Meeting information inconsistencies

The following note was posted by Ms. Lisa Ide on the FCPS Discussion page on Facebook: 

Lisa Ide: I attended two of the Southwest Boundary Study Meetings, at Union Mill and Fairview. I had neighbors who attended 2 other meetings as well.

The FCPS School Board's claim that the same information would be distributed at all of these events was untrue.

All of us either sent an email to staff the week prior or asked both transportation and instructional representatives at these meetings where the current Clifton AAP students who attend Willow Springs ES would receive AAP services if their neighborhoods are changed to Fairview ES.

We received 3 different answers. In the email, Denise James claimed our children would get to stay at the Willow Spring ES/Rocky Run MS AAP centers. At the Union Mill and Greenbriar meetings, we were told that our children would go to whatever Fairview's AAP centers (White Oaks ES/Lake Braddock SS). At Willow Springs, we were told that our children would stay at Willow Springs ES/Rocky Run MS AAP centers. And at Fairview we were told that there was a typographical error on all of the maps and that they should read "ALL Clifton AAP students will attend the Sangster AAP center".

Also at Fairview last night, one poor instructional staff member told me that neither he nor any of the other instructional staff people actually knew anything about elementary schools in general or about the issues being discussed at the event last night. He said that he and the other staff at the meeting had simply responded to a request for volunteers to show up at these meetings. He said, "I work with High Schools, although I used to be an elementary school teacher. But I don't know anything really about any of these questions."

Clearly this process was NEVER designed to answer community members' questions or solicit any kind of informed input from the community regarding these boundary changes.

The only questions on the response form were ratings of the cost effectiveness of the three options and how well each option achieved the utilization rate range goal. Yet:
-NO INFORMATION about the costs of each option were provided to community members and NO ONE at these meetings had any complete cost projections available.
-NONE of the options achieved their stated goal of having *all* 23 schools within the 95-105% utilization rate range. The three options presented only achieved that goal in 47%, 52%, or 57% of the schools.

WHERE ARE THE NUMBERS?

AND WHERE IS OPTION D, WHICH WOULD ACTUALLY ACHIEVE THESE SUPPOSED "GOALS"?

WHERE ARE THE REAL ANSWERS?

I hope everyone remembers how poorly you and your children were served by this School Board come election time in 2012. It's time to clean house!

**EDITOR'S NOTE:  In an effort to consolidate community statements regarding the boundary study, we are collecting posts as we find them and/or linking to blogs/forums/articles where public debate is taking place.  We are concerned that some messages might disappear before the public has had an opportunity to read them.  If you know of a good blog entry, forum posting or media article, please send us a note or leave us a message so that we can cross-post it here (we make every effort to give credit where it is due - we just want everyone's voice to be heard!).**