Bren Mar Park Parents Feel Left Out of Annandale Regional Study

Edsall Park residents say Fairfax County Public Schools Facility and Transportation officials did not consider their input when making recommendations for the Annandale Regional Study.

Now, those residents are speaking out against what they feel is a lack of oversight in the FCPS Facilities and Transportation staff recommendation regarding Bren Mar Park Elementary School. Parents of students in the BMP attendance area say their community has been left out of the boundary process since the beginning. FCPS

Facilities officials disagree and say parents were given plenty of notice about the proposed changes.

Bren Mar Park Elementary School (BMP) students currently go to , which feeds into (AHS). Under the proposed staff recommendation, Bren Mar Park attendance area students are reassigned from Poe to and from AHS to .

A Quiet Community, But Still Important

The Edsall Park parents are not on the only ones who feel they haven’t been heard. During their , School Board members said the 300 students to be moved from Bren Mar Park have been overshadowed by all the discussion over the .

Francine Froehlich, who has lived in Edsall Park for six years and is the incoming Parent-Teacher Association president at BMP where her daughter is a rising fifth-grader, said that the community that’s viewed as being more actively involved shouldn’t be deemed more important, referring to the Wakefield Forest community.

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“They’re not the only people who attend Annandale schools,” said Froehlich. “Because we have less of a presence, that doesn’t mean we’re not as important.” Froehlich also said she found recently retired AHS Principal John Ponton’s letter to the School Board “insulting.”

Unlike the Wakefield Forest community, maintaining the diversity at AHS is not on the list of priorities for some Bren Mar parents. “If had to deal with an overcrowded school or keeping the ethnic diversity, I can supplement the ethnic teaching at home, but I can’t supplement overcrowding,” said Froehlich.

To help with Bren Mar’s overcrowding, the special needs program currently at Bren Mar will be phased out and redirected to . The rest would be moved to the elementary school on the Lacey site at 3705 Crest Drive in Annandale over a period of time, according to Dean Tistadt, Chief Operating Officer with the Fairfax County Facilities and Transportation Department.

“That will free up a tremendous amount of space at Bren Mar to take care of the big numbers we’re projecting for that school,” said Tisdadt. But parents in the community disagree with that as well.

Lisa Beers, who has lived in Edsall Park for two years, said removing the special education programs from BMP also takes away from diversity of the school. “Being around other ethnicities is a great experience, but so is the special education program,” said Beers. She has a daughter at BMP and a rising seventh-grader at Poe.

Maura Viehmeyer, who has a son entering fifth grade and a daughter entering first grade, agreed. “It’s good for our kids to be exposed to everything. And they are. We’ve got kids from every walk of life of all abilities,” said Viehmeyer.

The parents are also concerned with the safety of their kids who will have to cross two major interstates, I-495 and I-395, to get to Edison. While the parents understand the route is shorter, they don’t believe it’s safer. But Facilities officials also disagree with parents on that point.

“From a transportation perspective, the bus route to Edison will be slightly shorter than the overall route to Annandale. The route to Edison is as safe if not safer than the route to Annandale,” said Tisdadt, who pointed out that some parts of the Bren Mar area that are closer to AHS and some are closer to Edison.

'Not Given a Voice'

The overall goal of the Annandale Regional Study was to establish a boundary for a new elementary school on the Lacey site and reduce overcrowding at AHS. According to the Annandale Regional Study fact sheet [see PDF at right], Bren Mar Park was included in the study “because of enrollment pressures at Bren Mar Park and a projected capacity surplus at North Springfield.”

“We’re angry that we were not given a voice or the opportunity to be involved,” said Beers. Maura Viehmeyer's husband Mark Viehmeyer said Bren Mar Park Elementary School Principal Anita Lynch initially told him and other parents the study would not affect their community [see the Edsall Park community’s letter to Facilities at right].

Because of that, Mark Viehmeyer said he and other residents did not pay attention to what was going on until they saw the options created by the ad-hoc committee (which was comprised of a parent and community members appointed to the Annandale Regional Planning Study by PTA and PTO leadership from 21 schools in the study area back in April 2010). and the School Board approved the scope of the study on April 28, 2011.

