I wanted to give you all a quick summary of Adamo et al's Staff Recommendation to the Loudoun County School Board last night.

For starters, the map and plan summary was not yet available on the LCSB website as of this writing, but may soon appear on this link:

http://cmsweb1.loudoun.k12.va.us/509905169119/site/default.asp

The bottom line from our perspective is that Dr. Adamo's recommendation would likely have us going to Sycolin Creek, and that Country Club, Woodlea, and Greenway attending Evergreen Mill along with the CL22 group located within the boundary defined by Catoctin
Circle, Blue Ridge Ave, Plaza St, and Rt 7 Business (the "town" Giant Foods area and the communities immediately behind it). The most notable move other than our own, was the movement of Stratford (out of
Cool Spring?) to Sycolin Creek along with us.

Adamo's logic is as follows:
1) The other communities along Rt 15 (Country Club, Woodlea, Greenway) have all moved in the recent past, so he made an attempt to not move any of those communities. This move was likely when Evergreen Mill opened 7-8 years ago and did not affect any of the children attending that school now.
2) Placing all of the Evergreen Meadows students in Sycolin Creek would be the best way to ensure that the entire community was served by a single school without exceeding attendance limits at Evergreen Mill.
3) Since there are no "walkers" from any community to Evergreen Mill, busing children from Evergreen Meadows was slightly simpler than busing them from the other schools attending Evergreen Mill at the moment.
4) Moving both Evergreen Meadows and Stratford to Sycolin Creek would add only "10 minutes" to thier transportation time each way.

The plan was immediately met with objection from Sarah Smith, the school board member representing the Leesburg District. I paraphrase her only comment, "Dr. Adamo, this plan will make a lot of people in Leesburg very unhappy. This must change."

Mark Nuzacco, whom we met with two weeks ago and our Catoctin District representative, then launched a barrage of concerns with the plan at Dr. Adamo that seemed to be positive from our viewpoint:

1) Nuzacco requested that Adamo provide him with the specific numbers of children that would be affected by these proposed movements. Adamo was unable to provide that information immediately but said that it could be interpreted from the existing figures. Nuzacco's concern, lying with the well-being of the students, was that the fewest number of students should be disrupted as possible. His other concern in this area is that busing hundreds of children several miles down Evergreen Mill Road would create additional traffic concerns on an already increasingly congested two-lane road.

2) Nuzacco asked Adamo whether he had considered community reaction when drawing the boundaries for his recommended plan. Adamo said that he was concerned about the response from CL-37 in particular (Evergreen Meadows).
3) An overall theme developed between Nuzacco's objections and Smith's objections in that both believe that Leesburg's kids should go to Leesburg schools, and that Adamo had not done a good job of keeping that
in mind when devising this recommendation.

4) Nuzacco was concerned that moving kids from Leesburg to Sycolin Creek would unnecessarily extend thier school day, creating added stresses on the children and thier parents, reducing the amount of
time the children were able to spend with thier families and the amount of time they would be able to spend on thier studies during the school week.

If you wish to become more involved in the process, please contact me on my cell phone number (703) 963-3421, and leave a message if I don't answer. We need volunteers to help us gather, prepare, and distribute information as we are working on a very short timeline. Thanks for your consideration.

Rob Kalinowsky
101 Shana Drive