Finding himself once again on the wrong side of frustrated parents, Gary Chevalier tried to buy some time.
Chevalier, director of the Fairfax County Public Schools Office of Facilities Planning, presented a new third option in the boundary study of Hayfield, Lake Braddock and South County Secondary schools: send some students from the lower portion of the current South County boundary to Hayfield for two years and try to find funding for a middle school in the meantime.
The demand for a South County Middle School was the most common solution expressed by parents following the first boundary study meeting in October, Chevalier said, which led him to create the third possible outcome of the boundary study.
“Parents also asked us to delay a boundary change and to consider what impact, if any, we’d feel from BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) at Fort Belvoir,” Chevalier said. He also said parents were concerned about overcrowding Lake Braddock, currently in the final stages of a multi-million dollar renovation and suggestions to have a county-wide boundary study to ease overcrowding across Fairfax County.
“In some groups, there was the misconception that we were planning to come back here in two years and build a middle school, which is not true,” said Chevalier, to the several hundred parents gathered in the South County auditorium and those who watched on closed circuit television in the school’s cafeteria. “According to the (Capital Improvement Plan), the middle school is in the 2015 time frame for being funded. We’re not taking it out of the CIP, but that’s where it will remain.”
Chevalier said that if by some chance the money for a middle school turned up tomorrow, he’d happily accept a check to make that happen.
“If there’s a way to come up with a free middle school, how wonderful would that be?” Chevalier said. “Unfortunately, that hasn’t come up yet.”
FOR THE NOV. 1 meeting, Chevalier said parents were to discuss Option One, which would remove all middle school students and send them to either Hayfield or Lake Braddock and make South County strictly a high school, and the newly unveiled Option Three.
In Option Three, Chevalier explained, students from the Lorton Valley, Lorton Station and Mason Neck areas would be sent to Hayfield starting with students in seventh, eighth and ninth grades next fall. No students would be sent to Lake Braddock in this plan.
South County is already projected to be over 700 students over capacity next year, an estimated 3,230 students in a school built for 2,500.
If accepted by the School Board, the population at South County would decrease from 3,230 to 2,934 students for the 2007-08 school year and from 3,463 students down to 2,834 students by 2011-12, Chevalier said. The school would still be overcrowded, but this would provide some immediate relief to the school, he said.
The population at Hayfield would grow from a projected 2,329 students to 2,625 in 2007-08 and up from 2,444 to 3073 by 2011-12, Chevalier said. The school would be 95.3 percent utilized, with a capacity of 3,225 students.
No changes would be made to Lake Braddock in order to allow enrollment numbers to settle after the renovation is completed, Chevalier said.
Essentially, the first phase of Option Three buys both the School Board and the South County community time to find funding for a middle school. It also provides time for better information on the number of students and families moving into the area because of BRAC changes, which are to be in place by September 2012.
If funding for a middle school is not secured by fall 2008, a second boundary study would be conducted in conjunction with one for the planned Laurel Hill Elementary school, which may redirect some students to Lake Braddock, Chevalier said.
However, if the community is successful in raising money for a middle school, no students would be sent to Lake Braddock, but a second study may be necessary to bring back students sent to Hayfield, Chevalier explained.
BEFORE TAKING QUESTIONS from parents, Chevalier was sure to say that while Options 2A and 2B were not included in the papers handed out at the start of the meeting, the options were still available for the School Board members to consider.
“Depending on your reactions tonight, at least at the staff level, Option 2A and 2B may be off the table,” Chevalier said. “But to the School Board, everything we’ve presented is still up for consideration.”
School staff members are scheduled to make their recommendations to the School Board for any boundary changes during a meeting on Thursday, Dec. 21.
Opening the floor to questions, Chevalier was asked why a middle school wasn’t created out of the former Lorton prison building right next to the high school.
“We have the sites picked out for the middle school,” he said. “We have a place, we just don’t have the money.”
A parent in the middle of the auditorium asked Chevalier what the guarantee was that South County students sent to Hayfield would be brought back if a middle school were built.
“To me, the only reason we’re here tonight is because someone didn’t like the outcome of the first study,” the woman said.
A South County father asked why South County was built to house only 2,500 students, when both Hayfield and Lake Braddock, built to be secondary schools over 30 years ago, have capacities of over 3,000 and 4,000 students, respectively.
“No matter how you tweak it, this school will be over capacity,” the man said. “Fairfax County is growing by leaps and bounds, especially here. We need this middle school.”
One Lake Braddock mother asked Chevalier how she and the other parents could be expected to make educated comments and provide thoughtful insight on the third option when they only received the information that night.
Patricia Fausser also informed Chevalier that while he said the cafeteria at Lake Braddock could fit all the students into four lunch periods without problem, the school currently has five lunch periods and students are still cramped.
“Kids can’t get through the halls between classes as it is,” she said, urging him to reconsider adding students to Lake Braddock.
Christopher Pavalokos, a junior class representative from Lake Braddock, invited Chevalier to spend a day walking through the halls at the school, to see for himself just how much room is available.
“You say there’s all this room, I’d like to know where it is,” he said.
Chevalier said he’d be happy to meet Christopher at the school for lunch one day, which earned him applause and laughs from the parents.
The greatest concern expressed by Hayfield parents is what they believe is an inaccurate estimation of the extra capacity at their school.
“You can’t look at the capacity of Hayfield without looking at the separate categories,” said Ed Joseph. While there may be extra capacity in the high school, adding middle school students to Hayfield would overcrowd that portion of the building, which is divided into two areas with common core facilities, like a cafeteria and auditorium, in the middle.
“You can’t just look at the health of South County, you have to look at the health of Lake Braddock and Hayfield too,” Joseph said. “If you’re sending kids back to us, it should be all grades so as to not ruin the character of Hayfield.”
Another Hayfield parent, Dick Reed, told Chevalier that he’d asked several education professionals what the impact would be on students if Option 1 were chosen as the answer.
After contacting representatives from the Center for Mental Health in Schools, the National Association of School Psychologists, the American Association of School Counselors and the National School Board Association, Reed said he was repeatedly told removing middle school students only to bring them back to a different secondary school for their last four years is a dangerous thing to do.
“I really think Option 2, either A or B, is superior,” Reed said. “I think the students should either be moved to one school or the other and left alone, not move them back and forth.”
All the options harm the communities, he said, but the damage caused in Option One is “avoidable.”
FOLLOWING THE MEETING, Crosspointe resident Bob Falkenstein said he was disappointed that Chevalier didn’t call on him during the question and answer segment of the meeting.
“What I’d like to know is how much property the School Board has available that we might be able to put on the market for sale, where the proceeds could be used to pay for the middle school?” he said. “We haven’t heard about this option.”
Once again, a petition in support of building a South County Middle School was available outside the auditorium doors; this time 91 parents had signed it by the end of the meeting.