"Regarding Lenah"

What follows is a letter from Dulles Supervisor Stevens Miller to his constituents, about the schools situation along the Rt. 50 Corridor.

Supervisor Miller
Dulles District
October 29, 2008

Dear Neighbors,

At its October 21, 2008 meeting, the Board of Supervisors voted to ratify the Planning Commission’s denial of a permit for a school at Lenah Run. I was with the majority for ratification because I felt it was the right way to vote. I have received many emails from people on both sides of this difficult issue. Some have thanked me and some have expressed unhappiness. I recognize that this issue is personal for many of you. In the past, Dulles South has been overlooked and the residents along Route 50 have organized in order to force schools and other services be built in their area. I want you to know that I absolutely recognize the need in your area. I support these two schools, but not the specific location. I believe we are at a point where Dulles South’s needs are known, and we must now fight for smart choices and not settle for the options immediately in front of us. You have the right to expect more than a school site whose only virtue is that it accommodates a schedule that should never have gotten so far overdue. This is a first-class community and you deserve better. We can and must choose our school sites consciously and strategically.

Based on the information from LCPS, this site was not centrally located to the community it would serve, with most of its students on opening day coming from as far away as Little River, at the county border with Fairfax. This would have meant that students would actually drive past Mercer Middle School and Freedom High School, to reach schools farther away. My office did request that LCPS present us with an attendance zone that did not include Little River, but rather expanded uniformly eastward from the Lenah site. LCPS declined to do so, leaving me with only their original zone to consider. I suspect that a boundary without Little River would have placed Mercer Middle School and possibly even Freedom High School physically within the new Lenah Cluster.

I consider the experience of StoneHill Middle School to be instructive and a useful comparison. In previous versions, the School Board’s CIP indicated that Stone Hill was intended to accommodate overcrowding at Mercer. The School Board chose not to alleviate Mercer as planned. I would have to assume that the fact that so many residents in the Route 50 corridor consider Stone Hill too far away was a factor. Stone Hill remains under capacity as a result and Mercer has grown more crowded. I did not believe that Lenah would have been any better at solving the problem than Stone Hill has been. Based on the numbers presented by LCPS, more than two-thirds of the students at Lenah would have come from Little River or other neighborhoods such as Stone Ridge.

For me, this was never about the validity of building schools in the Transition Policy Area (TPA). The TPA permits those facilities. Those who voted for Lenah because of that one policy, in my opinion, missed a larger point. As presented, Lenah did not meet the General Plan’s objectives to place schools near the students to be served, and direct resources towards existing communities. I am aware that future growth might provide more students to the west, but that is speculative at best, and not supported by existing growth patterns, nor did LCPS give us any predictions as to when those students might arrive. Lenah would have resulted in tens of millions of dollars of public infrastructure being directed into an area prematurely. A location far to the west of its service community would have meant unnecessarily long bus trips, which implies a permanently high operating cost which I believed could be avoided. The Planning Commission’s findings are consistent with my concerns and I found them appropriate for ratification. Accordingly, and because I have always said that the recommendations of the Planning Commission deserve respect, I voted to ratify their decision.

Obviously, any delay in opening needed schools will create problems. I have always known that the most acute issue is the long bus rides some children have to tolerate to get to the schools taking overflow students. I know that our children today have busy and hectic lives. I could not, however, approve a stop-gap whose cost could have run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

I was encouraged when LCPS stated at the October 21 Board meeting that a substantial part of those bus rides is spent traveling amongst stops, rather than making the final run to school. I would expect the creation of an overflow boundary zone, instead of zones that completely overlap each other, to yield a significant reduction in that time. Attendance zones are drawn by LCPS, with public input. I hope parents of affected children will participate in that process. I believe that many of those boundary adjustments could be drawn to keep those that live in the areas surrounding Mercer and Freedom at the schools closest to them.

System-wide, there does remain substantial capacity to take overflow students. While bussing our students is never desirable, I am ready to work with LCPS and the community as a whole to limit this temporary measure to as short an interval as possible. At the same time, I will be asking for LCPS to cooperate with the Board of Supervisors in seeking lower-cost temporary on-site overflow buildings, perhaps with legislative relief to reduce the administrative overhead that adds time to installing such structures. Where limited core services are an issue, I am also ready to work with LCPS in any way that I can to seek new alternatives and to provide relief.

Many of you have written to ask where we will go from here. My focus is on the process for land acquisition. I have suggestions and some of them are mentioned in this email. I will say that I have tried to be proactive throughout this process. I raised my concerns about Lenah early and encouraged LCPS to think about other options. When other sites became available, I took them to LCPS right away. I asked for a land inventory to help lay the groundwork for future site selections. I look forward to working with the School Board.

What the School Board and the Board of Supervisors should not do is continue the processes that led to our current situation. Perhaps in the past economy, or when unbalanced development policies generated sites by proffer, those processes might have functioned. They do not function now. With land at low prices, and owners willing to sell, the time has come to adapt to the present conditions, and to build a better way of finding and buying school sites. It is my hope to explore with both the School Board and Board of Supervisors the idea of strategic land-banking. Perhaps, by suspending large capital projects, such as the proposed GovernmentCenter, we can direct a portion of that money into acquiring land ahead of time giving everyone a chance to know where public facilities are intended. Asset acquisition would be a wise investment and good planning. The time for this discussion will be in the New Year, but I want to begin to raise the idea now.

Regarding the price of the Lenah site, it is true I was disturbed by the disparity between Greenvest’s own claims about the value and the sale price. I wish the School Board had done more to find an acceptable price, if for no other reason than it would have removed another unnecessary complication in the public’s view of this application. Taxpayers deserve good stewardship and government must work to build trust in our fiscal disposition.

I regret that circumstances have us coping with problems of overcrowding and long bus rides. The Planning Commission’s findings seemed accurate to me, however, and I have made the hard choice to reject a flawed attempt at solving those problems in favor of focusing our efforts on a solution that actually meets our needs. I know that my vote has not been popular in some circles and I recognize that some of you strongly disagree with me. I can only say that I believe wholeheartedly in the vote I cast and the most difficult aspect of my decision has been coping with the sense of urgency we all feel by the overcrowding that has been allowed to develop at MercerMiddle School. I made a politically difficult choice that did not sit well with some very well-spoken and passionate residents of my district. I hope that, if we must disagree on this issue, we can respect our collective desire to do what it is best for our community. Going forward, I will redouble my efforts to build a better process, so we won’t be faced with any more choices like this one.

Best Wishes,

Stevens