An umbrella group for opponents of a plan to shift high school borders in western Fairfax County is raising money for a potential legal challenge to the controversial redistricting, the group’s director said.
On a 10-2 vote late Thursday night, the Fairfax County School Board approved the boundary change, which would add students to the underpopulated South Lakes High School by drawing from surrounding districts. It drew more protest than any other county decision in recent history, with critics blasting the move as an attempt to “dilute” the overall poorer, lower testing South Lakes population with pupils from better performing districts.
The decision came after a series of rancorous public hearings dominated by calls to scrap the entire redistricting. While legal threats have been heard throughout the entire process, opponents are now turning more attention to how they might fight the redistrictingin the courts.
“We’ve done a lot of work in that area, we have pledges, as of [Friday night] we’re going to be asking for checks,” said Nick Pesce, director of the Fairfax County Coalition of Advocates for Public Schools, which encompasses about 10 homeowners associations in the affected area and other redistricting critics.
School Board Chairman Dan Storck, who called the redistricting a “fair and equitable process,” said he didn’t know of any successful challenge against the board in at least the last two decades.
“Please put your money into the schools, because you’re just going to be wasting it if you spend it on attorneys,” he said.
Pesce was mum on how the School Board’s decision or the process leading up to it could be vulnerable to legal challenge, saying about 10 options are “on the table.”
The plan approved Thursday phases in a change where students who would have gone to Westfield, Oakton and Madison high schools go instead to South Lakes, and some Chantilly High School-bound students will head to Oakton.
