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Boundary plans change again
Responding to requests from the community, Prince William school officials have again changed high school boundary plans and are now considering three different proposals.
The county's 11th high school will open in 2011 in the Kettle Run area, relieving overcrowding at Battlefield, Brentsville and Osbourn Park high schools.
Western Prince William students who are currently in sixth and seventh grade will end up being affected when the new school opens. By then, they'll be ninth and 10th-graders and many will be shifted to a different high school when the changes take affect.
Eleventh-graders will have the choice of whether to stay at their current school or shift to the school they've been reassigned to. Twelfth-graders will finish off their senior year at their current school.
And even though the changes are a few years out, parents are looking to the future and weighing in.
Last Tuesday, hundreds of parents turned out at Stonewall Jackson High School to voice their opinions on the boundary changes.
The biggest group came from the Victory Lakes community. Students who live at Victory Lakes currently attend Stonewall Jackson, but parents of the future high school students said they want their kids to go to the 11th high school instead.
Wearing red t-shirts, they asked planners to approve Plan C, which assigns their children to the 11th high school. The other two plans, A1 and B1, keep the Victory Lakes children at Stonewall Jackson.
But under any of the plans, Sheffield Manor residents would stay at Stonewall Jackson. Sheffield Manor parents also attended the meeting, asking planners to put their children in the same school as Victory Lakes because the neighborhoods are close together and the children intermingle.
"You're totally separating friendships and a lot of us will have to move," said Sheffield Manor parent Heather Prior, who said many families will move into Victory Lakes, rather than have their children separated from their friends. "It would be a shame to have to move two blocks down the street."
But planners are walking a tightrope, trying to balance demographics, population and transportation without splitting up small communities. Because the schools are already overcrowded, if one neighborhood gets shifted into a school, another neighborhood has to get shifted out.
So the boundary process pits neighborhood against neighborhood as each group fights to ensure that their children get assigned to their school of choice.
The Great Oak community and their nearest neighbors just outside Manassas are among those caught in the crossfire. The children in Great Oak and the surrounding areas all currently attend Bennett Elementary School and Parkside Middle.
Parents are concerned that Plan C -- the plan favored by the Victory Lakes parents -- will split their children into different high schools.
Christine Krebs told planners that under Plan C, her first grader will go all the way through elementary and middle school with her two best friends but when they get to high school, one will be sent to Brentsville, one to Stonewall Jackson and one to Osbourn Park.
"At the time we bought our homes, our area was serviced by a single elementary, which feeds into a single middle school, which then feeds into a single high school," she said. "We bought our homes with the understanding that our children could make friends with other children in elementary school and then expand on those friendships as they moved forward through their school years."
Under Plan B, which Krebs and her neighbors prefer, most of the children will end up at Brentsville.
As of press time on Tuesday, plans A1, B1 and C were the only three plans slated to be delivered to the School Board. The School Board members, however, will have the final say and they have the option to alter the proposals.
The School Board will hold a public hearing on the boundary changes on May 20 before voting on the final plan.
Detailed maps are available online at www.pwcs.edu/Constructplan.
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