By Brian Trompeter
Needing to offset massive current and projected over-capacity problems at Kent Gardens Elementary School in McLean, Fairfax County School Board members on Dec. 4 unanimously approved boundary changes that will affect 380 students at five schools in the vicinity.
Citing access, transportation and staffing concerns, officials opted to go with one of five proposed boundary-change plans, dubbed Scenario B, as a long-term solution.
The plan will affect students at Kent Gardens, Franklin Sherman, Churchill Road, Haycock and Chesterbrook elementary schools, as well as Advanced Academic Program (AAP) centers at the latter two schools.
The school system will shift 190 kindergarten-through-sixth-grade Kent Gardens students to Franklin Sherman and 38 to Haycock.
Franklin Sherman also will send 112 students to Chesterbrook and 40 to Churchill Road.
Despite the shifts, all of the affected schools will remain under 100-percent capacity, officials said.
Franklin Sherman’s students no longer will be separated by a split-feeder system into either Cooper Middle/Langley High or Longfellow Middle/McLean High. Those who are shifted to Churchill Road will matriculate to the former schools; students remaining at Franklin Sherman will go to the latter.
To ensure a smooth transition, the school system will begin reassigning students in the 2024-25 school year. Rising kindergartners and first-graders will be shifted to their new schools then, but students in second through sixth grades will have the option of remaining in their prior assigned school for the 2024-25 school year and until they move on to middle school.
Fewer than 10 students at Haycock Elementary’s AAP center will be shifted to Churchill Road’s AAP center, while 41 students in Churchill Road’s program will move to Haycock’s.
FCPS officials declined to reduce the French Language Dual Immersion program at Kent Gardens, saying this would have minimal enrollment impact because Kent Gardens students constitute 75 percent of the program’s enrollees. The program still will be accessible by out-of-boundary students systemwide, using a lottery.
During the 2022-23 school year, Kent Gardens had 1,023 students, or 121 percent of its 848-student capacity, county school officials said. By comparison, Chesterbrook and Franklin Sherman elementary schools were operating at 77 percent of capacity, Churchill Road at 86 percent, Haycock at 95 percent and Spring Hill at 84 percent.
Kent Gardens last year also operated 13 temporary classrooms, versus four apiece for Chesterbrook and Haycock, two at Churchill Road and none at Franklin Sherman and Spring Hill, elementary schools.
By the 2027-28 school year, FCPS officials were projecting that Kent Gardens still would be a 120 percent of capacity. Of the other elementary schools mentioned, Haycock would have the next highest capacity figure of 92 percent.
The School Board approved the boundary changes on an 11-0 vote; member Melanie Meren (Hunter Mill District) was absent.
The adjustments will not change the middle- and high-school boundaries in McLean, said School Board Chairman Elaine Tholen (Dranesville District). Scenario B made the most sense overall, but will have significant impacts on Franklin Sherman Elementary, she said.
Officials tried to reduce impacts at Franklin Sherman, but were limited by geographical challenges, Tholen said. The school system did not wish to shift children away from current walking zones, owning to the shortage of bus drivers, she said.
“Region 2 stands ready to work with our principals to make sure our children are managing this transition and making new friends,” she said.
Those principals are planning joint open houses Jan. 25 to “receive any new students with open arms,” Tholen said.
Boundary changes “are never easy,” said School Board member Ricardy Anderson (Mason). “There’s never going to be that perfect solution that creates happiness with all parts of the community.”
Anderson added she hoped that future boundary adjustments would be staff-driven, not led by School Board members.
“It is an undue burden to folks who are not subject-matter experts,” she said.
Superintendent Michelle Reid said the school system could look at a different boundary-change process. Officials already rank schools by over-capacity percentages, she said.
