Proposing Skyview and Chantilly to be near or at capacity while leaving Westfield with a capacity of 2800 with 2000 students or fewer, when the schools are so close by to each other in miles, would be a waste of taxpayer dollars.

The population needs to be reasonably balanced in numbers and SES, across the school buildings, whether people want to be moved or not. Its one school system.

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Anonymous wrote:Honestly the best solution is probably to not try and backfill all of Westfield. 2000 students is fine.

Are you at Westfield? Have you figured out how many teachers would get destaffed and how many electives Westfield would lose if it went down to 2000? Why do you think Meren is trying to protect South Lakes?

There will be plenty of electives. And, plenty of teachers. Unlikely any will be destaffed when you consider those who apply to transfer or retire.

And, just because there are electives, does not mean your child will get into the class. My DD had to make choices because she wanted two electives that were only taught once and they were at the same time. This happens. Two_years in a row, she had to make choices--at Chantilly--which, FYI--is a very large school.

This is nonsense. You need a certain number of MC and UMC kids at a school in order to offer a reasonable number of elective and advanced/AP courses. That depends on your schools FARMS percentage. For example, Langley is a small school in student population but has many more electives and AP options than Westfield because almost the entire school is UMC kids.

FCPS needs to be very careful not to make Westfield worse off than it is now or the zoned MC kids will not attend and it will go into a Justice death spiral. If they are pulling 1000
kids out of Westfield and only moving in an few hundred, then FCPS needs to be very generous with the staffing formula for Westfield (like it will be for Skyview) to keep classes at the school.

I think you are under the impression that all the Skyview kids leaving Westfield are all MC and UMC. They are not. You might check out the FARMS rate of those schools. Keep in mind that much of Floris is not at Westfield.

Westfield will be fine. And, also, just because you see electives on a school's website, does not mean they end up staffing them. It can change from year to year.

With all the new construction, and some adjustments from Centreville and Chantilly, I suspect that Westfield will still be around 2000 in SY 27-28. There will be plenty of electives.

What's your definition of "fine" ? Westfield already offers much fewer advance dclasses than comparable sized schools.

What classes do you want? Which AP classes do they not offer that your child wants to take?
Again, just because a website says the class is offered does not mean that it is or that your child will get into the class if it is full.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are there any FCPS schools with only 2000 students and FARMs rates in the 40%?

That would be like an Annandale or Edison although they are more 2200 students.

Annandale was slightly under 1950 last month.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are there any FCPS schools with only 2000 students and FARMs rates in the 40%?

Mount Vernon 55.4%
Herndon 47.6%
Justice 47.5%
West Potomac 47.5%
Falls Church 45.3%
Lewis 43.8%
Annandale 41.1%
Edison 36.7%
Westfield 35.8%
Fairfax 34.5%
South Lakes 31.4%
Hayfield 31.3%
Centreville 30.8%
Marshall 24.1%
South County 22.5%
Lake Braddock 21.8%
Chantilly 20.5%
West Springfield 17.0%
Oakton 16.5%
Woodson 14.3%
Robinson 13.8%
TJHSST 13.7%
McLean 13.2%
Madison 10.1%
Langley 4.6%

Most of the schools have more than 2000 kids. Falls Church and Annandale are the two close to 2000 kids with FARMS rates in the 40s. Justice enrollment will come down but they are pushing up the FARMS rate by moving UMC areas to Falls Church.

Anonymous wrote:Are there any FCPS schools with only 2000 students and FARMs rates in the 40%?

That would be like an Annandale or Edison although they are more 2200 students.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly the best solution is probably to not try and backfill all of Westfield. 2000 students is fine.

Are you at Westfield? Have you figured out how many teachers would get destaffed and how many electives Westfield would lose if it went down to 2000? Why do you think Meren is trying to protect South Lakes?

There will be plenty of electives. And, plenty of teachers. Unlikely any will be destaffed when you consider those who apply to transfer or retire.

And, just because there are electives, does not mean your child will get into the class. My DD had to make choices because she wanted two electives that were only taught once and they were at the same time. This happens. Two_years in a row, she had to make choices--at Chantilly--which, FYI--is a very large school.

This is nonsense. You need a certain number of MC and UMC kids at a school in order to offer a reasonable number of elective and advanced/AP courses. That depends on your schools FARMS percentage. For example, Langley is a small school in student population but has many more electives and AP options than Westfield because almost the entire school is UMC kids.

