Loudoun County Public Schools is asking the community to fill out a survey seeking input on a new academy program in 2011. LCPS has desired an advanced technology academy for years now, but it continues to get pushed back in the Capital Improvement Program, mostly because of the huge price tag. According to the CIP, the academy facility will cost a whopping $95.6 million to build and furnish, with the annual operating impact (operations, maintenance, and debt service) starting at $13.4 million in the first year. Think your tax bills are high now?
The Loudoun County fiscal picture is so dire that no new capital projects were appropriated in the FY 2010 budget. Many new school projects had to be deferred. The county is close to exceeding its debt cap (thanks in part to the $240 million being paid for its share of the Dulles Rail Project), which would push bond interest rates higher that would have to be paid for with a property tax hike.
LCPS already faces enormous new expenses with the opening of Tuscarora and Woodgrove high schools in 2010, followed by HS-7 in 2012. The total annual operating impact for Tuscarora alone, according to the FY 2008 CIP, is $33 million per year, which means these new schools will add another $100 million to the current budget.
The Advanced Technology Academy is not a necessity because Loudoun students can attend a similar program at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County for a tuition that is about the same as what LCPS would spend to educate them here. The academy is clearly a “want”, not a “need”. There are many other higher priority projects waiting to be funded. The county does not have the financial resources to fund an elite academy anytime in the foreseeable future. It is fiscal insanity to even consider such a costly program.
The survey on the LCPS web site is open to all county residents, whether you have school-age children or not. All Loudouners are encouraged to voice their opinions, as any new program will have a significant impact on their already crushing tax burden.
I hate that we point at Jefferson as an excuse for not building our own magnet school. TJ sucks all of the oxygen out of the room in terms of relationships with corporations and such; they consume an inordinate amount of resources when compared to the paltry number of kids Loudoun sends there. There are a lot of kids in our system that would benefit from a magnet school(s) (I don’t believe the “Academy-within-a-school” concept is very effective, at all) and, as one of the wealthiest counties in the country, we should be able to afford it a first-rate magnet school, comparable to TJ.
Look at our neighbors, virtually every country around has a magnet school program – except Loudoun.
We should, but we can’t, no way, no how, at least not now. Our government allowed the systematic looting of this county by developers, leaving us to foot the bill over the costs of new infrastructure, schools especially. Each new home built in this county should’ve had an impact assessment (or some other mechanism) to help pay for the infrastructure they demanded (I love that Broadlands demanded a Community Center at taxpayer expense before they even complete build-out – have to admire the sheer brass.)
Someday, when our population has stabilized, and we’ve retired the hundreds of millions of dollars in bonds we’ve sold to finance school contruction, (iirc, isn’t the county budget approaching 25% in debt service payments?), this would be a fabulous idea. If we’d had the political leadership the last 10-15 years, we could’ve and should’ve done this already.
Our kids deserved the opportunities a magnet school would’ve provided. It’s just so frustrating – such a woeful lack of vision by LCPS and the county BOS.
Hey, if only LCPS didn’t waste so much money on bone-headed site acquisition fiascos, maybe they could afford to do this. With the way they spend now, forget it.
Is this the right time, considering the economy for a new cadillac school? no. Has thie school board spent the county taxpayers money wisely? Hell no. Spending in recent years has outstripped growth and inflation by a factor of two. This is crap.
“advanced technology academy”
I had thought this was the purpose of the Monroe Technology Center.
How many Taj Mahals does Hatrick need ?
“The Advanced Technology Academy is not a necessity because Loudoun students can attend a similar program at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County”
The acceptance of Loudoun students into TJ is very low. Maybe if LCPS were to focus more on middle school academics, Loudoun students might have a better shot at TJ ?
I replied to this survey. My comments included many of the points above about how economically unfeasible this is at this point, however I did have one other suggestion. I’d like to see more vo-tech options for our Loudoun HSer’s – these programs are sorely lacking in our county and surrounding counties. Over the years the trend has been to build the Taj-Majal advanced academies at the expense of children at the other end of the spectrum.
There needs to be a balance in LoCo, not every kid is aiming for a science and technology advanced curriculum, nor are they going directly to college. I think we leave a lot of kids out of the loop when we concentrate on one area of advancement and neglect another.
Marshall HS in Fairfax County is not only one of the few remaining Votech centers in FFX, but it is also an IB school. Over the years this one school has probably prepared more kids for “the real world” than any other, on both fronts. In the future I’d rather see more of this practice in Loudoun at the schools that already exist with additions to their campuses. This would be less than the 100 million$ advanced academies that cater to a small percentage of the students.
I thought Monroe was our VoTech school?
I think college education has been sold (and oversold) as the only path to a high-paying, secure career. Too often, people spend tens of thousands of dollars to send their kid to a school where they graduate with a 2.0 GPA in Physical Ed and that gets them no closer to a career than when they started out four years earlier.
