Briar Woods overcrowding

The School Board is taking a break from boundaries for a couple weeks while they decide on the Capital Improvement Plan for 2014-2018. Public hearings on it are at the School Administration Building at 6:30pm on Monday and Tuesday night. See below for the letter I sent after the proposed plan came out. I'd appreciate your feedback.

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Dr. Adamo and School Board members:

Looking at the proposed CIP for 2014-2018, I would urge you to expedite HS-6 so that it may open in the 2014-15 school year instead of the proposed opening of 2015-16.

Briar Woods High School is projected to be 655 students over capacity in 2014 including the 10 trailers it already uses to raise its program capacity.

We have heard suggestions in our community of bussing Briar Woods students to John Champe High School in Aldie because Briar Woods facilities simply can not handle the amount of load projected.

It seems a better and obvious solution to expedite the construction and opening of HS-6. The high school is to be co-located with Rosa Lee Carter Elementary on proffered land in Loudoun Valley Estates. Funding for its construction has already been approved and allocated by the BOS. Bids for its construction are to be advertised in May, 2013. If that were moved up to December, it would follow closely to the schedule of the newly constructed John Champe High, whose bid was awarded in January, 2011, and opened for the 2012-13 school year.

The Briar Woods High school community needs this relief. Thank you for your consideration. I look forward to your response.

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Joy Maloney
Ashburn, Va

 

How about moving some of the southern portions of the Briar Woods district to John Champe?
Maybe then, we could actually delay building HS-6, save tens of millions of dollars, and utilize existing capacity we already have?
Haven't looked at the numbers. Just a thought.

 

Thanks for playing devil's advocate, Cliff.

1) The "southern portions" is Brambleton. If we move them across Route 50 to the Dulles South area, they'll be moving again in two years either back to Briar Woods or to the new school when HS-6 is now planned to open.
2) I don't expect opening the school one year early to cost tens of millions of dollars. In fact, it may save some money on the construction costs.

 

Aldie seems like a long bus ride for our local students. Does it make sense for Briar Woods kids to be bussed to Aldie?

 

I wasn't thinking one year. The move should have been done this year. If it was, I'm guessing you wouldn't actually need another high school for 3-5 years.
But then I need to actually see the actual projected number of students.

LCPS has a history, in my opinion, of "creating" the need for schools sooner than needed by not utilizing the capacity they have.

 

I was the only speaker at the public hearing last night. If you have a half hour free at 6:30pm tonight, come show your support for moving up HS-6. It's at the School Administration building next to Clyde's. Here's Leesburg Today's
coverage of last night's meeting: http://www.leesburgtoday.com/news/s...cle_b1aef96a-32c5-11e2-b7e9-001a4bcf887a.html

 

Isn't a contributing factor to the issue is that they dont build large enough High Schools? The schools in Loudoun are physically too small.

 

One could absolutely argue that HS-6 was needed before HS-7 (now John Champe) (thus the numbering?). One could argue that the Brambleton community should have been split up and some moved to John Champe when its boundaries were created in May, 2010 (I disagree). One could argue that we should have build larger schools sooner, instead of starting more recently (which we have). Or one could see where we are now and how to solve our current problem of Briar Woods being untenably overcrowded in 2014 (and some would say we're close or there now).

Thanks to the community support, there is a resolution on the Monday, Nov. 27, School Board Meeting agenda to move up the opening of HS-6 to 2014 and requesting the County's support in speeding up the timeline. Please consider signing the petition I created in support of this. Also, show up at for the Nov. 27 meeting to show your support. There is public input to start the meeting.

The resolution's text can be found here: http://www.boarddocs.com/vsba/loudoun/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=928R5J6C4D08

 

Or build multiple levels? Seems it would be the best use of limited land or space and less costly.

 

Howard Co. MD in the late 80's, my high school was only about 750. Broad Run here in LoCo about that time was only about 800.

 

Briar Woods is 2 levels. I can't speak to the other schools, but since they are all built with pretty much the same specs, I would assume any built around the time BWHS opened would also be two levels.

 

I just want to point out that the overcrowding issue at BWHS adds insult to injury. Combine that with the bafoons that run the school and you have strike one and strike two. I suspect a more insolent and narrow minded prinicpal next year may well be strike three. This school needs a shake up and that administration needs to be held accountable.

 

Before another Briar Woods bashing thread begins......and please know I'm not taking away from your experiences there - but both my children have had an amazing 4 years at the school. One will be graduating from college soon and was obviously very well prepared for a difficult course of study. The other has already been accepted to multple strong schools and I have no doubt will excel in college. We have had great experiences with the teachers and assugned counselors. There is a lot of good happening at Briar Woods, which shouldn't be overlooked.

 

Yes. Have to agree with frm...... Please no more BWHS basing...or at least create a seperate thread so I don't have to read it.......

 

Agreed, I can't say enough about Briar Woods and ED Starzinski. Great experience for all 3 of my daughters.

 

How old is BW? I didn't think it was that old to have so many portable buildings. Is it that overcrowded?

 

Briar Woods opened in 2005. Without the trailers, it is supposed to hold 1648 kids. It currently has 1998 kids enrolled. There are 10 trailers that raise the capacity to 1855, so it's already about 150 kids overcapacity with the trailers.

 

We started the year with over 2000 kids.

 

2079 to be exact