FCPS needs to be very careful not to make Westfield worse off than it is now or the zoned MC kids will not attend and it will go into a Justice death spiral. If they are pulling 1000
kids out of Westfield and only moving in an few hundred, then FCPS needs to be very generous with the staffing formula for Westfield (like it will be for Skyview) to keep classes at the school.

I think you are under the impression that all the Skyview kids leaving Westfield are all MC and UMC. They are not. You might check out the FARMS rate of those schools. Keep in mind that much of Floris is not at Westfield.

Westfield will be fine. And, also, just because you see electives on a school's website, does not mean they end up staffing them. It can change from year to year.

With all the new construction, and some adjustments from Centreville and Chantilly, I suspect that Westfield will still be around 2000 in SY 27-28. There will be plenty of electives.

What's your definition of "fine" ? Westfield already offers much fewer advance dclasses than comparable sized schools.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they are actually going to get rid of MS AAP, then they shouldn't touch the MS boundaries until that happens.

What they did with Thoreau/Kilmer/Jackson hasn’t had the chance to blow up in their faces yet. I think Franklin is slated as one of the last MS to get AAP when it should be one of the first, and be done in conjunction with these boundary adjustments. Otherwise I agree that they shouldn’t touch MS boundaries until the AAP phasing.

Yeah they will have to pull kids out of Thoreau if it becomes an AAP center and some of those folks who maneuvered to get redistricted to Thoreau from Jackson and now Kilmer will be upset.

The situation with Kilmer took the cake because they used fake numbers about the school’s capacity to justify moving kids out of Kilmer/Marshall to Thoreau/Madison. And then they corrected the Kilmer capacity once it was clear that move would be approved. It served to justify an expansion of Madison that wasn’t needed, but it’s going to drive up the FARMS rates at Kilmer and Marshall for no good reason.

Melanie Meren did nothing about this fraud by the way, so the next time she pretends to care about governance and data-driven decisions she deserves to be called out for her hypocrisy.

Anonymous wrote:Are there any FCPS schools with only 2000 students and FARMs rates in the 40%?

Mount Vernon 55.4%
Herndon 47.6%
Justice 47.5%
West Potomac 47.5%
Falls Church 45.3%
Lewis 43.8%
Annandale 41.1%
Edison 36.7%
Westfield 35.8%
Fairfax 34.5%
South Lakes 31.4%
Hayfield 31.3%
Centreville 30.8%
Marshall 24.1%
South County 22.5%
Lake Braddock 21.8%
Chantilly 20.5%
West Springfield 17.0%
Oakton 16.5%
Woodson 14.3%
Robinson 13.8%
TJHSST 13.7%
McLean 13.2%
Madison 10.1%
Langley 4.6%

Are there any FCPS schools with only 2000 students and FARMs rates in the 40%?

2000 is not enough students to offer enough advanced classes if a school is 40% FARMs. If the school is 5% like Langley or 10% like Oakton, it would be a different story.

If you think that would be "fine", feel free to send your kids to a school with that student population breakdown and let us know what you think about the academic options.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly the best solution is probably to not try and backfill all of Westfield. 2000 students is fine.

Are you at Westfield? Have you figured out how many teachers would get destaffed and how many electives Westfield would lose if it went down to 2000? Why do you think Meren is trying to protect South Lakes?

There will be plenty of electives. And, plenty of teachers. Unlikely any will be destaffed when you consider those who apply to transfer or retire.

And, just because there are electives, does not mean your child will get into the class. My DD had to make choices because she wanted two electives that were only taught once and they were at the same time. This happens. Two_years in a row, she had to make choices--at Chantilly--which, FYI--is a very large school.

This is nonsense. You need a certain number of MC and UMC kids at a school in order to offer a reasonable number of elective and advanced/AP courses. That depends on your schools FARMS percentage. For example, Langley is a small school in student population but has many more electives and AP options than Westfield because almost the entire school is UMC kids.

FCPS needs to be very careful not to make Westfield worse off than it is now or the zoned MC kids will not attend and it will go into a Justice death spiral. If they are pulling 1000
kids out of Westfield and only moving in an few hundred, then FCPS needs to be very generous with the staffing formula for Westfield (like it will be for Skyview) to keep classes at the school.

I think you are under the impression that all the Skyview kids leaving Westfield are all MC and UMC. They are not. You might check out the FARMS rate of those schools. Keep in mind that much of Floris is not at Westfield.

