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Elementary boundaries to change
It's a rare thing for everyone to leave a school boundary meeting happy, but that's what happened last week after the Prince William School Board voted to change elementary boundaries in western Prince William.Two new elementary schools will open in September. One is Clay T. Wood Elementary in Nokesville; the other is a not-yet-named school on Linton Hall Road.
The new schools mean that students across western Prince William will be shifted to alleviate overcrowding. But the proposal created by the boundary committee and approved unanimously by the School Board on Jan. 22 shuffles a relatively small number of students.
Under the plan, the Lakeview Estates, Virginia Oaks, Linton Crest, Bridlewood, Brookside, Laurianne Woods and Independence communities will move to the Linton Hall school.
Turning Leaf, Crossman's Creek and New Castle Village will go to Bristow Run.
Wood Elementary will house the Highlands Village, Tartan Hills and New Bristow Village communities, along with the Kettle Run Road/Schaeffer Lane area.
Rising fifth-graders will be allowed to stay at their current schools if their parents provide transportation and no one else will have to move at all.
That's especially good news for the Lake Manassas community. Residents there had fought hard to keep their children at Buckland Mills Elementary.
In supporting the changes, Brentsville School Board Member Gil Trenum said it “probably isn't a perfect plan, but I believe it is a good plan.”
In order to accommodate all of the residents who didn't want their neighborhoods to change schools, the committee had to leave some schools overcrowded.
Wood will open at 104 percent of capacity next year. Trenum said that's “reasonable,” since it means the school will have 967 students instead of the 924 it was designed for.
Buckland Mills will be at 121 percent: almost 200 more students than it should have, but the families who send their children there had said they preferred the tight squeeze to being split up.
And even though overcrowding is a problem, it's not a catastrophic problem, said Occoquan School Board Member Grant Lattin.
He pointed out that hundreds of students in eastern Prince William have attended schools at 140 percent capacity and, he said, still received an excellent education.
Trenum added that Buckland Mills will see relief in 2014 when another elementary school opens in Haymarket. The following year, yet another elementary school will open along the Linton Hall corridor.
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