What a stupid comment by Hatrick. Parents have been screaming for YEARS that their kids should be going to the school that is closest to their home. This is a no-brainer - my neighborhood kids can't go to a school that is right across the street! This doesn't apply to a few schools, they need to review ALL of them. Let kids WALK and save the bus upkeep and gasoline!

Posted by GenuineRisk (anonymous) on November 12, 2008 at 10:23 a.m. (Suggest removal)

genuinerisk, very few kids will be walking under the new boundaries.

Miller told Dulles South a week after he voted overdue schools down that we wouldn't be seeing any schools for four years.

A lot of people from the fastest growing area in students will be on buses to far away for a long time, and it won't be saving any gas.

Posted by BarbaraMunsey (anonymous) on November 12, 2008 at 1:14 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Again and again, its not realestic to look at 15-10-5 plans. The cuts should start at 25% right now and go 25-30-35 This county can no long afford to have 68-72% of personal property tax go to funding the schools. The most should be 35% but I could live with 45%. NOW Hatrick needs to live with it also. The tax payers did not create this problem. The School board, and BOS did with their agenda policy running for office. Its now time to see who is truely a manager and not a yes man. Get off your asses and make something happen for the entire community not just those intrested in the nearest, newest, stained glass school.

Posted by Funnyguyva (anonymous) on November 12, 2008 at 3:29 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Amen, funnyguyva!

If any one of us were to see a 20% cut in our income, you'd bet we'd radically cut our spending and live without "niceties" and even a few necessities. This is where life is at right now and will be for a couple of years to come, at least! Now's the time to deal with it.

Posted by glastonbury27 (anonymous) on November 12, 2008 at 6:24 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Funny guy - A large part of the problem is obviously the historically inadequate proffers, particularly in the Dulles South and Ashburn areas (perhaps Round Hill too!). Dr. Adamo needs to reevaluate the number of students per household that he provides in Planning Dept referrals. Underestimating the number of children per house in a development application benefits who? The developer, because it reduces the proffers they are required to provide. The system is designed to benefit the developers while we get stuck with the bills.

Posted by stinger (anonymous) on November 12, 2008 at 10:40 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Y'know what they do in Hawaii? No free busing. Period. If you want your kids to take the bus, you pay - and no, not everyone is within walking distance.
This is a great idea. Believe it or not, Loudoun is comparable in size to Oahu, and busing here is potentially more expensive, considering all the rural routes. This would be a great way to get Loudoun parents to step up to the plate and start shouldering more of the burden of education, while simultaneously allowing for less spending on the school system and "smarter" spending of what's currently allocated for busing.

Posted by Hoqenishy (anonymous) on November 13, 2008 at 8:05 a.m. (Suggest removal)

hoq, all you may get from that is more traffic impact as more parents drive their kids. Reduced cost to taxpayers, yes. Greater impact by schools (which are now greedy developments) on roads and communities (that use services, but don't want to look at them?).

Sarah, you have to go way back to see the proffers for any of the existing developments in Ashburn or Dulles South (and I mean 15 or 20 years on some). Don't forget the impact of by-right growth too: impact without mitigation.

Growth has been occurring for a long time here, and some who wish it never had have yet to face up to that in terms of roads, schools, palying fields, parks, etc.

It may slow down, but it isn't likely to stop as long as there's a federal government.

Posted by BarbaraMunsey (anonymous) on November 13, 2008 at 9:20 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Do not limit the problem to inadequate proffers by the big planned developments. If only the children who lived in South Riding (4 proffered school sites), Stone Ridge (1 proffered school site), and Kirkpatrick Farms (1 proffered school site), attended school in the Freedcom/Mercer cluster, there would be little to no overcrowding in Dulles South schools.

