To: Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) Boundary Review Committee

We, the undersigned residents of Dominion Dr, King’s Garden Way, King’s Mill Court and adjacent neighborhoods in Falls Church, respectfully petition Fairfax County Public Schools to keep our neighborhood zoned for Marshall High School and to reject any proposal that would reassign our community to McLean High School.

As FCPS undertakes its boundary review process with the goals of improving instructional quality, equity, student well-being, and the efficient use of resources, we urge you to recognize that reassigning our neighborhood to McLean would directly undermine each of these objectives.

1. Walkability, Transportation Efficiency and Environmental Impact

Our neighborhood is immediately adjacent to Marshall High School, within a safe, five-minute walk for most students. This unique proximity allows our children to walk to school daily, fostering independence, reducing stress, and contributing to both physical and emotional well-being. Just as importantly, walkability provides a rare opportunity to reduce our community’s carbon footprint, a goal FCPS has explicitly championed.

In its own boundary policies, FCPS states that boundary decisions should aim to maintain neighborhood connectivity and avoid disruption of natural neighborhood ties, complicated transportation routes, and inefficient use of school resources. Reassigning our neighborhood to McLean High School would violate each of these principles. It would:

• Sever our walkable connection to Marshall, disrupting natural neighborhood continuity.
• Require daily bus transportation along congested corridors, creating unnecessarily complicated and inefficient routes.
• Add over an hour of commute time per student per day, reducing time available for study, extracurriculars, rest, and family.
• Force students to wake an hour earlier, undermining the intent of delayed high school start times.
• Lead to an increase in teenage driving, as students and families seek alternatives to long bus rides
• Erode operational efficiency, placing additional costs on a strained transportation system.
• Dramatically increase FCPS’s transportation emissions and fuel consumption, contradicting its environmental commitments.

It is illogical and environmentally irresponsible to displace students who can currently walk to school only to bus them long distances to a school that is already over capacity.

A more equitable and sustainable approach would be to preserve zoning for neighborhoods within walking distance of Marshall and consider reassignment of communities such as Pimmit Hills, where busing is already required regardless of school assignment or just leave Lemon Road as a split feeder as the proposed scenarios are far more disruptive and not in keeping with FCPS goals.

2. Preservation of the International Baccalaureate (IB) Program

Marshall High School offers the International Baccalaureate (IB) program, a globally respected academic curriculum that is often a prerequisite for admission to European and other international universities. Many families have deliberately chosen to live in our neighborhood to access this opportunity. McLean High School does not offer IB, and transferring students would represent a profound loss of educational opportunity and future options. Denying students access to a program they have planned for, and in many cases already begun, is educationally indefensible.

3. Family Disruption and Need for Grandfathering

Marshall is not just a school for our neighborhood, it is part of our community fabric. Our children grow up attending events and activities at Marshall, and they build relationships with peers expecting to attend the same high school. Reassignment would fracture that continuity.

Any rezoning must include guaranteed grandfathering for:

• All current students enrolled at Marshall High School or Kilmer Middle School.
• Younger siblings of currently enrolled students, to avoid splitting families between schools.

Without these guarantees, families will be forced to choose between separating their children or moving entirely, introducing significant upheaval.

4. Capacity Discrepancies and Questionable Logic

Marshall High School is projected to be at only 85% capacity under the proposed changes, despite removing students from its walkable boundary, while McLean would remain at or near 100% capacity in all three scenarios under review. This outcome contradicts the stated intent of easing overcrowding and points to a deeply flawed process.

It is difficult to interpret these proposals as anything but arbitrary, given how clearly they contravene principles of efficiency, equity, and common sense.

Conclusion

Our current zoning reflects the best of FCPS’s values: sustainability, efficiency, equity, and student well-being. Removing our neighborhood from Marshall’s walkable boundary would inflict real harm, academically, environmentally, and logistically.

We urge FCPS to retain our community’s current zoning for Marshall High School and to prioritize policies that support neighborhood schools, walkability, academic continuity, and environmental responsibility.

We strongly encourage the Board to reconsider this proposal and to work collaboratively with affected families to develop a more reasonable, equitable, and sustainable solution that aligns with FCPS’s stated goals.