School Superintendent Recommends Trailer to Ease Mount Daniel Overcrowding
At a school board work session last night, Dr. Lois Berlin recommended that the school system purchase a “relocatable” or trailer to house the increasing school population at Mount Daniel next year. Even though an addition was completed in 2006, Mount Daniel is currently unable to house a necessary seventh first grade class for the 2009-2010 school year. Preliminary counts of eligible kindergarten-aged students indicate there may also be a need for a seventh kindergarten class and having a relocatable will allow Mount Daniel to welcome that additional class as well. In order to plan and hire a seventh kindergarten teacher, however, at least 135 children need to be registered for kindergarten by June. Kindergarten registration begins May 6.
The Elementary PTA and Mount Daniel parents had strongly supported the addition of a relocatable over other options being considered. But in previous meetings, the addition of a relocatable was considered to be the most lengthy and costly solution due to the Fairfax County permitting process. Since Mount Daniel is one of three Falls Church City schools located outside the city limits, school officials must work with the Fairfax County government in order to place the trailer on the school grounds. Fairfax County residents and public officials were less than pleased when the recent addition was planned on the side of the school with the least amount of buffer for the neighborhood residents, and over the years, Falls Church City has gotten a reputation for not being particularly sensitive to its Fairfax county neighbors when it comes to school expansion.
The need for additional space at Mount Daniel came sooner than expected. Even though the FY 2009 CIP report anticipated the growth of the schools:
…the addition of Mary Ellen Henderson Middle School has alleviated immediate needs for additional capacity at any of the existing four school facilities. However, steadily increasing enrollment and new residential construction in the City of Falls Church has resulted in revised projections that indicate capacity could be reached within the next five years. New construction may be necessary to accommodate the growing number of students. In addition, three of these buildings are aging facilities where major renovation or replacement may be needed as buildings and major systems may be nearing the end of useful life.
Mount Daniel was not expected to reach capacity until 2014. The school system is currently conducting a new facilities study to identify the greatest needs for the city schools, and one can expect that adequate classroom space is being considered. To read more about the facilities study, click here.
By Annette Hennessey
April 15, 2009
Thanks for the update. I’m one of the people responsible for this mess – we moved into the City last year and my daughter will be going to Mount Daniel (or a trailer at Mount Daniel) in the fall – sorry! Other than Mount Daniel what other school/neighbor problems have we had with Fairfax County? The only other FC schools in Fairfax County (MEH and GM) don’t seem to really have any neighbors.
What seems odd to me is that the CIP (which I think means Capital Improvement Plan) acknowledges the additional housing being put into the City but then it has the Mount Daniel enrollment prediction drop from 278 in 2009/2010 to 269 in 2010/2011. Does anyone know their method for making these predictions?
Also, the CIP shows the capacity at Mount Daniel is 290 and specifically says that that’s for an average class size of 22 students. But 290 kids is 13.2 classes of 22 kids (i.e. 14 classes) and now it sounds like the building can’t accommodate 14 classes without adding a trailer.
The CIP shows current enrollment at 258 and it predicted a jump to 278 – is it really going to jump to 285 or more? An increase of 30+ kids? Wow, that’s a lot. The Facility Master Plan indicates that the MD addition was completed in 2005 so I assume the planning for that was done a couple of years prior so maybe it’s understandable that they didn’t see this growth coming (or maybe their options for the addition were limited – I’m not familiar with how the school was changed).
Anyway, I’m just throwing rocks at the CIP and I have no idea how it’s put together so that’s probably not fair. Obviously there are more kids entering the school system so one way or another we need to increase capacity. There are big challenges with that – but it has to be done. Personally, I’m interested to see which ideas float to the top as viable options.
Thank you for your continued support of Falls Church City Public Schools.
The link to the FCCPS Facility Study has an error in it in the story.
The actual link is http://www.fccps.org/board/facilitystudy/
(EDITOR’S REPLY: Thank you John Brett (Webmaster for Falls Church City Public Schools). We have corrected the error.)
In this story it says that when kindergarten enrollment reaches 135 in June a seventh glass will be added. Enrollment has reached 135, now the sup. says it must reach 140. What’s up with that?