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.

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 ?

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.”

Thanks for jogging my memory squiddy..

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.

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 ….

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 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 ?