Home Care In Kent Gardens, ON

The Fairfax County School Board amended its new capital projects plan last week to prioritize finding solutions to overcrowding at McLean’s Kent Gardens Elementary School,

The Fairfax County Public Schools Fiscal Years 2024-2028 Capital Improvements Program (CIP) was approved unanimously last Thursday (Feb. 9) late in a five-and-a-half-hour meeting mostly spent debating new calendars for the next three school years.

“I understand that the CIP is not perfect, but there’s lots of data and information and a spending plan that we need to move forward on to continue our construction and enrollment projection work efficiently,” Dranesville District Representative Elaine Tholen said.

According to the CIP, which outlines the school system’s short-term capacity needs and renovation plans, Kent Gardens is currently at 121% capacity with 1,023 students. The only school with a higher capacity utilization — Wakefield Forest Elementary School — is in the midst of an expansion.

FCPS has made tweaks over the years to reduce the capacity deficit, adding temporary classrooms, rearranging the interior layout to be more efficient, and reducing the ratio of out-of-boundary students allowed in the school’s popular French immersion program from 40% to 25%.

However, staff have “exhausted ways to modify the building” and a more significant programming or boundary change is needed, said Tholen, whose district includes McLean.

The amendment, which she called “long overdue,” designates Kent Gardens as a priority for boundary or capacity adjustments, directing staff to review and identify options. The CIP previously only recommended that the school be monitored.

“I want to thank Principal [Holly] McGuigan and the Kent Garden Elementary School students, parents and community members for speaking to us over the last year on this topic,” Tholen said. “I do agree with them that dealing with the overcrowding should’ve happened long before this and I will not make any excuses for the delay.”

At-large board member Abrar Omeish noted that FCPS paused consideration of boundary adjustments in 2018 so the school board could update its policy, though no changes have been adopted even after a consultant presented a final report on Dec. 14, 2021.

“I’m excited to see when that will be coming forward, but…in the meantime, [at] Kent Gardens, the problem there has only grown, and we haven’t been able to address it, so this is an opportunity to do that,” Omeish said.

FCPS has since resumed evaluating boundary changes, implementing adjustments in the McLean and Justice high school pyramids in 2021 that are now being phased in.

The CIP also lists the Marshall High School pyramid as a priority for a boundary review in anticipation of the planned Dunn Loring Elementary School, though a potential scoping isn’t expected until 2026.

With the prioritization of Kent Gardens approved, FCPS will present an analysis and recommendations to the community sometime this year, Tholen said. The review will take into account public input that has already been shared, including at a community meeting on the capacity challenges in October.

“Community input will be sought on these options before a final decision is made,” Tholen said.

Kent Gardens Elementary School is still bursting at the seams, but at least the trailers accommodating the overflow of students will soon get an update.

Seven old, one-classroom trailers behind the McLean school (1717 Melbourne Drive) will be removed and replaced by a four-classroom trailer and one with two classrooms, principal Holly McGuigan and Fabio Zuluaga, an assistant superintendent for Fairfax County Public Schools, recently told families.

Construction staging for one of the new trailers took place last week (April 1-9) over spring break, according to FCPS. The other will be delivered in June, when construction on both facilities is expected to start.

“These are replacements for the trailers behind the school that were at the end of their useful life,” an FCPS spokesperson said, noting that each classroom in a trailer has a capacity of 29 students.

One existing duplex trailer will remain. The school system hopes to finish the new trailers in time for the next year, which will begin Aug. 21, McGuigan and Zuluaga said in the letter shared by Dranesville District School Board Representative Elaine Tholen.

In addition, maintenance will be performed on all of the school’s bathrooms over the summer to ensure they’re working properly for the next school year.

The trailers being replaced were installed at Kent Gardens between 1997 and 2000, FCPS says. The area where they currently sit will be turned into an outdoor classroom space, though FCPS doesn’t anticipate that being ready for the fall.

“This will take planning and time over the next year or two,” the letter said.

Though it won’t provide any additional capacity, the trailer replacement is intended as a short-term improvement for Kent Gardens, which has been viewed as overcrowded for over a decade now.

Last renovated in 2005, Kent Gardens was at 121% capacity with 1,023 students for the 2022-2023 school year, according to the latest FCPS capital improvement program (CIP). As of February, though, enrollment had ticked up to 1,042 students, the school’s profile says.

The Fairfax County School Board amended the CIP in February to prioritize addressing the crowding situation at Kent Gardens. A community meeting to determine the scope of possible program or boundary changes will be held on April 26 at 6:30-7:30 p.m. in the McLean High School cafeteria.

According to FCPS, recommendations will be presented this fall, followed by a public hearing and school board vote. Any changes would get phased in starting with the 2024-2025 school year.

Capacity relief can’t come soon enough for Susan Taylor, who has a fifth-grader and a sixth-grader at Kent Gardens and is among many parents frustrated by what they see as inaction by FCPS.

Talking to FFXnow in February, she said she has emails going back a decade of parents complaining about the state of the trailers.

