Sunday, June 21, 2009
When I campaigned for the Loudoun County School Board two years ago, my priorities included improvement in these areas: school boundaries, site acquisition, participation by constituents and accountability and transparency on the part of managers.
Unfortunately, we have seen little progress on these problems. Some might argue that things have gotten worse.
For example, the Board of Supervisors recently voted against the Wheatland "edu-plex" site near Lovettsville. I thanked the supervisors for listening to local residents and not allowing a bad deal to be executed. Many of the arguments against the site can be traced to comments that I and other community leaders had sent to the Joint Board of Supervisors/School Board Committee in July 2008 and again in February, calling for reform of the school site acquisition process.
The same goes for the school boundary process. It was broken when I ran in 2007, and it is still broken today. This was further validated by an e-mail that School Board member Bob Ohneiser (Broad Run) sent to fellow board members April.30. "The [boundary] policies need to be revised, goals need to be revised and procedures [under] which LCPS approaches communities need to be revised prior to LCPS going to the public again with any boundary change," the e-mail said.
Short-term solutions offered by School Board Chairman Robert F. DuPree Jr. (Dulles), such as grandfathering some rising eighth-graders for the boundary changes at Mercer Middle School, are political overtures to a vocal minority but provide little long-term strategic vision.
When it comes to building schools to keep pace with growth, I don't think this county or our school system can afford another major setback of the likes of Fields Farm, Grubb, Lenah Run, Rouse and now Wheatland. Hopefully, we can open a much-needed middle school and high school in Dulles South by 2011 and 2012, respectively. Additionally, I hope we can open another elementary school to serve communities bordering South Riding along Poland Road whose children must ride buses that pass by three elementary schools and several dangerous and crowded interchanges to get to Pinebrook Elementary School.
We should not let this opportunity to make improvements slip away when we may have a brief reprieve in rapid growth, brought on by current economic conditions. Just imagine — we have a chance to catch our breaths, think creatively, plan proactively and promote a smarter way forward.
Kevin J. Turner, South Riding
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