School Board Boundary Policy

I attended the School Board meeting this week and spoke about the boundary changes. Then I went next door to hear a wonderful presentation on bullying at the Special Education Advisory Committee. When the presentation was complete, I went back to hear the discussion on the boundary policy.

It seems to me that this topic is becoming extremely difficult and time consuming, but I for one don't think it's better - just different.

So, I came home and wrote my own policy. And I'm posting it here. This is a link to board docs and the policy that is under consideration.

FYI - Blue text is my two cents!

§2-32 School Attendance Zones: Policy and Process

A. Authority

The Loudoun County Public Schools is vested with the authority to “provide for the consolidation of schools or redistricting of school boundaries or adopt pupil assignment plans whenever such procedure will contribute to the efficiency or the school division.” [Code of Virginia: Section §22.1-79 (4)]

B. Definitions

Permanent Attendance Zones – LCPS does not provide permanent attendance zones.

Stable Attendance Zones – The School Board strives to provide stable attendance zones for all of the students of LCPS. Stable attendance zones are those that are deemed unlikely to require revision for 5 years.

Temporary Attendance Zones – It may be necessary for the School Board to engage in attendance zone changes that are deemed temporary. This is likely due to the health, safety and instructional needs of students during a period of expanding attendance.

Cluster/Feeder System – LCPS utilizes the feeder system to promote cohesive operational clusters in which students remain with their educational cohorts and staff coordinate and communicate within the cluster. Generally, several elementary schools feed into one middle school, and the middle school feeds directly to the high school. Clusters are identified by the high school in the feed.

Split Feed – Any school that sends students, upon completion of the highest grade level, to more than one cluster or any school that receives students from more than one cluster is considered to have a split feed. All split feed attendance zones are considered to be temporary attendance zones.

Staggered Enrollment/Phasing – The School Board may decide to stagger an attendance zone change through the phasing of incoming classes.

C. Reasons for Considering Attendance Zone Adjustments

The School Board may change an attendance zone in order to maintain or improve operating efficiency and/or in order to maximize instructional effectiveness. In general, adjustments may relieve facility crowding, better utilize existing space, avoid underutilized facilities, mitigate the impact to schools created by demographic imbalances, and better allocate program resources, and/or reduce operating costs.

D. Attendance Zone Change Process

At least annually, the Superintendent will recommend to the School Board options for the transformation of all temporary attendance zones to stable attendance zones. In addition, the Superintendent will evaluate whether or not additional attendance zone changes are to be considered. Typically, the evaluation will take place within the context of the Capital Improvements Program process, but changes may also be recommended at any time to address safety, overcrowding or other concerns. Attendance zone changes may also be initiated at the direction of the School Board. When conditions exist for school attendance zone changes, the Superintendent will recommend to the School Board that options for change be developed. These options will identify schools potentially affected by the attendance zone changes, the means by which the public will be involved in the attendance zone change process and a calendar for the attendance zone change process. The School Board will seek to encourage public participation throughout this process and will hold at least one public hearing prior to the adoption of any attendance zone change recommendation. The School Board will act on the Superintendent’s recommendation, but may modify that recommendation. Finally, if an attendance zone is deemed to be a temporary attendance zone the time frame of the change and the means to transformation to a stable attendance zone will be determined at the time of the change.

E. Factors Considered in Attendance Zone Changes

When changing school attendance zones, the School Board and the Superintendent will consider, but not be limited to, the following criteria whenever possible (alphabetical order):

Demographic characteristics of the student population

Equitable distribution of programs and resources

Minimize future capital and operational budget costs

Minimize long-term use of mobile or modular classrooms

School capacities, new facilities and/or renovations to existing school facilities

School location

Stability

Student enrollment projections

Transportation

The School Board may will consider each of these factors in making an attendance zone change. In the exercise of its authority, the School Board recognizes that it may not be reasonably practicable to reconcile each and every factor in any attendance zone change, but any attendance zone plan adopted by the School Board should be based on the above factors to the greatest extent possible.

School Board 2, My Comments

This post is a continuation of my post from early this morning on last night's School Board meeting. It is also, however, an interruption of the topic of that post. I will return to that topic shortly, but wanted to post here, now, the comments that I prepared to read last night. This is in it's entirety as I was unable to finish my comments due to both the time constraint of two minutes AND the fact that I lost my place while I was reading and had to repeat part of a sentence. I am leaving out the salutation and identification info at the beginning.

It does not please me to be here tonight.

You have heard many of my neighbors give details on how tonight’s Action Item is the result of inappropriate and unprofessional behavior by members of this board. This information is available as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request. It is shocking that citizens in this school district must file FOIA requests to have the facts about their schools. It is especially disgraceful in light of the fact that this board revised it’s Code of Conduct for School Board Members in August.

A4 of that policy begins: That my fellow board members and I should take the initiative in helping the people of this community to have the facts about their schools…

It is offensive that these words have been so quickly forgotten and replaced with behavior intended to spread disinformation. As a special ed parent, I cannot communicate with the members of this board or administration about any educational issue that my child may have if FOIA is the new preferred method of disseminating information; I will not participate in violating my child’s rights.

