For Clifton Elementary School students and their parents, June 21 will not just mark the bittersweet end of the current school year and the much-anticipated beginning of summer vacation. It will also be their last day in their beloved historic school, located in one of Fairfax County’s dwindling rural enclaves. That’s because last summer, the Fairfax School Board steamrolled the wishes of the entire town and voted 9-2 to shutter CES rather than spend $11 million to renovate it.
So ends the First Battle of Clifton, but the war is far from over. The community’s efforts to save the school turned into what educators call “a teachable moment,” illuminating some ugly truths about the nation’s 12th-largest school system.
In November, Fairfax County taxpayers will be asked to approve a $253 million school bond referendum recently approved by the Board of Supervisors. The referendum includes $13.7 million to relocate trailers and expand three schools (Fairfax Villa, Greenbriar Estates and Union Mill elementaries) that will be receiving displaced Clifton students. In an Oct. 20, 2010, op-ed, Springfield District School Board member Liz Bradsher promised that “all [Clifton] students can be moved to successful nearby schools without the necessity of additions or renovations.” The bond referendum refutes Bradsher’s claim.
Instead of spending $11 million to renovate Clifton, Bradsher and her fellow School Board members want to spend $2.7 million more for “additions and alterations” to schools that are already at capacity so they can shoehorn in 366 Clifton children over their parents’ objections. The price tag for the 206 extra seats this plan will create comes out to $66,450 each — compared with the $29,756 per seat it would cost to renovate CES. If this makes no sense to you — especially since high renovation costs were one of the three main reasons Fairfax County Public Schools used to justify closing CES in the first place — then welcome to the club.
Lawsuits alleging violations of Virginia’s open-meetings law and Freedom of Information Act were filed by Clifton residents when the two other major justifications for closing the school — including the alleged unreliability of the water supply and a supposed decline in enrollment — were thoroughly debunked by Clifton residents using FCPS’ own data. Yet the School Board still refused to budge.
Clifton residents learned a lot about FCPS in the process. Elizabeth Schultz, who is now running for the School Board, points out that they finally forced FCPS to provide legal advice to all standing committees reporting to the School Board that they are subject to FOIA requests. They uncovered Superintendent Jack Dale’s “vault” — correspondence sent by Dale during the Clifton closure controversy that FCPS decided was somehow not subject to FOIA.
So the Battle of Clifton is far from over. Questions that will be of considerable interest to other communities facing disruption under FCPS’ current Southwestern Boundary Study remain unanswered:
Why hasn’t FCPS done a transportation study on the effects the CES closure will have on surrounding communities, as previously requested by the Board of Supervisors?
If parents of students forced to change schools are not considered “aggrieved parties” under the Virginia Code, as attorneys representing the School Board argued in court, who exactly is?
Where’s the $2 million Fairfax taxpayers OK’d for planning and renovating CES in 2007 and 2009?
And after FCPS facilities Chief Operating Officer Dean Tistadt was videotaped telling taxpayers that “We actually have a great deal of [leftover bond] money in what we call the ‘construction reserve,’ ” why is FCPS asking recession-battered taxpayers for $253 million more?
Barbara F. Hollingsworth is The Examiner’s local opinion editor.
