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Public Input on School Construction This Wednesday, 10/7

Discussion in 'Broadlands Community Issues' started by Charlotte, Oct 5, 2009.

  1. Charlotte

    Charlotte New Member

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    Lori Waters emailed this to her Broad Run constituents this afternoon. My apologies if I posted it in the wrong forum:

    October 5, 2009

    Dear Neighbor,

    I wanted to make sure you were aware of an upcoming public input session scheduled for Wednesday, October 7, 2009 at 6pm in the Board Room of the School Administration Building. The input session is for the Joint Subcommittee on Capital Construction Needs, comprised of members from the Board of Supervisors and School Board and tasked to give recommendations about the capital needs specific to schools in the Ashburn/Dulles North area. While the subcommittee generally has agreed that the student projection numbers demonstrate a need for a high school and a middle school north of the Greenway, the difficulty is finding suitable land under the current school prototypes. For example, the School Board request 75 acres for a high school, and there are only about three sites in the Ashburn area that meet the land criteria. The cost of acquiring or condemning these privately owned sites will be substantial.

    At the last joint subcommittee meeting, I proposed considering magnet schools as an option to help address the situation. A magnet high school could be built on the county-owned property across from the Ashburn Ice House and draw students from the entire area. This plan would reduce overcrowding in Broad Run and Stone Bridge HS, save money by not having to acquire additional land, and potentially avoid a boundary war by providing academic incentives for students to want to attend the specialized school. Furthermore, the School Board could establish magnet programs in under-enrolled schools to increase utilization of the hundreds of empty seats, without having to cause massive community disruption in a significant boundary change. Many school systems around the nation have magnet programs and use them to enhance academic offerings and even out enrollment. To read my proposed recommendations as well as others, click here (follow the link to the Joint Subcommittee folder, then click the 09-2-09 meeting date). Other alternative solutions, such as expansion of existing facilities or trailers, have not been fully explored.
    Your thoughts on these ideas or other ways of reducing overcrowding are very much welcomed.

    I hope you can make it to the public input session on Wednesday, October 7. There will be another meeting of the joint subcommittee on the following Wednesday (October 14) at 6:30pm in the Purcellville Room at the Government Center on Harrison Street as well, if are not able to attend the October 7 meeting. Additionally, the subcommittee will be discussing the elementary school situation in the Ashburn area on Oct. 14. We will be reviewing the Sept. 30 official school enrollment numbers to examine whether or not the numbers justify another elementary school in Ashburn, too.

    You input is vital to the future school situation in the Ashburn/Dulles north area. The county is facing challenging economic times and increased demand for seats in schools in Ashburn. These challenges present opportunities for creative solutions. I welcome your ideas.

    Sincerely,
    Lori Waters
     
  2. CuriousGo

    CuriousGo New Member

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    Supervisor Waters has her own such spin on things - her own agenda. Basically her spin is, make everyone believe that land can not be secured in Ashburn which will KEEP Lansdowne at Stone Bridge and kick Ashburn Farm out of Stone Bridge. She is so obvious in her writing and she wants to keep her constituents happy at the cost of the rest of the county. What happens if her plan occurs? Broadlands will be overcrowded at Briar Woods. Kids who live closest to Briar Woods will get kicked out of there, just like the AF kids who get kicked out of Stone Bridge. Briar Woods would be completely over crowded like Stone Bridge, I think both would be at like 120% + capacity. I don't have the exact numbers... but don't expect your kid to have a locker, get into the courses they want, play sports, or be involved with their activity of choice. Her magnet school theory just doesn't work in solving the over crowding that will be caused. Think about it, the magnet school would draw from ALL over Loudoun County. How does this solve the Stone Bridge / Briar Woods / Broad Run over crowding issue? It doesn't. It would only cause more underutilized schools and unless like four hundred kids from these three Ashburn HS are accepted, our schools remain overcrowded. So, do you really believe that 400 kids from Briar Woods would be accepted into the magnet school program? I sure dont. So, when all of Ashburn Farm comes knocking at Briar Woods... what happens then? I think I hear that Briar Woods opened with 75 kids more than anticipated. And now Lori Waters wants to send Ashburn Farm there too? Lansdowne needs to go to Tuscarora until land can be secured for them to get their own high school. That is the only solution that will work for us!
     
  3. Charlotte

    Charlotte New Member

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    'Scuse me, but I am not a Lori Waters fan. I just posted this info because I thought there may be people interested in atending this meeting.
     
