News Release
Thursday, September 05, 2013
Fairfax County School Board to Pursue Property to Alleviate Overcrowding in Seven Corners Area
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The building, which has been vacant for a year, is a foreclosed property owned by a Maryland limited liability company. It is located at 6245 Leesburg Pike. FCPS has been negotiating in good faith over the past two months, however, to date the owners have been unresponsive.
Consequently, the Fairfax County School Board has approved the use of a statutory authority to gain access to the vacant building to closely inspect and determine whether the building could be converted for use as a vertical design school. A thorough internal inspection of the building is necessary to determine whether this building would allow for the design of a fully functioning elementary school.
“We are facing a crisis at Bailey’s Elementary School, which is only going to get worse as more students enroll,” said School Board Chair Ilryong Moon. “Currently the school has trailers on nearly every available outdoor space. The school library was removed this summer in order to make room for the more than 1,300 students who are attending this year. We have already removed the SACC program and pre-kindergarten classes from Bailey’s. We have a responsibility to the children and this community, so we must do something to alleviate the overcrowding.”
The school district has been searching for a solution to overcrowding at the school for the past two years; the effort has been limited by the lack of available land in the Bailey’s Crossroads area of Fairfax County.
Once options are determined, including the possibility of the use of this building, public input will be gathered. ###Note: For more information, contact the FCPS Department of Communications and Community Outreach at 571-423-1200.
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My first impression was “Good, it’s about time FCPS addressed their addiction to using trailers for classrooms, and the overcrowding they have long created with poor planning, bad policy and a sleeping school board.”
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I had already heard that FCPS was contemplating the idea of opening a “vertical” school (multiple floor design vs. a typical sprawling single level building) in an existing vacant office building somewhere.
I was surprised to learn a detail that seemed disjoint with the concept: The property in question is privately owned, but the owners are apparently not interested in a deal with FCPS. This begged the question: “Why is FCPS so vocally interested in it, when 1. The owners after several months of negotiation have expressed no interest whatsoever, and 2. it is not even clear that it is a viable solution, structurally speaking, to begin with?”
Reading on it became shocking: “the Fairfax County School Board has approved the use of a “statutory authority” to gain access to the office building to inspect [it] and determine whether the building COULD be converted for use as a school.” “Statutory authority” – what is that the a euphemism for seizing the land?? They call trailers “learning modules”, and other outright insulting euphemistic nonsense.
So, did I understand this correctly? First, they don’t even know whether the building is suitable for their use, yet they are already moving towards obtaining it, and that against the will of the private owners of the property?? To borrow from Jeff Dunham’s dummy characters… “What the he77 is that?!?!?”
Then the press release turned outright strange. School Board Chairman Ilryong Moon is quoted and has the audacity to COMPLAIN that Baileys Elementary is in a crisis: “Currently the school has trailers on nearly every available outdoor space”, he says,
“The school library was removed this summer”, he goes on,
“We have already removed the SACC program and pre-kindergarten classes” for lack of space - but here is the real kicker…
“We have a responsibility to the children and this community, so we must do something to alleviate the overcrowding.”
Oh no, what an emergency! What a terrible disaster! Time to jump in and act quicky this was so unexpected! Better do something about it for the poor children! Yeah! You GO boy! Rah rah rah….
WAIT A MINUTE!!!
FCPS has been using trailers for classrooms on a steadily increasingly basis for about three decades now and running. The number in use has grown exponentially over time. Last year they reached about 900 trailers. Many schools have had them in place longer than the length of a permanent building’s life cycle! This debacle occurred over the SAME PERIOD FCPS and THE SCHOOL BOARD failed to ensure competent planning and construction was occurring on an ongoing basis, which is what facilitated it occurring in the first place. For about half of that time period wasn’t Mr. Moon was a member of - you guessed it - THE SCHOOL BOARD!
Did he just now suddenly wake up out of a haze and discover this was a problem and he was responsible?
How dare he complain and wring his hands now about a problem he himself was party to creating FOR YEARS AND YEARS - no make that “decades” - in the first place. Instead of wringing his hands
as if he was not at all responsible and moving so blatantly and with malice of forethought to annex private property via an eminent domain action that will cover your rear end, why don’t you stand up and take responsibility for the mess you created Mr. Moon instead of pitching such propaganda?
As a parent and resident of Fairfax we do not like to see our children in trailers and in in grossly overcrowded schools. It is an enormous problem and will be painful to address. Yet at the same time we would like our leaders to act the same way we teach our children to act: responsibly. We teach them to do their jobs right the first time, be responsible and proactive, and learn from your mistakes, and when you do have a mess clean it up diligently and properly and take responsibility - not let the problem grow enormously out of whack and then use the magnitude of the problem itself to rationalize taking private property away from someone, victimizing them to cover up your own incompetence and to fix your screw-ups at the expense of others.
Shame on him and FCPS for promulgating such tripe. I want solutions, not propaganda and overwhelmingly so do most people. We would like our kids at school to be in an actual classroom, with actual textbooks, actually being taught. Those basics are the lion’s share of the task and if one cannot do that much what good are they? Is that really too much to ask you to figure out how to do? Oh wait, this is the JOB you sought out to have and were elected to do it certainly is not as if you didn’t know.
Try this idea out: I like the concept of seeking an existing building that can readily be used to be converted to a needed school, so how about FCPS targets one that is not owned by someone that will resist FCPS taking it, and hence save a lot of wasted lawsuit money. How about we explore using the Gatehouse Administrative Center, you know the fancy FCPS headquarters, for adaptation into a vertical school instead – you know it already has a state-of-the-art school cafeteria in it! Just think of the cost savings provided from using that facility for actual students! This choice would entail targeting a building already in use by FCPS - no delays, no legal proceedings, no red tape. What could be simpler or more desirable?
But alas it would create one question: What to do with all the staff that already have offices there? Well, the children moving in would be vacating those moldy and musty miserable trailer spaces, so allocate that now vacant space to them. Let’s begin with the FCPS facilities, planning and executive staff, and add to that the School Board offices. This would not be a problem because it REALLY would just be a “temporary solution” - just like the trailers in use now have been deemed by all of the above! This arrangement would only be until the overcrowding problem is addressed, alleviated and all students have actual classrooms to learn in. This building use will put some students into classrooms asap, and perhaps best of all, create an apropos incentive, a true “carrot” for those responsible for adequate planning and facilities to get all students into classrooms… at which point they can move out of the trailer offices and into conventional offices again themselves.
There, that sounds like a win-win all around to me. If implemented I’ll wager that these problems the students face would be solved in practically no time at all.
Imagine if the new Superintendent would take a step in such a direction and illustrate real dedication to the students plight and their needs.
