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Brentsville’s Trailer Proposal Draws Fire
By Greg L | 22 May 2007 | Illegal Aliens, Prince William County | 6 Comments
I’ve been getting some emails from readers asking me to take a look at the issue of trailers at Brentsville High School and the maneuvering between the school board and the planning commission. Monday’s editorial in the Potomac News didn’t sit well with quite a few folks, who felt that the editorial grossly misrepresented the issue at hand and ended up causing more confusion about this problem than it did to point to a solution. There’s also some political issues involved, which aren’t getting reported and have a lot to do with the wrangling here between the school board, the planning commission, and the Board of County Supervisors.
The story begins with an overcrowding problem at Brentsville High School, which isn’t atypical of what is happening in almost all of the county’s high schools. School construction hasn’t kept pace with expected residential growth, but not all of this can be laid at the feet of county planners, since a large component of this student enrollment growth seems to be coming from illegal alien families. The schools are required to educate anyone who seeks enrollment and has their immunizations up to date (the right answer, by the way) but the unprecedented growth of this segment of the student body caught everyone by surprise, and was legitimately unforeseen. This results in Brentsville having 1,426 enrolled students when it’s designed capacity is only 1,110. Next year that enrollment figure is expected to rise to 1,580. This is a major problem.
The fastest way to increase capacity is to use trailers, but this is a problematic band-aid to apply. Trailers don’t make hallways bigger, they don’t expand the capacity of cafeterias or bathroom facilities, and while they can increase instructional space, unless the planning on how they’re to be employed is carefully done they actually can cause their own problems. Eight hundred female students currently share the use of only fifteen toilets. Hallways are actually designated as one-way corridors to help mitigate safety concerns. The cafeteria runs in shifts from 10AM to 1:30PM since the facility can only accommodate 275 students at any one time, which complicates instructional planning considerably. When the school board requested approval for additional trailers at Brentsville, they didn’t provide any plans for how they would deal with these problems, and even refused to divulge some of the statistics that were important in considering the proposal. It actually took Brentsville Supervisor Wally Covington’s site visit to count the number of available toilets in order for the planning commission to evaluate that component of the problem.
While the planning commission approved additional trailers at several other schools, they rejected the request for trailers at Brentsville. They should have. That proposal was terribly flawed, many parents thought the proposal was shockingly stupid, and there were clearly safety, as well as health and welfare concerns. The school board is appealing that decision to the Board of County Supervisors, to be considered on June 5th, and is requesting clarification from the courts in regards to the legal authority the planning commission has to accept or reject proposals by the public schools to manage facilities on their grounds.
There are several problems that all of these details are hiding. Perhaps most significant is that Lucy Beauchamp has been an unmitigated disaster as the Chairman of the School Board. She is constantly engaged in senseless turf battles with the Board of Supervisors, has failed to provide any effective vision for the school systems beyond her “we need more money” mantra, and this brain-dead proposal to add additional instructional space to a school that that hasn’t the infrastructure to support it presents real risks to the students. Here’s how one parent put it:
Then the school board chairman Lucy Beauchamp twisted around and made it seem like the parents and planning commission didn’t want trailers period, and instead wanted to squeeze all the kids in the existing building. She went to a breakfast of excellence at our elementary (Bristow Run) and said exactly that. She then went on to subtly threaten parents that she and the school board would pick a neighborhood over the summer, notify those parents and then bus those kids all the way to Woodbridge High in the fall. She encouraged parents to contact Wally Covington and complain if they didn’t agree with the parents who complained about the trailers. She also said no parents had ever complained at a school board meeting. Of course, parents were terrified. We were able to talk to some and convince them that she couldn’t threaten people like that and that the trailers would come anyway but we wanted the other needs addressed.
The reason we didn’t complain at the school board meeting was we didn’t even know about the trailers (the school board sent NO notices to parents of any kind) until some parents happened to see the public hearing signs. By then it was too late to address it at the school board and we were forced to go to the planning commission and complain. At least they listened to parents and really seemed to understand. The school board representative at that meeting could not answer a single question about what they were going to do in terms of bathrooms (15 toilets for 800 girls) or cafeteria space (it currently holds only 275 max).
There clearly is political grandstanding going on, as Beauchamp is desperate to find some champion issue in which she can raise her political future from the grave in her race (now as an independent candidate, rather than as a Republican) for the County Clerk of the Court. Scaring the hell out of parents is an interesting strategy, but most likely not a very effective one.