“My son is in an advanced math classroom in one of these new modular buildings they put out front with very thin walls on the other side of the music classroom,” she said. “So, when his class is doing testing, the music class has to be silenced. I mean, it’s absurd.”

Though FCPS says its renovation queue isn’t based on capacity, Taylor argues an addition or other permanent structure will be needed as the area’s population continues to grow.

“I understand that these decisions are difficult because things cost money, but you can’t keep kicking this can down the road,” Taylor said.

There's much history and beauty to be found in the Stour Valley, as Fiona Reynolds finds out.

The great towers of Canterbury Cathedral soar skywards from every direction as they have for centuries. Canterbury was the pilgrimage destination and, as Chaucer reminds us, it was the beauty of an April spring that ‘longen folk to goon on pilgrimages’. Longing for such beauty myself, I arrive by train in the city, dump my bags and set off from the cathedral to walk along the River Stour.

My walk is inspired by an evocative painting: Canterbury Meadows by T. S. Cooper, of the water-drenched, almost treeless Stour Valley landscape in the 1870s. Heavy, angular cows stand knee-deep in the water meadows and the cathedral rises majestically in the distance, no trappings of the city visible.

It’s a compelling image and, as I leave the city walking westwards, I keep turning to see if the view is remotely replicable today. The answer is not really. The river has been straightened, the trees have grown up and, above all, the modern city has intruded.

There are now three huge embankments in the first mile: first the railway, then the A2, which now bypasses the city, and finally the A28, which approaches Canterbury from the south-west. As the path goes under the A2, I do see the towers peeking above the trees and, for a moment, connect with the image that would have inspired tired pilgrims as they approached their destination.

My purpose today is not pilgrimage. Instead, I’m exploring a small part of the Kentish countryside known as the Garden of England. The abundance of orchards and hop-gardens here creates an intimate, welcoming landscape, some of it protected by the Kent Downs AONB.

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I walk westwards for about an hour along the River Stour, taking advantage of the well-managed, surfaced path and excellent signposting. There’s evidence of work to reinstate the meadows and, as I pass by the settlements of Thanington, Milton and Horton, I pick out the old manor houses and mills among the newer developments. Chartham boasts a substantial paper mill, which is still operating, and I wiggle through the old village centre, by the church and green, before leaving the river to walk north.

Here, I meet my first orchard: old trees, well pruned and still bare of greenery, in a field above the river. I walk through it and head up the hill to Chartham Hatch, until I suddenly reach a vineyard, its angular twisted stems sharp against the blue sky. The 21st-century fruit for England, I wonder, as I navigate the field.

At Chartham Hatch, I join the North Downs Way, which takes me straight to No Man’s Community Orchard nature reserve. This is an old orchard site (named because it straddled the parish boundary and thus belonged to ‘no man’), which is today managed by the community for Nature, green space and social benefits. It’s a wonderful place, with old and new trees cohabiting and a surprisingly realistic sculpted wooden snake lurking in the grass.

My path winds through beautiful woodlands of densely coppiced chestnut, a mass of soaring, bleached stems with a deep litter of dry chestnut leaves coating the woodland floor. And then the surprise: Bigbury Camp Iron Age hill fort, a massive ancient monument that Kent Wildlife Trust has cleared of coppice to expose its bones. It was a hugely important defensive site from the 1st century BC and believed to be the site of one of Julius Caesar’s first battles in England in 54BC. It’s a spectacular place, steep, mysterious and beautiful.

Emerging from the peaceful woodland, I find myself on a bridge over the busy A2, firmly back in the 21st century. My path now follows the road before cutting across Golden Hill, where more huge new vineyards have been planted, then plunging back into the city. My last view is, once more, of the cathedral towers, now appearing above houses and streetlights: not romantic, but a reminder that, thankfully, the important things in life survive.

Fiona Reynolds is a passionate walker, author of The Fight for Beauty and chair of the Governing Council of the Royal Agricultural University

Efforts to alleviate crowding issues at Kent Gardens Elementary School are starting to pick up steam, but Fairfax County Public Schools is still working to identify and pursue specific solutions.

With 1,023 students, the McLean school is at 121% of its building capacity, per a proposed capital improvement program (CIP) for fiscal years 2023-2027. That makes it one of the most crowded schools in FCPS, second only to Wakefield Forest Elementary School and tied with Centreville High School.

Wakefield Forest in Annandale is at 135% capacity, but construction is underway on a renovation, which will reduce its capacity utilization to 80%. Centreville High is in line for an expansion as part of the FCPS renovation queue, which was last updated in 2009.

Kent Gardens, however, has yet to join the queue, despite overcrowding complaints persisting in the McLean High School pyramid for a decade now.

That may change after FCPS staff hosted a community meeting on Oct. 7 to discuss the challenges facing the elementary school and gather feedback on potential solutions.

