School board approves boundary change but parents upset with lack of community engagement
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| The boundary adjustment map approved by the school board. Click to enlarge. |
The Fairfax County School Board approved a boundary adjustment June 17 that changes the attendance areas of elementary schools within the Justice High School pyramid.
While the school board passed a motion to reduce the negative impact on families in the Sleepy Hollow community, parents in that neighborhood are unhappy with the lack of community engagement. The board approved a revised plan that was only made public hours before the meeting.
The original proposal called for transferring about 80 students in the Sleepy Hollow neighborhood from Sleepy Hollow Elementary School to Beech Tree Elementary School.
Under a revised plan approved by the board, about 60 students from a slightly smaller geographical area – between Sleepy Hollow Road, Holmes Run Road, and Arlington Boulevard – would be moved from Sleepy Hollow to Beech Tree.
The revised plan also would transfer about 160 students at the Hollybrooke Apartments in Seven Corners from Glen Forest Elementary School to Sleepy Hollow.
The goal of the boundary adjustments is to reduce overcrowding at Glen Forest, which has nearly 1,100 students, two modular structures, and 12 trailers.
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| The capacity numbers for schools facing boundary changes. |
The revised plan also would transfer:
- 229 students from Glen Forest to Parklawn;
- 33 students from Parklawn to Belvedere; and
- 35 students from Belvedere to Bailey’s and Bailey’s Upper.
The school board approved a motion by chair Ricardy Anderson (Mason) to give rising second, third, fourth, and fifth-grade students the option to either attend “the newly assigned school or remain at their prior assigned school for the 2021-22 school year and until they matriculate to middle school.” Rising kindergarten and first-grade students will have to attend their assigned school for the 2021-22 school year.
Anderson described that amendment as “an opportunity to cushion the transition.”
The newly announced proposal “and the way they rammed it through was a slap in the face to the whole Sleepy Hollow community,” said Greg Diephouse, the outgoing Sleepy Hollow PTA president.
The revised proposal came out shortly before the meeting, so the public didn’t have much of an opportunity to discuss it, noted Sleepy Hollow parent Robert Kotka. The addition of the Hollybrook students would take Sleepy Hollow over capacity, so instead of losing 80 students, it would gain 120.
Related story: Sleepy Hollow families oppose school boundary change
“It’s really appalling that the Hollybrooke apartment complex was added at the last minute without giving them an opportunity to comment,” he said. “They deserve to have a voice in the process.”
Kotka also calls it “really appalling to hear board members congratulating themselves on the process that they ran. FCPS considers this a fine process and that they engaged the community. It was disgusting. The process was a sham.”
According to Anderson, there was extensive community engagement. She notes that 319 people registered for the
scoping meetings in March, 406 people registered for the April meeting
where the options were presented, and 16 people spoke at the public hearing earlier
this month.
“No previous presentation showed two schools (Parklawn and Sleepy Hollow) would become over 110 percent capacity, with Glen Forest now vastly underutilized at under 60 percent capacity,” said Sleepy Hollow parent Jeff Longo.
“FCPS says they will perform ‘use optimization’ to get those schools just under 100 percent, but neither staff nor board members have provided any explanation of what that means despite a multitude of requests for explanation,” Longo said.
“Between the shenanigans FCPS pulled during the process of alleviating the overcrowding of Bailey’s (which led to Bailey’s Upper), the Justice High School expansion/park paving, and now this, FCPS has shown that it has zero ability to sincerely and truthfully engage the public when it comes to facilities issues in our area,” he said. “There is deep and systemic rot that permeates the school board as well as senior FCPS leadership.”
Slight Correction of my quote. Glen Forest becomes 65% capacity, not under 60%. The point stands – it is a massive overcorrection that shifts the burden to Parklawn and Sleepy Hollow, and was NOT vetted by the community.
I am also in 100% agreement with the statements from my fellow community members Mr Kotka and Mr Diephouse.
Why would you think that the Fairfax School Board would engage the public? They seldom have done that before and when they do, they still do whatever they originally planned. They seem to have zero regard for our opinion and pass things like this in total secrecy to keep complaints to a minimum. Remember: You voted for these people.
As in the last time I witnessed the school re-boundary process, the fix was in before they even announced the process they would follow. The last time I paid attention (Wakefield Chapel neighborhood redistrict to Woodson from Annandale) the numbers (student capacity predictions) behind the redistricting were way off the very first year of the switch. The supposingly over capacity Annandale HS had to immediately move teachers to other schools and has reduced numbers to this day.
This case seems different in that the impetus doesn't seem to be to appease well-connected, well-off parents but rather to avoid community displeasure.
Not sure how else the School Board would ever offload Glen Forest students onto neighboring schools without sitting through 100's of hours of NIMBY euphemisms.
So now Parklawn becomes the overcrowded school with way too many kids from another neighborhood. Thanks so much school board. You've done a wonderful job of transplanting the kids from the entire school district to solve the problem in one school. Why not just hand out contraceptives to the people in the apartments where the issue originates from? That way, less kids will be born and no need to create upheaval in the entire pyramid.
School boundary adjustments are, by their very nature, extremely unpopular. I distinctly remember back in the early 2000s when 1,000 people came out to protest the moving of 20 students from Madison to South Lakes, the result of which was…not so significant. Whether they are liked or not, changes are a necessary component of District management. Glen Forest is extremely overcrowded and has been for a long time. As its eastern edge it is pressed up against Arlington, there are only two real options for addressing the problem. Either build a new school in the same area or reconfigure boundaries. It is unfortunate that the receiving school communities feel that they didn't receive enough notice, but having been involved with this type of action for two decades, I have never seen a community that felt they had enough chance to speak out against a change.
