Parents to Loudoun School Board: 'Move Someone Else'

One by one, parents from Leesburg elementary schools came before the Loudoun County School Board Wednesday night with a very similar plea: when boundaries are adjusted for the new Douglass Elementary School, planned to open next fall, please move children from another neighborhood, not mine.

Jennifer Sweeney, who has childen at Frances Hazel Reid Elementary, quoted a second-grader named Jack as saying: "I love Reid. I don't want to go anywhere else." She said the little boy is happy at Reid because "he knows what he is supposed to do and where he is supposed to go." 

Luke, another little boy, likes going to the same school that his siblings attend, according to Sweeney. She quoted Luke as saying "I love my teachers and they tell me stories that are funny about my brothers and sisters."

With one member absent, eight School Board members on the dais and several hopeful candidates listened with the knowledge that about 800 students will attend Douglass Elementary School, now under construction near the intersection of East Market Street and Plaza Street SE in Leesburg.

As parents repeatedly reminded them, Leesburg's eight elementaries are all within three miles of downtown: Frances Hazel Reid, Ball’s Bluff, Leesburg, John W. Tolbert Jr., Cool Spring, Catoctin, Evergreen Mill, and Sycolin Creek Elementary Schools.

Some parents dressed in matching shirts to show they were from the same neighborhood, standing when one of their number approached the microphone to address the School Board. Most had similar concerns, citing four considerations identified by School Board policy when determining attendance zones: efficiency, proximity, community, and demographics. They want balance in the public school educational program and they don't want their children to be moved. 

 “Over the past five years, our economically disadvantaged population has increased to 42 percent. Catoctin’s average SOL scores are below state and county averages in ALL subjects. Our achievement gap is WIDER, and you have not provided the resources we need to effectively cover that gap,” said Nicolle Robinson of the Catoctin Elementary district. One of her three children attends Catoctin Elementary and two are home-schooled, she said.

“There is no tenable reason for significant quality differences among schools that are within a 3 mile radius of downtown. The schools in Leesburg are NOT the same. You know it, I know it, and everyone is this room knows it,” Robinson said. “I implore you [to] invest in our school now. BALANCE Leesburg.”

Next on the calendar for determining the Douglass attendance zone will be work sessions at the LCPS administration building at 6:30 p.m. on Nov. 14 and from 4 to 6 p.m. on Nov. 15.

See the staff's presentation under PDFs on this page, or under "board docs" at www.lcps.org.