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Politics & Government

Final Attendance Plan for Douglass Elementary Approved Dec. 13

Departing School Board members ask to balance schools by proximity rather than economic demographics.

 

Attendance boundaries for Douglass Elementary School in the heart of Leesburg were adopted Tuesday at the last official board meeting of the present Loudoun School Board.

The board resisted last-minute attempts by Board Chairman John Stevens (Potomac) and Tom Marshall (Leesburg) to rely more heavily on proximity, one of its criteria for establishing boundaries, before adopting a plan that puts the highest number of free and reduced meal (FRM) students at Douglass -- 31 percent.

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By comparison, there will be 16 percent FRM students at Tolbert Elementary and 18 percent at Catoctin, a smaller, older school that had an elevated number of FRM students when the process started. Marshall said the “ideal” number of FRM students is about 22 percent.

Though it moves the fewest students overall, the new plan divides into thirds a section of apartments and town homes on Ft. Evans Road just east of Leesburg Outlets.

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Children from Potomac Station, on the east side, will be transported west to Tolbert Elementary and children from the west side would go east to Douglass, located off East Market Street in Leesburg. Potomac Station would be the only "split feeder" under the new plan.

“I will vote ‘no’ on any plan that splits this neighborhood in the name of community,” Stevens said.

“I can see them waving at each other on buses going in different directions,” said Bob Ohneiser (Broad Run). “I don’t remember the word ‘demographics’ being included as a critical factor” in establishing attendance zones, he said. “This is going to start a cavalcade of demographic change.”

“I don’t remember the word ‘demographics’ being included as a critical factor” in establishing attendance zones, said Bob Ohneiser (Broad Run). “This is going to start a cavalcade of demographic change.”

“The suggestion has been that I’m trying to make numbers,” said Jennifer Bergel (Catoctin), arguing that her plan to divide CL 19 will make it easier to establish boundaries for a new middle school in Ashburn and a new high school in Lansdowne.

Marshall had first proposed a plan that was defeated after several board members objected to its effect on the Stratford community, which had volunteered early in the process to be moved to Douglass.

When Bergel moved to adopt “Bergel Plan 2 Amended 12/12/11,” Marshall pointed to the higher number of FRM (31 percent) students and English Language Learners (ELL) (34 percent) it places at Douglass and asking, “how do you explain that?”

He proposed instead moving two close-in Leesburg neighborhoods, identified on planning maps as 7.0 and 7.1, from Catoctin to Frances Hazel Reid Elementary because they are physically adjacent to Reid, and moving Lakes at Red Rock, a suburb east of Route 15, from Reid to Catoctin.

“You are taking one group of people who wish to be together, and another group of people who wish to be together, and switching them,” Marshall said. “I ask the deference of the board to hand me this small victory.”

After Marshall’s motion failed, Stevens commented about “a sidewalk and a neighborhood and a fence” between Evans Ridge and Sycamore Hill in CL 19. Stevens described grass paths that “complete a circuit” when sidewalks were not connected.

Despite his opposition, “Bergel Plan 2 Amended” was adopted 5 to 3 with Joseph Guzman (Sugarland Run) absent. Marshall, Bergel, Tom Reed (at-large), Priscilla Godfrey (Blue Ridge), and Robert DuPree (Dulles) voted yes and Ohneiser, Brenda Sheridan (Sterling) and Stevens voted no. 

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