But Loudoun County has failed to build the additional school space required by rest of the new subdivisions in Dulles South (Blue Springs, Bridle Ridge, North Riding, Lenah Run, Avonlea, Cedar Hunt, Cedar Crest, South Village, East Gate and so on). The same thing has happened all over Loudoun. State law limits the ability of the county to get any financial contribution from these so called "by right" developers. Loudoun County has been slow to face the reality that proffers alone will not do the job. The economic reality is that it costs a lot of money to add thousands of new kids to the school system every year. Until state law changes to allow the County the ability to recoup the entire cost of providing new public services directly from the builder/buyer of a new home, tax rates will go up as growth occurs and services will likely go down. The fault is with the existing development system, not the families who bought homes in these communities.

Posted by charsj (anonymous) on November 13, 2008 at 9:57 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Barbara, not sure if I put too much stock in the "increased traffic" argument. Many of the folks I work with who drive their kids to school, do so on the way to work - in other words, I don't think we'd necessarily see a linear function in terms of traffic impact if we started charging for busing.
... and besides that, I never said I expected everyone to start driving! I suspect some would still opt for the bus.

Posted by Hoqenishy (anonymous) on November 13, 2008 at 3:26 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Cut the bloated school budget.

Posted by CountrySide2cents (anonymous) on November 13, 2008 at 6:42 p.m. (Suggest removal)

I would be very willing to pay for public transportion for my children if they could just have it deliver them to a school where they were getting an equitable high school education.

Just heard tonight, Hatrick is officially recommending to the School Board County-wide boundary changes everywhere except east of Route 28. Will be interesting to see how they manage that task. He also shared his plans for the west: Loudoun Valley + Blue Ridge Middle = the High School "Campus". Meanwhile over in Hamilton, Harmony (Middle) + Culbert Elementary = the Middle School Campus. He didn't bother to have a parent meeting to let us know how it will work, but at least he is doing something, which is more than I can say about the Supervisors.

The Town of Purcellville has agreed to drop all the lawsuits and provide sewer, but Burton isn't happy and is looking for excuses. Can someone just ask him to give up his power trip? He is going to leave a legacy dominated by the HS-3 debacle instead of rural preservation. Sad.

I say if BOS doesn't figure out a way to settle this issue by next Tuesday's meeting, for once and for all, let's start building the school in Round Hill at Franklin Park: County owns it. Franklin Park has sports fields, has easy access to Route 7 bypass, sewer/water utilities available from Round Hill, provides community focus, Round Hill Town Council drafted a resolution in 2005 in support of it being the site, and oh... did I say COUNTY OWNED? Yes let's go there and put all the sports fields at Fields Farm and call it done.

Posted by stinger (anonymous) on November 13, 2008 at 11:40 p.m. (Suggest removal)

All of you in other districts who want to control school spending, could you please tell your Supervisor (bos@loudoun.gov) to quit wasting County resources and tax dollars on legal fees and other related expenses by just settling on Woodgrove? And, if they won't do that, tell em' to just put the school on County-owned Franklin Park!

Posted by stinger (anonymous) on November 13, 2008 at 11:50 p.m. (Suggest removal)

hoq, I agree that many would still use the bus. Lots drive though, and while it may be on the way to work, it is still an impact on the location of the school.

Charsj is right; my point was that while it may be satisfying for some people to point at South Riding and Stone Ridge as CAUSING the problem through proffers deemed inadequate in hindsight, two things to remember: these are COUNTY public schools, and everyone has an equal right to them and claim on them. Pointing back to '93 doesn't address the school capacity that is needed NOW.

Sarah, maybe this proves "be careful what you wish for"? The Woodgrove model has now been applied in Dulles South, and we will be seeing all the productive stopgaps you have been living with.

Now that there are two clusters with stymied secondary relief, the boundaries will shift nearly countywide to meet need.

Is Franklin Park the easy answer, or just another set of protests and delays (and maybe lawsuits?) Should the western county give up a park to get a school? That seems remarkably silly; there's more land out west (but I know that doesn't mean its available, buildable, or acceptable to a variety of interest groups).

