Waiting Lists Greet Loudoun Students
Lack of New Space Sets Off a Shuffle

By Michael Alison Chandler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 5, 2006

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.

Leesburg elementary schools have been particularly jammed because a school that had been scheduled to open last year was delayed while the School Board searched for land.

In the meantime, teachers at Evergreen Mill have been eating lunch in a hallway nook surrounded by partitions because their lounge was converted to a special education resource room.

When more schools open next year, there will be more shuffling for as many as 2,000 children. Officials expect a record redistribution of students as 35 of Loudoun's 68 schools have their boundary lines redrawn. For many residents, switching schools has become an exhausting ritual in a county known for proliferating homes and big families. Sometimes, it's hard to keep track of which school-logo sweat shirts are current.

"There are people who have a lot of spirit-wear in their closet because they have to move" so many times, Byard said.

The system seeks to cushion the transitions by using uniform designs for its schools so new buildings will be familiar to students, officials said. It also has adopted uniform standards for teachers and curricula. But for some families, the moves can be jarring, separating siblings into different schools or requiring students to make new friends every year or two.

Such transience is not exclusive to Loudoun. Residents in developing parts of Howard County, for example, have seen large-scale redistribution of students in recent years to offset crowding. Fairfax County schools and other systems often add trailers to campuses. But Loudoun officials have sought to minimize the use of trailers, citing added expense and strain on cafeterias and other services.

In anticipation of new schools next year, the system has set dates for about 30 hearings to gather input on boundaries. Plans are also underway to redraw lines to accommodate a new high school in western Loudoun scheduled to open in 2008.

Times and locations of the hearings are listed at http://www.loudoun.k12.va.us/ . Officials are urging parents to participate so they won't be surprised by the results.

School Board Chairman Robert F. DuPree Jr. (Dulles) said his goal is to minimize the number of children who will have to change elementary schools more than once.

"They are not chess pieces; they're children," DuPree said. "We need to take care that we don't make a decision now that a year or two later we have to revisit."