Lansdowne & Ashburn Farm: My Take

A commenter asked:

John,

Is there any reason we wouldn't keep Ashburn and Lansdowne together at Stone Bridge because of their shared schools in each other's neighborhoods? How can we acknowledge the virtues of the feeder system and also support dismantling it when other options exist?

I would hope that no community would have to leave SBHS but it seems like if a community has to move to a new school, you wouldn't want it to be the one that breaks the feeder system and houses a middle school used by Ashburn.

What are your thoughts?

I made extensive remarks (about 11 minutes) about this on Tuesday night, they start at about the 5:13 mark on the webcast. I'll try to post the audio here later tonight. For the sake of clarity, here are my thoughts:

1. There isn't room at Stone Bridge for Lansdowne, Belmont and Ashburn Farm.* Too many kids. To the best of my knowledge, this is a fact accepted by all sides.
   
2. Kids in Leesburg and the surrounding area will fill Leesburg-area High Schools (County, Heritage, Tuscarora) in 4-5 years. To the best of my knowledge, this is a fact accepted by all sides.
3. Therefore, Lansdowne cannot have a permanent home in Leesburg, at either Tuscarora or Heritage or split between the two. To the best of my knowledge, this is a fact accepted by all sides.
4. Therefore, if we were to accept a plan that sends Lansdowne to the Leesburg schools temporarily, we need to think ahead to where Lansdowne will attend once the Leesburg-area kids fill up those high schools.
5. There are four high schools within range, three existing and one planned to open in 2014. In reverse proximity order, they are the planned HS-6, Briar Woods, Broad Run and Stone Bridge.*
   
6. I do not support assigning Lansdowne to HS-6 because it is the farthest school of the four, which violates the proximity principle.
   
7. Similarly, it does not make long-term sense for Lansdowne kids to attend the 3rd farthest school, Briar Woods.
8. To send Lansdowne to Broad Run would cause dramatic disruption to an otherwise stable high school community, something everyone values. Broad Run has no capacity, so Lansdowne would displace about half the Broad Run students, creating a different "southern slide" to HS-6 and violating the stability principle.
9. Stone Bridge is the remaining school in the group. It is the closest, and is the school that Lansdowne students currently attend. It is the only one of the four that makes sense to me, indeed the only one of the four* that anyone has suggested is a viable permanent option.
   
10. If Lansdowne's permanent home is to be Stone Bridge, it violates the stability principle to move them out now only to move them back in later.
    
11. We have already established that if Ashburn Farm attends Stone Bridge, Lansdowne cannot.
12. Therefore, if Lansdowne attends Stone Bridge, Ashburn Farm (or Belmont, which lies between these two neighborhoods) must be assigned somewhere else. Ashburn Farm to Briar Woods is the logical choice according to the principles of stability and proximity. I have not heard anyone argue for a different alternative such as HS-6 or Broad Run.
13. The staff plan moves some parts of Ashburn Farm to Briar Woods now, anticipating that the rest of the community will move there in 2014 when HS-6 opens and relieves capacity from Briar Woods.

*A plan to expand Stone Bridge or build another high school north of the Greenway changes this formula, but until those plans are in place it isn't responsible to assign students to schools based on those proposals.

There are many other factors that many people are debating: Past Ashburn Farm moves, contiguous communities, travel distance, walkability, dangerous roads, overcrowding, fairness, the feeder system. These are all legitimate concerns. In my mind though, the question of Lansdowne's permanent home overrides all of them.

Update:
It would have been better for me to have written that every neighborhood needs a permanent home. That was my meaning. Under the other proposals, there remains one community without a permanent home, and that is Lansdowne. Therefore the basis of my opposition to them is the lack of that permanent home. The staff recommendation moves toward permanent homes for all neighborhoods, albeit not the permanent home that all neighborhoods want. I would not have voted for a plan that didn't give Ashburn Farm a permanent home either. I created matrices of the major proposals against all of the possible future homes, at the planning zone level. The staff plan was the only one that did not move any planning zones twice. I have no personal affinity or loyalty to any of the neighborhoods in question here.

There are a hundred different numbers to argue over, but I believe my logic over the long term can be understood without the numbers.

You may also want to listen to Mr. Marshall's very good remarks about how he had decided to support the staff plan, starting at the 5:39 mark. Several minutes later he abstained from the vote on the staff plan, and it failed.