What seems to be missing from this discussion are any voices from the other affected community, i.e., Glen Forest. Aren't parents there entitled to redress of school size? It would also be valuable to hear from teachers, school leaders, parents, and children of the impact of the excessive period that they have experienced overcrowding. I am not unsympathetic to those who feel that their school will be affected by the change, but boundary changes have been going on since the district was formed and will be forever. In my opinion, it is essential for all communities involved to understand the need for the change and begin the process of preparing for the new configuration.
James, You conveniently gloss over the fact that this is a massive overcorrection. It will leave Glen Forrest at under 80% utilized WITH BOTH MODULARS REMOVED (65% before then), while now massively overcrowding two other schools at over 110% capacity each. Such drastic shifts were never proposed until mere hours before the school board met, and multitudes of emails from myself and others remain unanswered spanning a week about how proposed “use changes” (first described for parklawn, and then for sleepy hollow at last minute) will be implemented. In the end, the fact that glen forest will be under-utilized will actually be bad for them, as they will (or should anyways) receive significantly less resources than a similarly right sized school.
Your reference of moving 20 students is incredibly disengenous. This reallocation moves hundreds of students around the pyramid.
During public comment, there actually was a teacher from glen forest that spoke – A strings teacher that served both the glen forest and parklawn communities. She actually advocated that less students be moved from glen forest to parklawn!
I know you like Ricardy and you encouraged her to run, but there is now no escaping that she has been an utter disaster of a representative.
It's obvious that none of the schools involved in redistricting have to be more than 100%, since 7 schools will be 90% or under. how about doing the hard work of figuring out how to BALANCE all school populations, instead of pandering to some and punishing others. That's EQUITY
Here's the unfortunate reality for those who generally support locally Democrats – the last two FCPS School Board have been utterly incompetent when it comes to managing FCPS facilities and wholly lacking in transparency when it comes to boundary changes. It's not limited to the Justice HS pyramid – they have done nothing to address severe overcrowding at Chantilly HS; they are delaying overcrowding relief at Shrevewood ES in Dunn Loring for years because Karl Frisch decided saving a dog park in Oakton was more important; they made a last-minute change to reject an FCPS staff recommendation that would have moved some multi-family housing to Langley HS, the county's richest high school for the first time; and taxpayers will be subsidizing a $45 million expansion of West Potomac HS so that students don't have to attend nearby Mount Vernon HS even though MVHS is under-enrolled. The people who serve on the School Board simply don't have the skill sets, discipline, and integrity to oversee a fair and thoughtful process.
James Albright is right that boundary changes are typically contentious (although the example he cites with South Lakes in 2008 also involved several other schools and far more than 20 students moving to South Lakes from Madison), but the recent School Boards withhold data from the public about the expected impact of boundary changes that once was routinely shared in advance of a final decision, and they repeatedly and cowardly make decisions at the last minute to try and evade further scrutiny. To Jeff Longo's point, it's not just Ricardy Anderson who has been a disappointment; with only one or two possible exceptions, every member of the 2019-2023 School Board needs to be replaced.
Autocracy at its worst. Goodbye neighborhood schools, hello chaos.
My friends in Montgomery Co. are seeing the same shifts to their neighborhood schools. This is part of the Mont.Co. plan to address the roughly 34,000 undocumented children that have arrived at the border since January. Possibly, Fairfax Co. needs to do the same?
See attached local news x2
Fairfax Co. is mentioned
https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/maryland/influx-of-unaccompanied-minors-has-local-nonprofits-working-to-expand-capacity/65-7e7632de-f3e7-44c4-88f5-774b68a1a2dc
https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/maryland/montgomery-county-leaders-prepare-for-a-surge-of-migrant-children/65-7c65e14a-4ff8-48a4-9cb0-7049b33e896e
"undocumented children"….hilarious….so PC. They're illegal immigrants. Period. End of story.
Yes, looks interesting about Montgomery Co. Why our kids? Looking at the redistricting map it appears that this is more about achieving greater diversity of student bodies at these schools. The Sleepy Hollow neighborhood is the bill payer. Gotta love progressives and social engineering; too bad the kids who have to say goodbye to their schoolmates and "bus" to the school don’t get a voice.
Hey I get it…… the real estate agent says "the schools here are really great (the price of the home has that value baked in) with a fantastic student to teacher ratio". Family purchases home and POOF! they are re-districted – now comes the trailers, now lunch time is shorter, now the teachers are less patient, etc, etc…… The school you thought you were buying into will now suffer a protracted educational death by a thousand cuts, and the quality of education you thought you were buying was just flushed.
So yeah if I was a parent that bought a $600k (and UP) 30+ year old home and got schnitzeled on the re-districting I would be vexed.
If you don't have school aged children and you just say "meh" it is what it is. Ha – be careful because the populations of these unaccompanied children will keep rising, and they won't be moving back to Central America. Nope! they will be here for the next 20 years and they need somewhere to live and work. Your next-door neighbor "howdy neighbor" will rent his house and POOF! you will have seven cars parked on the street next to your lovely abode with comings and goings all time of the day and night.
I am a lifelong (40+ years) Fairfax County resident – the county WAS in general a very well managed, safe, and prosperous place to live. The school system IS STILL the corner stone to this county's survival (and the BOS knows this) and attracting a highly skilled workforce that wants to raise their children with the highest standard of living/education as possible. If the county continues to be a sanctuary county then it will reach a tipping point and will become very segregated(very sad). People who earned their spot and lifestyle can only take so much before pushing back or sending their children to private school.
Oh by the way here is the latest FCPS budget. I think we need a Jaime Diamond to manage this enterprise judging by the size of the budget (jk).
https://www.fcps.edu/news/fairfax-county-school-board-adopts-fy-2021-advertised-budget