Another issue is that the school system receives federal financial aid based on enrollment, which has encouraged the school to import several hundred students from surrounding areas. Some students that might otherwise attend Brentsville and are similarly “exported” to surrounding schools, which is supposed to make things balance out somewhat. You’d think this would present the most cost effective and least disruptive means of addressing overcrowding, but because it could impact the revenues the school receives it seems that this is off the table. Ceasing the practice of importing students will shift burdens to other schools, and may not be a preferred solution, but neither is having eight hundred girls share fifteen toilets. What incentives enrollment-based federal funding are creating to possibly encourage overcrowding need to be better explained to parents, and goring this ox ought to be among the possible solutions considered.
Ultimately, what is causing the overcrowding needs to be addressed, as trying to build ourselves ahead of the curve of student enrollments related to the presence of illegal aliens in our community is tremendously expensive and perhaps physically impossible. Right now we do not know how many of these students are illegal aliens or the children of illegal aliens because the school, either by policy or by law, is prohibited from even collecting this information. Trying to address root causes here requires a good picture of what the problem actually is, and the school system just doesn’t want to know. If they knew, we might be able to craft solutions which are consistent with the law and would help to alleviate this tremendous pressure on our school systems. Instead, we bury our heads in the sand and try to build our way, or in this case rent our way, out of the problem not knowing with any precision why we’re having the problem in the first place.
Hopefully on June 5th, when the public has an opportunity to speak about this with the Board of County Supervisors, citizens can start talking about what the real problems are, and cut through the insulting baloney that Lucy Beauchamp is offering up on this issue as part of her campaign for Clerk. At least after November parents won’t have to deal with her any more, regardless.
UPDATE: Charles Reichley’s opinion piece in the MJM has more on this.
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You’ve almost got it right, in this instance however, it is not principally a matter of illegal immigrants but rather one of poor or some might suggest absent planning, particularly in the Linton Hall corridor. There’s plenty of blame to go around and the Planning Office that has reccomended the approval of explosive rezoning applications and editions of the BOCS that have approved them, bear their share of the blame. The lion’s share however, falls on the School Board, Superintendant and their Planning Office which has a miserable record on site acquisition, at least acquisitions that they have to pay for. As result, they frequently force the BOCS into accepting additional rezonings in exchange for school sites that should have been acquired previously.
It helps create a vicious of cycle of growth begetting growth in an effort to address inadequate infrastructure. It also has a snowball effect as the site acquisition is arguably the cheapest component when one considers construction, equipment and staffing costs, the latter or which are perpetual. A cursory review of the Brentsville boundaries seems to indicate that the problem here is the massive growth in the Linton Hall corridor particularly in starter or next tier housing, as the neighborhoods start to mature the pressure on the high schools increases as the children begin to age. I don’t see anything to suggest that the demographics support the premise that illegals are largely responsible for the overcrowding, like anything else involving infrastructure in the western end of the county, it all comes down to poor or absent planning. For that you can thank the Planning Office, School Board and particularly, Connaughton, Caddigan, Wilbourn and especially Wally.
With regard to your comments about Lucy, I couldn’t agree more, the last thing she wants is public input that runs counter to her position. As a result she runs roughshod over the School Board and citizens who wish to speak, going so far as to strictly limit access during citizens time and public hearings, limitations that might not be in the spirit of the governing statutes. I hope no one believes that the location of the current School Board building is poorly marked by accident. I know more than a few who have been unable to find it on the night of a meeting even when given a set of (incorrect) directions by the Schools.
But the new building should be easy to find, right, it’s certainly too large and elaborate to hide….
I have a quick easy solution to all of this: round up all the illegals, children and all, and send them back to Mexico or Central America where they came from. Once they are back home then they can apply for citizenship the legal way. See how easy that was?
Mom makes some very good points about where the overcrowding is coming from, but it is important to note that rezonings she refers to are even older than she indicates. Linton Hall Road was rezoned for housing pre-1990. In fact, the rezoning of Waverly (which became Disney which became Dominion Valley) was a major campaign issue in 1991. This was before any of the supervisors mentioned joined the Board.
Worst of all, the proffers were nothing like they are today. The average school proffer was 10% of the cost of building the school capacity. To put it in round numbers, 15,000 houses at a shortfall of $18,000 each or $270,000,000 that the current taxpayers have to come up with to make room for the new folks (and that’s just schools). So now we are bumping up against the County’s debt limit while the schools are packed.
It’s true there was no planning, but it wasn’t today’s planners.
