To:     Patty Reed, FCPS School Board Representative

From:  Residents of Penderbrook and Fairfax Farms

As residents of the Penderbrook and Fairfax Farms communities, we are concerned about the issue of overcrowding at our current middle and high schools (Lanier Middle and Fairfax High). We are also concerned about the negative impact being part of a “split feeder” elementary school has on our children, from both an educational and social standpoint.

We ask that the school boundaries for the Penderbrook and Fairfax Farms neighborhoods be shifted so that our children will remain with their cohorts as they progress from elementary to middle and high school. Specifically, we request that our neighborhoods’ middle school students be reassigned to Franklin Middle School and our neighborhoods’ high school students be reassigned to Oakton High School.

We believe that reassigning Penderbrook and Fairfax Farms fully under the Oakton pyramid offers many benefits. First, this change could potentially be implemented as an administrative boundary change based on the size of our communities and the number of children who live here. Second, if identified as an administrative boundary change, this reassignment would provide more immediate relief to the Lanier/Fairfax overcrowding situation than other changes implemented as part of a larger boundary study. Third, and most importantly, it would allow our children to remain with the friends they have bonded with over the years.