Many kids would do far better learning trades, and in fact, we’d be able to keep kids who don’t want to and won’t sit in class all day learning Calculus or Asian History, but who’d happily spend all day learning how to rebuild a car’s engine or repair a heat-pump or learn plumbing, which for the most part are useful, well-paid life-long jobs that can’t be shipped overseas – not a bad thing, in my view.
VoTech, unfortunately, is looked down upon by too many snotty, wealthy parents and their equally snotty kids – it could really use a PR make-over.
I honestly don’t know the state of Vocational education in Loudoun, but I agree with part of what you say – there very definitely should be a strong Vocational ed program in the school system. But I also feel that the top 10-20% of our kids are being “ripped-off.”
Take two hypothetical kids – Kid ‘A’ scores whatever on the TJHS admissions test, Kid ‘B’ gets exactly the same. Kid A is admitted to TJ, Kid B decides not to attend, or a coin flip is made, whatever. Kid ‘A gets a high school experience that’s second to none in the country. Kid B goes to Park View, and four years later, while Kid A is off to an Ivy League, Kid B is headed for a job at Costco …
Our schools celebrate (and encourage) mediocrity ….
We do have one Votech school, that is simply not enough. Kids are bused in wasting hours and gas everyday when there should be multiple Votech centers. The kids in Eastern Loudoun spend an addition hour per day being transported to Monroe for a half day curriculum, it is stupid.
The current thinking that there can’t be an academic program under the same roof as a Votech center is pure BS. The model of both paths operated for years in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s in NOVA until it became much more popular to offer ONLY advanced curriculums in science and technology.
I know too many people from HS that did not follow the 4 year college plan that have high paying careers in a number of trade fields. I do not know that any people in their 20’s that have the same success, it seems to have become college or the highway. It is really a shame.
Think I may have mentioned the wrong school above, Academy of Science is what I meant, I get that confused with Monroe Tech..
Thanks for jogging my memory squiddy..
We are broke we can not afford it.
These people need their heads examined.
I have often wondered why these people do not consider the alternative of truly significant upgrades to the math, science, and technology departments of our existing schools, both with regard to facilities and teaching. I am of a generation which got their education largely in public high schools, went on to college, and helped to build this post WWII country through sheer will and brain power. There were no magnet schools in our era; yet many of my own friends went on to become outstanding engineers, architects, doctors, scientists, and mathematicians, not to mention the old pal who became a crackerjack neurosurgeon. They did not need magnet schools to do that — just decent facilities and dedicated teachers. And this was the central high school in a blue-collar town.
But, no, today the idea seems to be to build magnet schools and let the other public schools blunder along in some sort of lower quality status good enough for the “lesser” among us. It’s a bit like having an older home, exceedingly well built by true craftsmen, a history of good service, but in need of repair and remodeling. Instead of restoring it, we opt to build a new one and leave the old manse to crumble bit by bit until it becomes a slum or is torn down.
We should take a lesson from some of our older, storied colleges and universities where many of the original buildings are preserved and still in use, even while more modern amenities are added as educational needs and demands change.
And please do not tell me we cannot do this because the times have changed and our secondary educational institutions are failing badly. We need to have the will to repair those institutions now. The solution, in my opinion, is not to create a smaller network of elitist magnet schools and let the rest of the system fester in mediocrity. That, my friends, is one sure path toward the kind of future, up-from-the-bottom revolution that none of us will like.
I guess you could classify Wolverine now as a senior citizen — at least in terms of pure statistics. Well, this senior citizen will tell you flat out that, while having such things as senior citizen centers is well and good, I personally would rather see those funds go toward something like the building of a top-notch science facility in Park View High School and the hiring of top-notch teachers to go with it. To me that is the real meaning of “let no child be left behind.”
squiddy in #1… You’ve got your head around the situation, friend.
You know what the definition of a liberal is, right?
That’s someone who is generous to a fault…with other people’s money.
Hatrick and company are part liberal in their outlook, but the real desire is on increasing the size of his kingdom. We could kick him to the curb, hire someone who makes more, and the first $MIL they trimmed from the system would make them a bargain!
We really do need to make spending an issue the next round of school board elections. Every time I talk to my rep about it, the conversation always gets around to “but we don’t spend as much per student as Arlington and Fairfax”.
My answer is always the same, Loudoun does not have the commercial tax base that these other two counties have. Don’t think they quite understand this..
Wolv brought up some very good points. Park View is the lowest performing HS in the county, and what are they doing to fix it ?
I’m glad NVTH is finally focusing on the dysfunctional spend-happy school system!
Dan, we absolutely must make the School Board a priority in the next election. Those races always fall below the radar with the BOS and Constitutional Officers taking the wind out of the air. We can’t let that happen next time. We need a whole new crew.
Off Topic for Loudoun Insider. What’s happening to the Too Conservative Blog? I haven’t been able to get in there for days. Some kind of strange gibberish showing up on the screen. Did you get hit by those North Korean hackers maybe?
Wolve, it’s that damned Twitter horsecrap. My life was better before it.
Of course our government school systems need more money! They need more money to splurge, indoctrinate and brainwash our children with rewritten history and perversion.