We may get to see the Dulles South HS north of the airport--great logic, huh? But the county already OWNS the land, and if it goes up in Ashburn, Lori Waters and Bob Onheiser get their "needs" met while manipulating Dulles South out of a school.

Maybe Lansdowne can stay in Stone Bridge then, and we can just get bused forever.

Posted by BarbaraMunsey (anonymous) on November 14, 2008 at 6:52 a.m. (Suggest removal)

no agenda for Ms Munsey, right. she posts that eliminating bussing would impact traffic. but somehow when she supported SNOWballing the area with 30,000+ more homes, she had no problem with the traffic impact.

Posted by molly (anonymous) on November 14, 2008 at 9:52 a.m. (Suggest removal)

prime example molly: the proposed policy amendment that would have potentially allowed variously 22K, 25K, 28K, 33K, or 50K in Paul Siker's election day robocalls, never happened, and will never happen unless five Board members vote to initiate a CPAM to do so.

Impact must always be discussed with mitigation, i.e. is what you get balancing what is given?

In the traffic case of the dead CPAMs, the entire Dulles South road grid and the schools needed to not only catch up on existing impact, but plan to serve future impact, was proposed to be financed through Community Development Authority bonding, which translates as closely as possible into an impact fee borne by the buyer of any new home built there.

In the current mindless scenaria of "adding another story to Mercer" that gets batted around, or "just put trailers there" it adds impact of traffic, and core service impact to cafeterias, gyms, parking lots, and every core service on the same uninlarged facility, i.e. adding impact to EXISTING impact with no mitigation whatsoever.

I realize that for those who must justify a personal decision on Mr. Miller's part to deny service to his own district for the benefit of a few contributors, the dead CPAMs , Steve Snow, Dale Myers, me, and the rest of the boogeymen of the past must be repeatedly invoked to cover the fact that an arbitrary and capricious denial of a public service occurred, and there are no solutions on the table but difficult choices and delay.

What is your SOLUTION, molly?

In the PRESENT?

Posted by BarbaraMunsey (anonymous) on November 14, 2008 at 10:15 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Sorry, Barbara, I'm still not quite sold on the impact argument. Let's take Ashburn Elementary for example - since it's right on a main conduit between 7, 28, and 267, it's arguable that people would've already been using that road to get to school, and just turn in to drop their kids off. Besides that, have you ever gotten stuck behind a school bus during the evening commute? You walk to talk impact, try it sometime!

Posted by Hoqenishy (anonymous) on November 14, 2008 at 3:03 p.m. (Suggest removal)

I expect hundreds of Dulles South middle school students to get reboundaried from Mercer to Stone Hill in Ashburn this spring. Others will probably go to a middle school in Leesburg. Next fall more than a few parents will drive their children to avoid the long and unsupervised bus ride. I've already heard conversations about carpools. To get to Stone Hill from Dulles South, they will have to drive on 606/Loudoun County Parkway or Gum Spring Road, Evergreen Mills, Belmont Ridge Road, Ryan Road and then back on the another segment of Loudoun County Parkway to Loudoun Valley Estates. I doubt many of them now take that route to work. Stone Hill is not on any major commuter route out of Dulles South.

Posted by charsj (anonymous) on November 14, 2008 at 8:46 p.m. (Suggest removal)

charsj, you are right. The only parents taking that route to work would be the employees of the school. Otherwise, they would be driving out of their way to get there. The middle school day begins at 8:40 AM, many parents have to be well on their way to work by then.

On top of the situation with the middle school students going to Stone Hill from the Dulles South area, it now looks like some supervisors and sb members are suggesting that HS-6 should be built with the bond that was just passed for HS-7. That would mean that many Dulles South high school kids will also be bused up to that area, too. But we need to remember, the Lenah site was just too far away (according to some supervisors and community activists).

Posted by momof2 (anonymous) on November 14, 2008 at 10:25 p.m. (Suggest removal)