That said, I have no idea how to pack 1,580 students in Brentsville.
I think the point the School Board is trying to make regarding Brentsville is that it’s a bit late in the game for the Planning Commission (which bears at least a portion of the responsibility for this mess) to say no trailers (especially since there is little to be done budgetarily to address the problem at this stage). While Lucy Beauchamps may be using some scare tactics (or the concerned parent quoted may be engaging in some hyperbole), the sad reality is that Brentsville High School is not big enough. Here are the options: (a) put in six more trailers and deal with the mess of scheduling lunches and finding toilets (and, having vistied to Brentsville HS, I find it very difficult to believe there are only 15 toilets for 800 girls) or (b) start putting students in the Brentsville District on busses and send them to Battlefield High, Stonewall, and other high schools in the area or (c) a combination of both where the number of trailers added can be supported by the school’s infrastructure and the “left over” students are sent to other schools.
Using the “illegals are filling our schools” argument is simply a cop out. Since hard numbers are not available to support either side of the argument, it’s impossible to prove one way or another that the bump in students is simply due to illegal immigration. In fact, the “hard facts” available actually contradict that argument. Over 50% of the students enrolled in ESOL in PWC schools were born in the United States (Constitutionally making them full American citizens). Even without the “illegals” in the school, we would still be facing a problem. The amount of space for teaching our children has not come anywhere near to keeping pace with the growth that has been allowed in the area. Who is moving into those houses along Linton Hall? Young families. Who is moving in to Dominion Valley? Young families. Like it or not, the Planning Commission needs to step up and take some responsibility (along with the BOCS and School Board) for inadequate planning. The BOCS has to get off this “hold the line on all taxes” so we can get $20 a year back on our property tax while our children are educated in overcrowded schools and new schools that would have provided relief are delayed over and over again (Kettle Run High School which would relieve the burden at Brentsville has been delayed another year). Let’s also keep in mind that our ability to build schools depends on our ability to incur debt and maintain a good bond rating. Many of the current school construction delays are not because the funds aren’t available within the school system’s budget but rather because the current debt ceiling (which is based on a percentage of the total budget) won’t allow it.
I really don’t want to come across as an apologist for the School Board as I really do question some of the decisions and choices they’ve made. I have no love lost for Lucy Beauchamps or Milt Johns. But there are times that political dogma needs to be set aside for common sense. The quip about Beauchamps (and the School Board by extension) engaging in “senseless turf battles” is way off. The standing agreement that the schools get 56.75% of the county budget without any negotiation or question on either side puts the school system at the mercy of the whims of the BOCS. As a result, the school’s budget is not set by true budget priority, but reather is set on the whims of the BOCS (whose members are paid considerably more than School Board reps even though the School Board is responsible for a much bigger budget and managing a much larger bureaucracy). Decisions outside the control of the School Board this year and in the past can’t be laid completely at the feet of the School Board (which still has a fair burden of shame to carry). The School Board didn’t give Heritage Hunt a pass on paying the full proffer amount per unit that should have been paid. The School Board didn’t decide to let conservative anti-tax dogma blind them to true and pressing needs.
I laugh at the inaccuracies of you argument. First of all the lunch shifts do not end at 1:30, hell man the school day is over at 1:50 pm, instead the y end at 12:17pm, just an hour and change before your stated time. Next, illegal immigrants are definitely not a problem at “good ol Brentsville” while the demographics have changed considerably in the past few years there are fewer illegals T BDHS than anywhere in the county. If there are any illegals, it is because the local yokels are allowing the migrants to live inn the district while they work the few remaining farms. Those S.O.B.s should be fined and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. One might also wish to check the employmet records of Wise Guys, Kettle Run and Wind Sod farms etc…as prevoiusly stated the illegals will only stay where the jobs are available. Most of the Hispanic, and minority population at BDHS are of the transplanted Fairfax (Centerville) and Loudoun ilk.
Trailers are a viable option because the school system has failed to keep up with construction of classrooms, mainly because the County Planning Commission will approve any and all housing developments regardless of the burdens on the school system. Get rid of these jerks (Burgess et al) on the Commission and you might see results. As for toilets for girls, you sir sound like a simpering fool who jusat wants to bitch about a situation that has noe asy remedy. I do know an esy solution..send you kid to Stonewall or Gar-Field and thank the Lord Jesus (is that pronounce Hey-zues?) when they come home every day.
Basically you sound like a whiny a$$ed parent who didn’t get his way!!!!!!!!!