And where does a communication process that requires the use of FOIA as a starting point proceed to? I’m afraid to imagine what the next steps may be. I am personally trying to avoid a due process hearing for my fifth grader by working my up the chain of responsibility within the special ed department. But when elected representatives don’t represent and communication is at a standstill, what is the equivalent of due process for an entire neighborhood?

Meanwhile, I have heard new, good options for the students of Dulles North that you may never hear if this process continues to intentionally pit neighborhood against neighborhood. Stop now and do it correctly and openly.

I will end where I started, it does not please me to be here tonight. I should be in room 105, engaged in the presentation by the Parent Resource Center on transitioning to middle school with IEP.

In hindsight, I should have gone to the presentation!

To the School Board: YOU DON'T GET IT!

For almost a year, Dulles North parents have been dealing with boundary issues. And tonight the process lost at the expense of the children in Lansdowne. Adding insult to injury, Bob Ohneiser - the duly elected school board member of the affected children - LECTURED Lansdowne parents from his cushy chair behind the dais.

I got involved in this last year when Little Dude was a fourth grader and the boundaries for all levels of schools were affected - elementary, middle and high school. I didn't think at the time that he would be moved for 5th grade or that our neighborhood would be moved for middle school, although here is a link to a plan that everyone denies has ever been promoted to take part of Lansdowne out of Belmont Ridge Middle School. I worked with others who were interested and self-selected myself to work on maps. Having been through many boundary changes with our older two children, I was familiar with the process - including when Stone Bridge High School opened. As a group, we pretty much determined that Seldens Landing would be over capacity, but moving one section of students to another elementary school to overcrowd them by the same amount was silly - a neighborhood elementary school should be overcrowded with it's own students, not with a handful of students from another neighborhood.

The staff and the school board apparently agreed and there were no boundary changes for our elementary school students. Middle school was more difficult, from a map perspective, but after many options by parents all over the Central and Dulles districts and, of course, the staff, it became clear that in one, two, or three years they would all be over capacity. So the same reasoning must have prevailed and the middle school boundaries were not changed.

But then we have the Almighty Stone Bridge High School!

Our family moved to Ashburn Farm (planning zone DN28) when Ms Giggles was in 3rd grade and Floggy was in 6th grade; I was pregnant with Little Dude; we moved from Ashburn Farm when Little Dude was starting kindergarten, and Ms Giggles was a Freshman and Floggy was a Senior at the Almighty High School. I never anticipated that Little Dude would go to the Almighty SBHS. And I am not alone among my neighbors with elementary only children, hence the poor turnout at neighborhood and school board meetings by parents of elementary aged students. Frankly, I think they trusted their neighbors with older children to represent the best interests of the community when it came to high school planning.

There were a number of different priorities that members of the community had. Teens at the Almighty Stone Bridge, naturally wanted to stay there. Younger sibs in middle school naturally wanted to not only follow their older brother(s) or sister(s) to the Almighty SBHS, but wanted to maintain the friendships that they had developed in middle school.

As a community we learned about the academic and social benefits of the feeder system, and liked what we learned. Everyone agreed that this was a common priority. We agreed that we wanted our children to have not just a stable neighborhood, but a stable school community. As a neighborhood, we will never be big enough to need a 1600 student capacity high school. Even with the largest elementary school in the district, we will not ever have 400 students in a grade, although we are over half way there with current second grade.

SO WE WANT TO BE IN A SCHOOL COMMUNITY WITH OTHER NEIGHBORHOODS THAT BORDER OUR NEIGHBORHOOD!

Our children attended Seldens Landing with the children from neighboring University Center until a new elementary school was built near One Loudoun and University Center was moved just over a year ago. Our middle school aged children have attended Belmont Ridge with children from Belmont Country Club, Belmont Green and part of Ashburn Farm.

BUT WHERE ARE OUR NEIGHBORS IN THIS PLAN?

Before I get into the particulars on tonight's meeting, I think we need to remind ourselves of the terminology that different groups use to describe our children. The Board of Supervisors refers to our children as seats; the School Board refers to our children as students; I have personally birthed three children that I call by name or refer to as my/our (older or younger) son and my/our daughter.

So who did what that was outrageous tonight?

I am compelled to start with Dr Hatrick because I hope that I can be as persuasive as he tried to be tonight.
Dr. Hatrick, nice try, but frankly, I don't believe you. It is futile to say you weren't steamrolled when: 1)members of the community have copies of the actual e-mails that were sent; or to use your experience on the job as justification for being able to hold your own when : 2)you clearly lost the grade weighting for honors classes debate; and most importantly: 3)I have never seen you have so little regard for the children that we have entrusted to your care. If you truly believe that it is in the best interests of the children who live in Lansdowne to become an academic and social island in your school system then I have been trusting you for way too long. We might all agree that it is the politically expedient thing to do, but I am not talking about seats, I am talking about the best interest of the teenage children that you have just agreed to isolate. There is a better process and there are better options. And I believe that you have the education and experience as both an educator and an administrator to know that this isolation is not necessary. I understand that the increased high school enrollment figures, especially for Briar Woods HS, were a surprise and that the original staff recommendation from last spring is no longer an option. But for a person who gives a great speech on the world that you are preparing our children to enter, this lacked any notion of the innovation that I hoped that you would model for those children.

