Additional school boundary changes proposed

Bren Mar Park Elementary School families concerned about a boundary change have been given a reprieve.

At a Dec. 10 community meeting on recently announced changes to the Fairfax County school boundary review process, Superintendent Michelle Reid said students at Bren Mar Park (BMP) will stay at the middle and high schools to which they are already assigned.

Changes dropped for Bren Mar Park

Currently, BMP students move on to Holmes Middle School and Edison High School. That plan will remain in place until the next boundary review in five years, Reid said.

A last-minute proposal from FCPS staff called for BMP students to go to Key Middle School and Lewis High School. That change was announced last week, after the Superintendent’s Boundary Review Advisory Committee had completed work on Scenario 4. That scenario called for BMP students to go to Holmes and Annandale High School.

Related story: Bren Mar Park ES parents concerned about last-minute boundary proposal

BMP parents complained that the last-minute change didn’t give them enough time to respond.

“We were blindsided on this. We were involved in the boundary process from the beginning and were happy with Scenario 4,”  said BMP PTA President A.J. Sutton at the community meeting.

Mason School Board member Ricardy Anderson said the changes to Scenario 4 had to be presented immediately because the boundary committee will have its last meeting on Dec. 12. Reid will then submit recommendations to the school board, which is scheduled to hold a public hearing and vote on new school boundaries in January.

More last-minute changes

FCPS Facilities Director Erik Gordon outlined other changes recommended after the work on Scenario 4 was completed:

• An estimated 98 students on the south side of Lincolnia Road would be reassigned from Parklawn Elementary School to Columbia Elementary School.

• Another 20 students from Bailey’s Crossroads who currently attend Parklawn would be transferred to Belvedere Elementary School.

• 67 students from the Sleepy Hollow area would be transferred from Glasgow Middle School to Poe Middle School. Another 46 students from the Lincolnia area would be transferred from Glasgow to Holmes.

• 101 students from the Sleepy Hollow area would be transferred from Justice High School to Falls Church High School. That change would create a split feeder at Beech Tree Elementary School but would eliminate the split feeder at Mason Crest Elementary School.

The boundary plan will take effect for the start of the 2026-27 school year. Students in a specialized program at their current high school will be able to stay until they graduate, Gordon said.

Scenario 4 called for Bren Mar Park students to stay at Holmes, then go to Annandale High School. When BMP parents asked where the last-minute change to Lewis came from, Reid said there were concerns that Annandale was too far away and that Lewis is closer and has more room. “This was a sincere effort to problem-solve the distance and shorten the route,” she said.

Several parents said the distance from their neighborhood to Lewis might be shorter as the crow flies, but it takes longer, as that route is subject to heavy traffic on the beltway and Braddock Road.

“I think we will table this,” Reid said. “This needs to be flagged as one of the first situations to pick up in the next five-year cycle.”

Lewis parents unhappy

Meanwhile, parents at Lewis High School complained that their school, which is under capacity, would not receive more students.

Lewis has the smallest enrollment in the county, and it’s decreasing, said one parent. The seems to have a negative reputation, she said. “Every time this has come up, people don’t want to move to Lewis.”

Smaller, under-capacity schools have fewer program options and staff. For example, another Lewis parent noted that the school only has a part-time band director while Glasgow has two full-time band directors.

“We didn’t anticipate that people would be willing to go to a school with 110 capacity to retain programming and staff,” Reid said. She acknowledged that staffing is based on enrollment.

Reid said an early college associate degree program planned for Lewis will create a wave of incoming students. Region 6 Assistant Superintendent Michelle Boyd announced Lewis was named a “distinguished school” in the state’s new accountability system. 

The next boundary review will start in five years. A boundary change at one school will have a cascading impact throughout the county, Reid said, “Boundaries will change things in ways we’re not expecting.”