in the school board’s crosshairs at the moment. I think the anger should be directed at the people looking to move these kids, rather than at families trying to prevent it.

I think most of us agree that these proposed changes create a ton of issues and aren’t any better than the status quo

1,000%

Let’s not turn on each other. We’re all just trying to protect our kids and do what’s best for them.

So were all WSHS and SCHS parents who went to the meeting last night because our kids are about to lose their friends and get moved for no good reason. And got drowned out by a bunch of EC parents at home on the sofa voting up dozens of their own posts so they can try to squeeze into a different HS.

We can be upset at both them and the SB members who are screwing over their constituents for no obvious reason.

Sure get hella mad at other families while the school board moves your kids.

Make it make sense.

That’s a bit simplistic, isn’t it? Emerald Chase flooded a community feedback session in another region in hopes of getting an upgrade. It is wrong the way FCPS is doing all of this. It is also wrong for Emerald Chase to drown out HVE families in a meeting in another region in hopes that Emerald Chase can take advantage of the situation for an “upgrade.”

Your post comes off like “hey it’s bad they came to your house and seized all your stuff for no reason, but I am here at the subsequent auction to get good deals, so don’t blame me.”

A better analogy is that a robber came into your house and your family member dashed for the door partially impeding your escape.

Sure you can be miffed at your family member, but be furious at the F’ing robber.

….maybe if your family member was interfering with your efforts to stop the robber by using the invasion as an opportunity to distract the robber into giving you something they took from somebody else (opportunistically using the boundary review to get spots at Chantilly, while drowning out people in another region).

Emerald Chase handled their business poorly yesterday. It’s a bit hypocritical to say “don’t take it out on us, we are not the bad actors” when Emerald Chase basically squashed another part of the county in hopes of getting something for themselves. That’s pretty crappy.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Emerald Chase people weren’t the only ones manipulating upvotes in Pigeonhole.

Well, maybe the school board should’ve listened to the community before getting to this point. We don’t want unnecessary boundary changes.

I keep hearing the pathetic talking point that there hasn’t been a comprehensive boundary change in 40 years. But they lie by omitting that the boundaries have changed, when necessary, many many times over that time.

Sandy Anderson and Kyle McDaniel and their misguided crusade need to be stopped before they do real damage to families in the county.

If only this were merely the crusade of Sandy Anderson and McDaniel. With the exception of McElveen, all the school board members were solidly behind this countywide review, and they got Reid to blather on about how it would be “transformative.” It’s anything but, yet it will remain a huge and unnecessary distraction for many months to come.

But we should have expected nothing less when we put a childless buffoon with political aspirations like Frisch in a position to chair the board.

The real question we should be asking this morning is: why do we need these changes?

It’s not like they’ve done anything with any of the feedback from the community over the last year. The boundary page is littered with hundreds of pages of feedback saying that they should keep things as they are.

Nonetheless, Sandy and Kyle, possibly in a New Orleans strip club, decided to ignore their constituents.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t have a dog in the emerald fight, and my house isn’t in the school board’s crosshairs at the moment. I think the anger should be directed at the people looking to move these kids, rather than at families trying to prevent it.

I think most of us agree that these proposed changes create a ton of issues and aren’t any better than the status quo

1,000%

Let’s not turn on each other. We’re all just trying to protect our kids and do what’s best for them.

So were all WSHS and SCHS parents who went to the meeting last night because our kids are about to lose their friends and get moved for no good reason. And got drowned out by a bunch of EC parents at home on the sofa voting up dozens of their own posts so they can try to squeeze into a different HS.

We can be upset at both them and the SB members who are screwing over their constituents for no obvious reason.

Sure get hella mad at other families while the school board moves your kids.

Make it make sense.

That’s a bit simplistic, isn’t it? Emerald Chase flooded a community feedback session in another region in hopes of getting an upgrade. It is wrong the way FCPS is doing all of this. It is also wrong for Emerald Chase to drown out HVE families in a meeting in another region in hopes that Emerald Chase can take advantage of the situation for an “upgrade.”

Your post comes off like “hey it’s bad they came to your house and seized all your stuff for no reason, but I am here at the subsequent auction to get good deals, so don’t blame me.”

A better analogy is that a robber came into your house and your family member dashed for the door partially impeding your escape.

Sure you can be miffed at your family member, but be furious at the F’ing robber.