And now the gloves come off.

Bob Ohneiser. I sit here trying to come up with one word that appropriately describes my impression. But maybe I should just describe the behavior and let the rest of you decide! You are the school board representative for the majority of the Lansdowne neighborhood, and at this exact moment I am jealous, for the first time, of my neighbors who happen to live in West Goose Creek. Clearly, you did not represent us tonight, and it seems that you have spent quite some time preparing to not represent us. And you have not communicated with us, in any manner, not only what your position is about where our teenagers should go to high school, but that you were going to throw us under the bus! You have also not solicited any input from us as to what we would consider reasonable, would be willing to accept, or what our priorities are. And on top of that, you had the gall to lecture us DURING A SCHOOL BOARD MEETING! Why didn't you meet with us sometime in the past two weeks? Is your precious phasing more important than our children. We think not, but it seems you disagree. And the whole hat demonstration was ridiculous. But not nearly as laughable as presenting it to the principal of Tuscarora HS. For anyone who was there or watched it on TV, maybe the word "Wegman's" is all that we will ever need to remind ourselves of your spectacle tonight.
There were plenty of comments from my neighbors about your phasing plan: What happens if you have a current 8th grader and a current 9th grader? How is it beneficial to a family to have two children, especially two children only one year apart, going to different high schools? How do we get out of Tuscarora? If you have a freshman when the next boundary adjustment is made and our children can go to school with children in nearby neighborhoods closer to home are we stuck at Tuscarora? Yeah, it's a nice new school - FULL OF STRANGERS! And you did not have our permission to trade 130 of our children for your pet project.
Do you realize that we do not want to drive our children to Lucketts or Point of Rocks to visit their new friends or work on a project. And we have no interest in having our children with drivers licenses making that trek up and down Rt 15.
You need to come here and meet with us, in person.


And it's almost 3:30am and I need to get some rest. More tomorrow. After the PTA meeting, but before the IEP meeting hopefully.

Are We Just a Bunch of Whiners?

While I prepare to update what's going on in the special education part of our lives, here's one more link to an article by an emergency room doctor that was published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Enjoy!

Ruling deals a blow to denials of autism treatment -- latimes.com

Ruling deals a blow to denials of autism treatment -- latimes.com

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Autism Benefits from Health Reform Bill

From the AutismVotes.org website:

News Center

Senate Finance Committee Passes Health Insurance Reform Bill Containing Menendez Amendment for Autism Insurance Reform

Washington, DC (October 13, 2009) -- Autism Speaks, the nation's largest autism science and advocacy organization, today applauds the members of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee for their 14 to 9 passage of a health care reform bill, the America’s Health Future Act, containing an amendment for autism insurance reform.

The amendment, introduced in September by Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and passed by the Committee with the support of Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT), will prohibit discrimination in benefits against people with autism by including behavioral health treatments as part of the essential benefits package.

“We are grateful to Senators Menendez, Baucus, and their Committee colleagues for passing this health care reform bill. The legislation will ensure that families dealing with autism will be a part of larger health care reform,” said Bob Wright, co-founder of Autism Speaks. “Short of finding a cure for autism, there is nothing that can have a more significant impact on the lives of people with autism and those who love them than putting an end to insurance discrimination.”

“I am proud to have included a number of my amendments in the legislation, which will help lower health insurance costs, protect consumers and expand access to health coverage,” said Senator Menendez in a press release. “My amendment to guarantee the coverage of behavioral health treatments will help bring economic security and peace of mind to many families dealing with autism or other behavioral health conditions.”

The next step is for the Finance Committee bill to be merged with the Senate HELP Committee bill passed earlier this year. The combined bill will then head to the Senate floor for a vote. Once the Senate and House have passed their respective bills, they must go through a conference committee before reaching the President's desk to be signed into law. Please visit autismvotes.org for updates on health care reform and the elimination of insurance discrimination related to autism.

The Freedom to Speak...or Not

I have been intentionally silent here for quite a number of weeks. The health care debate continues to take place and I continue to wonder if we will have health care reform, health insurance reform, or just change with no real reform. We each have an opinion or idea and I'm not interested in participating in a battling of the blogs. But I have had the opportunity to hear Mr Wendell Potter, the former VP of Communications for Cigna, speak on various programs and I find his opinion to be well informed and worth posting for review. Here he is speaking before the House Democratic Steering and Policy Comm.

It's possible that the venue of a House Democratic committee is not your idea of fair and balanced, so is a a 37 minute interview on Bill Moyers Journal that I found to be very informative and even handed:

If you're interested, here is a link to Wendell Potter's blog .

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• Wendell Potter: Health-Care Exec Turns Whistle-Blower (time.com)

And in case anyone has forgotten that Medicare is a well run and popular government program that seniors might want to share with their younger citizens, I offer this final video: