Community Leaders Against Redistricting…

Comments of Former School Board Member Steve Hunt
regarding the Western Fairfax County Boundary Consideration
January 30, 2008

My name is Steve Hunt and for the previous 4 boundary studies, I sat where you are, only not for quite so long.  I would like to begin by commending Dean Tistadt and his staff for surviving yet another boundary townhall meeting process.  I believe that this one was more challenging that any of the ones that I observed, because the facilities folks were being asked to perform a facilities operation to address a programmatic issue.  Consequently after Dean stated that there was no facilities justification for this boundary change, and the community looked for programmatic solutions and inputs for this programmatic issue, Denise and her folks were stuck in the middle.

Never one to avoid a boundary analysis, I have run the numbers.  There are enough elementary students in the South Lakes Pyramid to put 18-1900 students in South Lakes HS.  There is a marked reduction in the number of students between 6th and 7th grades taking into consideration the return of GT students to their pyramid.  I believe that Dr. Dale has actually already addressed this in the leadership that he has placed at both South Lakes HS and Hughes MS.  Bruce Butler has already turned the environment around and we are seeing improvements.  Aimee Monticchio has already established herself at Hughes and I see great hope in her doing for Hughes what Bruce has done for South Lakes.  Environments can be turned around quickly but reputations take time.  If the Board adds 600-700 students to South Lakes, once the reputation turns like it did at Stuart HS, and if the elementary students in the pyramid continue onto MS and HS, in a few years South Lakes will be 300-400 students overcapacity.

If the effort to date provides you with valuable information to guide you on to a next step, such as a holistic evaluation as to how to address the under capacity at South Lakes or even that all that is needed is to wait for the good efforts of the Butler / Monticchio team to take effect, than the investment was worth it.  There is no need to have a boundary change to make this investment worthwhile. 

It has been said that there is no time to evaluate the programmatic options.  That is understandable it if boundary change has to be approved by the end of February.  But there is nothing demanding that this boundary change happen now.  The head of Facilities has stated that the facilities can handle the students.  If addressing the under capacity at South Lakes is that critical, why has the similar under capacity at Falls Church and Marshall not been addressed long ago?  It is often said that there is no time to do it right, but there is always time to do it again.  I have experienced going back to a community a short time after one boundary change to do another one.  If this boundary process has been painful, I can only imagine the fun it will be to come back in threes years to move students out of an overcrowded South Lakes.

I urge you to vote to suspend the boundary change until the under capacity issue at South Lakes can be evaluated in a holistic fashion that investigates the reason parents are not keeping their students in the public schools, and that researches and evaluates potential programmatic solutions looking at the long term picture.

I also request that you refrain from moving the students that currently go to Madison.  Their “island” status can be addressed with the stroke of a pen that includes a non-residential area into the Madison boundary making them as contiguous as a number of other areas not considered “islands.”  More importantly, this move that has no facilities justification would actually overcrowd Sunrise Valley ES.

Thank you and enjoy the rest of your evening.

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