The parents claim they did not have representation on the ad-hoc committee, which Emily Slough, president of the AHS Parent-Teacher Student Association, says is true.

“On the one side is what actually occurred—a community that was not represented on the committee and feels blindsided as a result.  On the other side, there was a concern that the ad-hoc committee would be too large if every feeder ES (to all 7-8 HS's in the study) was included, and so we all (those of us who represented HS's and MS's) committed to reaching out to the various feeder ES's to keep them up to date,” Slough told Patch via email. “We developed a community outreach process and held 2-3 community meetings—sending emails to all feeder schools advertising these meetings via Principals and PTA presidents.”

To support their claim, the BMP parents drafted a 17-page letter to Facilities detailing their concerns and opposition to the staff recommendation. The letter also included a petition with 134 signatures from residents. In the letter, dated June 13, 2011, Viehmeyer and a group of other Edsall Park residents claim that BMP had not been mentioned prior to April 2011 [see page seven].

Facilities Says Plenty of Notice Given

Tistadt disagreed with that claim, saying that Facilities gave the communities plenty of notice through the ad-hoc process and the planning study.

Tisdadt said when Facilities wanted to make changes to the Bren Mar attendance area and shift them to North Springfield, Mason District School representative Sandy Evans defended the Bren Mar community, arguing that they did not receive enough notice about making changes to balance enrollments in the region outside of the AHS boundary. Agreeing with Evans, Facilities backed off on the recommendation.

However, the parents still argue that they never received notice about BMP’s involvement with the study. “If the water department in Fairfax County can send out notices to everyone, the School Board should have sent letters to every home [the study] affected,” said Grail Harte, who has lived in the area for over 17 years and has a granddaughter at Wakefield Forest Elementary School.

In the same letter, the parents also claim options one through three violated School Board Policy 8130 [see PDF at right], leaving option four, the non-boundary solution, as the “only viable option” for Bren Mar Park. Policy 8130 mandates that school officials consider the “proximity of schools to student residences; meaningful consideration of busing times and costs; deference to walking and busing safety; and avoiding proposals that require traversing natural and man-made geographic features."

The letter stated: “Even absent such improper motive, Options 1-3 violate School Board Policy 8130 as applied to Bren Mar Park. Since Edison (and Twain), unlike Bren Mar Park, Poe, and Annandale, are located outside of the Capital Beltway, Bren Mar Park students can only get to Edison and Twain by taking 395 and/or 495 and/or by leaving the county and traveling traffic-choked Van Dorn Street (the only non-interstate north-south route in the 6 miles between Backlick Road and Telegraph Road). No other elementary school inside the Beltway feeds middle/high schools outside the Beltway.”

According to the Annandale Regional Study fact sheet, the issue of proximity is included as a factor to be considered during school boundary studies. Many of the parents don’t believe the staff recommendation is what the community wants and said Edsall Park supported the non-boundary option before being told they were that option wasn’t being considered even though the process was still open [see letter].

Relief for Overcrowding at Issue

According to Appendix A [see PDF at right] of the staff recommendation, reassigning the students from Poe to Holmes would “reduce enrollment at Poe and align the middle school attendance areas to eliminate an attendance area island”.

[See individual chart PDF pages from the Appendix A index that show the projected capacities and enrollments for Poe, Holmes, AHS and Edison before and after the proposed changes.]

Some parents feel that they’re being used to solve the larger overcrowding problem without any consideration given to their thoughts and feelings. Maura Viehmeyer said she felt that BMP is always being moved around.

“First they took us away from Thomas Jefferson High School and sent us to AHS and now they’re trying to send us to Edison,” said Maura Viehmeyer. “We have to give up everything, for what, three-quarter classrooms? There’s nothing that says ‘this is better for you because’. There’s been nothing positive.”

Although the parents are divided about whether or not they want to go to Edison, Mark Viehmeyer said the lack of long-term planning by FCPS helps no one and that the staff recommendation is a no-win situation for the community. “Look at outyears. You can move kids around, but you can’t hide 3,500 kids in a county,” said Mark Viehmeyer.

The School Board will vote on the Annandale Regional Study on Thursday, July 28 at 8 p.m.