Waiting Lists Greet Loudoun Students

Lack of New Space Sets Off a Shuffle

New arrivals were streaming into schools last week to register their children before opening day, many clutching freshly signed housing settlement papers. But some parents found unexpected obstacles at nine of Loudoun County's 44 elementary schools: waiting lists.

In parts of the fast-growing county, primary classes this school year are especially crowded. One factor is a ribbon-cutting pause. When school begins today, there will be no new campuses in the county for the first time since Loudoun embarked on a 31-school building blitz a decade ago.

Next year, the 50,000-student system plans to open five elementary schools and one middle school to alleviate the strain.

But that won't help the roughly 200 families whose children's names are on waiting lists for space in their neighborhood schools this year. The children most likely to be bumped are in high-growth areas, such as Ashburn, Leesburg and along Route 50.

Waiting lists are not new to a county where the school population has tripled in 15 years, but the schools that need them rotate as development sparks up in different areas. School officials say they try to warn incoming residents in new neighborhoods that their school might not be able to accommodate them, but many families arrive unprepared for the educational hopscotch that awaits them.

Legacy Elementary opened last year in the Brambleton neighborhood of Ashburn and filled up quickly. About 350 new students enrolled there over the summer, making Legacy the county's largest elementary school, with 1,050 students. In addition, more than 40 students were on a waiting list last week and were likely to be reassigned to other schools in Ashburn.

Lisa Coleman, a financial analyst who has lived in her Ashburn neighborhood for two years, was not expecting to have any problems when she went to register her son Ryan for kindergarten at Legacy in June. She found out he would be fourth in line for a spot in the class and reassigned to Dominion Trail, another Ashburn school.

"I was absolutely surprised," she said. "I just assumed that every child that needed to go to their home school could go."

She said she was initially disappointed because she had visited Legacy and researched the teachers her son might have. The administrators told her that her son had a good chance at a spot. Last week, she found out that there was room for Ryan at Legacy. But she's keeping him at Dominion Trail because she said it was too late to switch his day-care arrangement.

Like every other public school system, Loudoun must, in general, offer a seat to any school-age child who lives in the county and seeks to enroll. But nothing in federal or state law prevents the county from assigning children to more distant schools if their neighborhood schools are full, school system spokesman Wayde B. Byard said.

"It's really hard when you have to tell people they can't come to the school in their neighborhood," said Laurie McDonald, principal at Evergreen Mill in Leesburg. "But that's Loudoun County."

McDonald and other administrators at Evergreen Mill have had to relay that message to more than 60 families whose children were still on waiting lists last week.