Westfield will be fine. And, also, just because you see electives on a school's website, does not mean they end up staffing them. It can change from year to year.

With all the new construction, and some adjustments from Centreville and Chantilly, I suspect that Westfield will still be around 2000 in SY 27-28. There will be plenty of electives.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly the best solution is probably to not try and backfill all of Westfield. 2000 students is fine.

Are you at Westfield? Have you figured out how many teachers would get destaffed and how many electives Westfield would lose if it went down to 2000? Why do you think Meren is trying to protect South Lakes?

There will be plenty of electives. And, plenty of teachers. Unlikely any will be destaffed when you consider those who apply to transfer or retire.

And, just because there are electives, does not mean your child will get into the class. My DD had to make choices because she wanted two electives that were only taught once and they were at the same time. This happens. Two_years in a row, she had to make choices--at Chantilly--which, FYI--is a very large school.

This is nonsense. You need a certain number of MC and UMC kids at a school in order to offer a reasonable number of elective and advanced/AP courses. That depends on your schools FARMS percentage. For example, Langley is a small school in student population but has many more electives and AP options than Westfield because almost the entire school is UMC kids.

FCPS needs to be very careful not to make Westfield worse off than it is now or the zoned MC kids will not attend and it will go into a Justice death spiral. If they are pulling 1000
kids out of Westfield and only moving in an few hundred, then FCPS needs to be very generous with the staffing formula for Westfield (like it will be for Skyview) to keep classes at the school.

Anonymous wrote:If they are actually going to get rid of MS AAP, then they shouldn't touch the MS boundaries until that happens.

What they did with Thoreau/Kilmer/Jackson hasn’t had the chance to blow up in their faces yet. I think Franklin is slated as one of the last MS to get AAP when it should be one of the first, and be done in conjunction with these boundary adjustments. Otherwise I agree that they shouldn’t touch MS boundaries until the AAP phasing.

If they are actually going to get rid of MS AAP, then they shouldn't touch the MS boundaries until that happens.

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Rocky Run is right next to Chantilly. Kids zoned to RR should all go to Chantilly (And I think now they do, except for the AAP kids).

They should but now Navy Oakton kids are getting rezoned there because Franklin MS is suddenly getting an elementary school that hasn’t been there in years and has priority apparently when they could just stay at Carson. Proximity doesn’t matter to these folks (they’re willing to commute all the way out to Oakton) so explain to me why should they all get moved over to Franklin while Navy kids will be split to different middle schools?

Really. I agree that there is difficulty with avoiding a split feeder. If Crossfield stays at Carson, then Oak Hill will stay at Franklin. Oak Hill is pretty certain to go to Skyview.

Honestly, Oak Hill and Crossfield should be at Carson/Skyview. Put Fox Mill at Hughes when AAP centers are in every middle school.

I would set Skyview boundary. Adjust Westfield on the edges and leave it be for a year or two. Then, work on the middle schools, if needed.

Franklin has been a split feeder forever--at least thirty years--maybe more. It's not optimum, but it is only two years.

Hughes is already a Center and there is no space for Fox Mill. Fox Mill should be at Skyview. There are Fox Mill kids within a mile of Skyview. We share a boundary with Floris and go to Oak Hill for AAP. Carson is right next door and we attend Carson. And most of us want to attend Skyview.

Let Crossfield stay at Oakton since that is where they want to be. And yes, I think that there are more Crossfield families that want to stay at Oakton then want to move to Skyview. The families that want to attend Skyview can pupil place for the specialized programs. They should be able to get permission to pick up a bus int he Fox Mill area or one of the other close by spots.

Hughes is not overcrowded. No need to lie.

DP.

Hughes is at 95% now and would be overcrowded if Fox Mill gets moved. I doubt it will happen.

The following middle school feeding pattern is plausible and very clean:

Fox Mill - Carson - Skyview
Oak Hill - Carson - Skyview
Crossfield - Franklin - Oakton

This will minimize or eliminate the split feeding at Carson and help Franklin.

+1

Hughes will be fine. For proximity, it should be Crossfield-Carson-Skyview and Fix Mill-Hughes-South Lakes. This will eliminate split feeders and keep space at Franklin for when AAP ends and all the Navy and Waples kids come back in 2 years.

+1 exactly. Franklin needs the space for the AAP kids.