“The upcoming CIP will highlight Kent Gardens as a priority site for a full scoping of options by staff and community engagement to determine the best way forward,” said Elaine Tholen, who represents McLean as the school board’s Dranesville District member. “Staff is also investigating short term improvements that can be done at the Kent Gardens site as longer term solutions are implemented over the next several years.”

Short-term options could include building maintenance or improvements to the on-site trailers, Tholen told FFXnow. Temporary classrooms were added in the 2019-2020 school year and this current year “to accommodate short-term capacity deficit,” according to the CIP.

In addition to a renovation, long-term solutions could include programming or boundary changes, which would be phased in over multiple years, Tholen said.

The school board approved a boundary adjustment in 2021 that shifted some McLean High students to Langley High School, though Kent Gardens wasn’t affected.

According to FCPS, the capacity issues stem from a combination of population growth in McLean — which could continue if development progresses as the county hopes — and high demand for its programs.

“The capacity challenges at Kent Gardens ES are complex as the school not only serves a growing community within its boundaries, but also incorporates students outside the boundary for the popular French Immersion program,” an FCPS spokesperson said by email.

FCPS data indicates that the school’s base population has actually declined over the past three years, dropping from 924 students in 2019-2020 to 869 students in 2021-2022. Students transferring in, particularly for language immersion, have pushed enrollment over the 1,000 mark.

Though FCPS revised its registration process last year to accept more students at Kent Gardens, among the options proposed at the October community meeting was dropping one of the three French immersion classes.

With the application period opening on Jan. 23, FCPS says no changes to the program will occur for the 2023-2024 school year.

“Since October, our instructional and facilities staff have continued to meet, look at community input and determine next steps,” Tholen said.

The school board’s ad-hoc Comprehensive Planning and Development Committee (CPDC) discussed possible long-term options for Kent Gardens at a meeting on Dec. 8. The committee will develop “a recommendation for a comprehensive planning process,” FCPS said.

“Discussion on the capacity challenges at the school will continue during the School Board Work Session on the CIP,” the FCPS spokesperson said. “Staff will prepare highlights for the January 2023 CPDC meeting of options by staff and a path for community engagement to determine the best way forward.”

McLean families are no strangers to overcrowded schools.

The challenges have been concentrated in the McLean High School pyramid, where the home of the Highlanders and feeder school Kent Gardens Elementary have been over capacity for the past decade.

At 121% capacity, Kent Gardens is experiencing one of the biggest space deficits in the county, trailing only Wakefield Forest Elementary School (132%) and Oakton High School (125%), according to Fairfax County Public Schools’ proposed Capital Improvement Program for fiscal years 2023-2027.

Capacity Deficits Projected to Continue

Kent Gardens had 1,023 students to start this school year in a building designed for up to 896 students. The school’s profile indicates that enrollment has dipped to 1,019 students as of November.

There are currently 11 temporary classrooms on site, with the most recent addition of trailers coming during the 2019-2020 school year.

According to the CIP, Kent Gardens has been over capacity since at least 2012, when it had 906 students and was at 111% capacity. While enrollment is expected to decline over the next five years, the school will still be at 118% capacity with 1,003 students by the 2026-2027 school year.

McLean High School has had more students than program capacity since the 2011-2012 school year. The introduction of a 12-classroom modular earlier this year helped cut the capacity deficit from 118% last year to 107% this fall, though enrollment appears to have grown from 2,347 students in September to 2,366 students, as of November.

FCPS says it is monitoring the school’s capacity after implementing a phased boundary adjustment in September that moved an estimated 190 high school students and 78 middle school students to the Langley High School pyramid.

However, the CIP indicates that overcrowding will persist at least through 2026-2027, when 2,317 students are projected to be enrolled and the school will be at 105% or 121% capacity, depending on whether the modular is still in place.

What FCPS Is Doing

FCPS says it is analyzing five possible options for addressing overcrowding at Kent Gardens:

According to a spokesperson, FCPS has revised its Dual Language Immersion Lottery to accept more students in Kent Gardens’ boundaries, starting with the 2022-2023 school year. The change will increase the school’s program capacity of 848 students, if not its design capacity.

With Tysons expected to double its population over the next few decades and downtown McLean gearing for extensive redevelopment, FCPS is preparing for the influx of families by building new elementary schools in Dunn Loring and Tysons, along with repurposing the Pimmit Hills Center.

The relief promised by those projects won’t come for a while, though. Construction on Dunn Loring Elementary School isn’t expected to finish until 2026, and FCPS isn’t planning to seek funding for the Tysons and Pimmit Hills schools until 2027.

It also remains to be seen who will benefit from the new schools, since they won’t be assigned pyramids until boundary studies can be conducted, which occurs towards the end of construction, according to FCPS.

The Langley and Marshall high school pyramids, which serve the McLean and Tysons areas, respectively, aren’t facing the same crowding as McLean, though Spring Hill Elementary School is projected to reach 101% capacity in 2026-2027.

Enrollment in FCPS overall is projected to decline from 176,212 students this year to 174,326 students in the 2026-2027 school year.

Photo via Google Maps