School Board Requests Hearings
0
Votes

School Board Requests Hearings

Neighborhoods See Increase in Student Population

Sam Adamo, director of Loudoun County Public Schools Planning and Legislative Services, will meet with parents of Forest Grove and Rolling Ridge elementary schools students, in February to discuss boundaries.

School Board member J. Warren Geurin (Sterling) requested the planning department examine the attendance boundaries at both schools due to overcrowding at Forest Grove Elementary School.

The five-year-old school is made up of parts of what was formerly Rolling Ridge's, Sully and Guilford elementary schools neighborhoods.

"In five years, the boundary area we created has grown in student population by a considerable amount," Geurin said. "By about 100 students."

Geurin said the No. 1 concern is the increase in class sizes, there.

ROLLING RIDGE is undergoing major renovations that will add seven new classrooms, new art, music and computer classrooms and a new gymnasium, to the school by August.

"There’s some room there," Adamo said.

"This set of boundary adjustments," Geurin added, "is designed to more evenly balance out students at Rolling Ridge and Forest Grove elementary schools."

Adamo will present a couple of different attendance boundary scenarios to parents at both hearings. He said the attendance boundary process could potentially impact "any and all" of the neighborhoods that comprise the attendance area at Forest Grove Elementary School.

"We’re not looking at singling out specific neighborhoods," he said.

THE BOUNDARY PROCESS, which begins with two public hearings Wednesday, Feb. 7, at Rolling Ridge Elementary School and Thursday, Feb. 22, at Forest Grove Elementary School, is a long one.

Planning and Legislative Services will make a recommendation to the School Board after the two community meetings next month. The School Board will hold a public hearing Tuesday, April 16, and is scheduled to adopt boundaries Tuesday, April 24.

"This is my idea," Geurin said. "It is my opinion."

When it comes to moving students around, attendance boundaries can be a controversial subject, Geurin said, especially when it comes to moving students between schools.

"This is because of a decision we made five years ago," Geurin said. "This won’t be as controversial as what we recently saw with Sycolin Creek [Elementary School.]

Nancy Torregrossa, principal at Forest Grove Elementary School, declined to comment on the increase in student population at her school.

"I really don’t want to get involved with that right now," she said.