McLean HS Overcrowding Dominates Fairfax County School Board Hearing

Concerns about a proposed boundary change impacting high school students in McLean dominated the public hearing last night on the Capital Improvement Program for Fairfax County Public Schools.

The draft CIP says that McLean High School is currently at 118% capacity, with projections showing the population increasing to 122% capacity in the 2024-2025 school year.

“For years, we have cobbled together a bandaid patchwork of solutions that were never meant to be permanent,” Kimberly Adams, from the Fairfax Education Association, told the school board about the trailers at McLean High School.

Adams said that the school board needs to ask for more funding to pay for additional improvements that will add more school space.

One idea that county officials are pursuing would shift students from McLean High School to nearby Langley High School, which has a current capacity of 83%.

Meetings in the fall solicited community input on the proposed boundary change that could impact the schools for this upcoming 2020-2021 school year.

More than a dozen parents, students and locals urged the school board to renovate McLean High School, add a modular brick-and-mortar addition, add IB classes at Langley High School or allow McLean families the option to enroll their kids at Langley High School.

Two McLean high school students, who spoke together, said that they don’t support the boundary change and would prefer to see a modular instead.

Jennifer Colman, a McLean High School parent, told the school board that the CIP has “good options” for the school, but that the boundary change is not one of them.

“Take the boundary change off the table,” Colman said.

And if a boundary change does happen, several parents, like John Callanan, urged that the change happens for the lower grades, like with students in elementary school, rather than at the high school level and that the boundary change not split up families.

“If we must consider boundary changes do it from elementary to middle to high school,” Callanan said. “Do not begin at the end.”

All of the testimony wasn’t about McLean High School overcrowding — several students urged for support of solar polar legislation and building schools that are equipped with solar and geothermal systems so that they can be net-zero energy.

Some parents urged for the school board to address overcrowding at Shrevewood and Kent Garden elementary schools. Other people said that the schools need to have more support for twice-exceptional autistic students.

Image via FCPS/YouTube