Fairfax Teens Try to Dispel Rumors, Fill Classrooms

By Michael Alison Chandler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 18, 2007

Students from South Lakes High School have barnstormed western Fairfax County recently in an unusual marketing campaign, seeking to fill 700 empty classroom seats by reshuffling the enrollment of as many as half a dozen campuses. Their pitch at PTA meetings targets wary parents from more affluent schools.

To persuade skeptics, students say they counter rumor with fact. The Reston campus is diverse, they say, not "ghetto." Students don't flash gang signs in the hallways, and they don't have to walk through metal detectors to get to class.

"I think of this school as a family. When someone talks about South Lakes, I think, 'You can't talk about my family like that,' " senior Sierra Little said. She represented the school last week in a town hall meeting at Chantilly High packed with about 2,500 anxious residents.

That meeting began a contentious process that could lead the School Board to redraw attendance zones for about a quarter of the high schools in the region's largest school system. It would be the first high school boundary shift in Fairfax since the opening of South County Secondary School in 2005. New west county boundaries could go into effect as early as next fall, when South Lakes High completes a $63 million renovation. Since July, more than 2,000 people have signed an online petition seeking to halt the process.

The school system has not made public any proposal for new boundaries. More community meetings are planned for December.

But board members and school system officials say action is needed to balance what is a skewed distribution of students and academic and extracurricular opportunities. South Lakes High has 1,443 students on a campus built for 2,100. Westfield High has 3,171 students, and Chantilly High has 2,838, both exceeding their design capacities.

Nearby, Oakton High has 2,350 students and Herndon High has 2,190. In addition, Madison High, with 1,910 students, could be modestly affected. Enrollment at all three schools is closer to the school board's target size of 2,000 for high schools.

The 165,000-student school system projects enrollment at most schools in the study will decline in the next few years. To some parents, that's a signal that any campus crowding could resolve itself and that redrawing school boundaries is therefore unnecessary. Denise M. James, director of facilities planning services, acknowledged in an interview: "There is physically enough room in all these schools." However, several campuses have classrooms in trailers.

What's driving the school system toward action, James said, are differences in programs available at the various campuses. "When you stop and look at how much is being offered at larger schools, there really is a disparity," she said. South Lakes High cannot offer as many electives or advanced courses, such as comparative religion or multivariable calculus. And at schools with higher enrollment, there is more competition for limited spots in student government and on sports teams.

School Board Vice Chairman Kathy L. Smith (Sully) said that she has heard from many parents that Westfield High is too crowded. But some parents said that they are not convinced that action is needed.

Michael Saunders, a parent in the Oakton High attendance area, next to South Lakes, said he doesn't believe steeper "competition to get onto the basketball team warrants calling for the mass relocation of hundreds of kids."

Many parents are calling on the board to reexamine which schools are included in the boundary study. Some ask why nearby Langley High is omitted. That school is undergoing an expansion to handle its enrollment growth.

At South Lakes High, a renovation now under way will transform a 1970s-era building that has few windows. The remodel will provide state of the art laboratories and computer labs and -- school officials hope -- serve more students. But proponents of boosting enrollment at South Lakes High face political obstacles that come with having a campus that is more diverse, economically and ethnically, than others in the surrounding area.

South Lakes Principal Bruce Butler said his student body consists of "kids who come from million-dollar homes on lakes and kids who wear the same pair of pants to school every day." The school has the largest concentration of students from poverty in the area, with one-third eligible for free and reduced-cost meals. The poverty rates for other schools in the boundary study range from 5 percent at Madison High to 19 percent at Herndon High.

At South Lakes and Herndon high schools, about 15 percent of students are taking English as a Second Language classes. Enrollment at South Lakes has gradually declined over the years as Reston's population has aged. Designed as a self-contained community in the 1960s, Reston has open space, bike paths and a mix of upper- and lower-income housing.

Many parents said they deliberately avoided the school when shopping for homes. They cited school security concerns and lower SAT scores. South Lakes reported 59 "serious incidents" of crime from fall 2003 through spring 2006, according to school system data. Of the other five schools in the boundary study, Herndon High reported the second-highest number of serious incidents, with 36.

"Overall, the educational environment is not as good as the nearby schools, so why would we want to go?" asked Dan Carney, a father in the Oakton High area. He believes he could be drawn into the South Lakes zone because that school is closer to his home.

Carney said he isn't interested in helping the county achieve socioeconomic balance.

"I don't want my children to take part in a sociological experiment," he said, "particularly when I have a known quantity, which is Oakton."

Before the next meetings on Dec. 3 and 19, Butler and the South Lakes High students said they would like people to see the school, with its new scuff-free hallways and a sunlit media center. They want to show off their mentoring program for younger students and explain the school's rigorous International Baccalaureate program.

"The perception of those that have never set foot in the building and the reality of those who live and work here is so drastically different," Butler said.

Courtnee Elliott, a senior, said she attended Monday's meeting at Chantilly High because she wanted to stick up for her school and because, as someone interested in political science, she wanted a glimpse of the democratic process.

"It didn't go as well as I thought it would," she said. "It was kind of one-sided."

She and her friends said they found themselves explaining that their school is academically challenging and socially close-knit. They tried not to take it personally when parents suggested that it should be shut down and turned into a magnet school or that their children would be "traumatized" if they had to attend there.

Throughout the night, they invited parents to come see the school for themselves. The offer, they said, still stands.