Fairfax County Public Schools ("FCPS") has informed the Community that Vienna Elementary School ("VES") is over-capacity and that VES's boundaries need to change.  If a boundary change is the only immediate option, then the undersigned persons support moving Student Planning Area No. 3914, known as "Tysons Woods," from Vienna Elementary and instead have students living in that area attend Freedom Hill Elementary School.  The reasons for this change include:

(1) Tysons Woods is outside the Town of Vienna limits and beyond the Navy Federal Credit Union area.  All other neighborhoods assigned to VES are within the Town limits.

(2) Because Tysons Woods is outside of the Town limits, Tysons Woods residents do not pay Town of Vienna taxes.  While Fairfax County pays for the schools, our Town of Vienna taxes are what pay for the infrastructure around the school and that supports the school.

(3) Moving Tysons Woods students to Freedom Hill would put the school pyramids into alignment.  Students from the Tysons Woods area go to Kilmer Middle School and Marshall High School, while all other students at VES go to Thoreau Middle School and Madison High School.  This move would therefore remove an inefficient "split feeder" school issue that can be detrimental to students.  

(4) The transfer of Tysons Woods to Freedom Hill was part of an original FCPS plan a few years ago, at a time when additional students were added to VES.  There was supposed to be a "swap" of areas between VES and Freedom Hill, but the Tysons Woods half of that transaction -- moving students from VES to Freedom Hill -- was dropped for political reasons, leaving VES even more over-capacity.  Completing this transfer now will implement the original plan.

(5) A number of FCPS officials have indicated that moving the Tysons Woods neighborhood to Freedom Hill, as currently contemplated in the FCPS Capital Improvement Plan, would solve the over-capacity issue at VES.