  4. CuriousGo

    CuriousGo New Member

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    Charlotte, I agree. This community definitely needs to be aware of what she is trying to pull and am glad you posted her hogwash to help everyone aware of this situation. I in no way meant to imply you were a fan. I was just stating how much we should disagree with her. Everyone should plan on attending the meeting.
     
  5. luftinarr

    luftinarr Member

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    FWIW - I didn't take the post as implying Charlotte was a fan. I am not a fan at all of Lori Waters. Especially her door-to-door vote solicitation tactics back in 2003. Then I had to deal with her when I was president of my previous HOA and her inability to help a fellow neighborhood deal with traffic calming issues (but she worked hard for her own neighborhood to get that traffic calming). She consistently placated us with "reassuring" emails that she understood where we were coming from, but nothing was ever done from her side. But she accomplished it for her own neighborhood two miles away from us. She's always been full of malarky - from traffic calming to schools to safety. Not once have I trusted a single word she uttered.
     
  6. vacliff

    vacliff "You shouldn't say that."

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    Lori Waters juvenile behaviour over this issue (see her tantrum at the BoS meeting where she didn't get her way) and attempts to control the school construction/boundary issues to feather her own cap in Lansdowne has been disgusting.
    She claims to be a fiscal conservative, yet promoted spending 10's of millions of our tax dollars needlessly just so Lansdowne can stay at Stone Bridge.
     
  7. wahoogeek

    wahoogeek New Member

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    All,

    Here's the email from the Ashburn Farm community regarding the meeting. Steve Miller is trying to do the right thing for both Broadlands and Ashburn Farm by proposing building a new HS and MS north of the Greenway to relieve the overcrowding and to create firm boundaries and establish the "feeder system" for our area.

    Broadlands and Ashburn Farm are tied together on this issue as one is moved the other will be affected. Please show up and support the cause, speak up because you know the Lori Water's camp will.

    Text of the email:

    Summer has passed, fall has arrived, and many questions are being asked at bus stops about school boundaries. Although you may not have heard from us in a while, we have been very busy over the summer monitoring the School Board and its progress on many fronts. There were two committees that were formed as a direct result of last spring's stalemate on the boundary process. We are monitoring both of them closely. For a thorough update, read the details below.

    The short version is this ... our best chance of staying at our community high school, Stone Bridge, and achieving stability at the middle school and high school level involves the construction of two new schools - a middle school in Ashburn that feeds Stone Bridge and a high school preferably in the Route 7 corridor that would be fed by Belmont Ridge Middle School. The continued large growth in student population in northern Ashburn supports this need and both schools are already being planned for, just in the wrong locations. When then will the high school boundaries be re-drawn? Our best guess is sometime in the spring.

    How can you stay involved? Attend the October 7 Joint Sub-Committee on Capital Construction Needs and show your support for Supervisor Stevens Miller's Recommendation. Supervisor Miller has suggested a new middle and high school be built north of the Greenway, and has defined both short-term and long-term solutions to deal with the overcrowding of schools in Ashburn. If you are interested in speaking at this public input meeting, please contact us so we can coordinate our efforts. If you attend, please remember to wear black.

    Link to Miller's plan:

    http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=4uhuiadab.0...t+Board+and+School+Board+Committee&id=preview
     
  8. Charlotte

    Charlotte New Member

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    I apologize, CuriousGo, for jumping to a conclusion. I just had a sudden panic attack that maybe it seemed as if I supported Lori's points of view - if you could call them that, and not what they are - hare-brained "ideas". Now Stevens Miller is a different story. He's not in my district, but if he were, he'd get my vote.
     
  9. afgm

    afgm Ashburn Farm Resident

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    Why is Lori Waters sticking her nose in school board business anyway? She has enough difficulty handling her own responsibilities on the BOS. Does she really need more issues to screw up?

    Her idea seems so self centered. Oh and by the way she lives in Lansdowne and is part of the neighborhood she wants to be at Stone Bridge.

    One other huge issue. Her magnet school idea is NOT funded. Her plan to get her kids into Stone Bridge falls apart without the funding. If she is going to promote this idea I want to know how she is going to pay for it. (Oh that little part I guarantee she's going to punt over to the school board to deal with)

    Who wants to bet she'll be *****ing at budget sessions that the schools need to cut their budget and at the same time want them to create a huge cost heavy magnet school program? Can't have it both ways.
     
  10. vacliff

    vacliff "You shouldn't say that."

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    I'm speaker #3.
     
  11. hornerjo

    hornerjo Senior Member

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    So how was the meeting?
     
  12. vacliff

    vacliff "You shouldn't say that."

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    Fairly quiet, abut 20 speakers. Most speaking to support a new high school/middle school in Ashburn rather that farther south.
     

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