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This is the first installment in a three-week series about the opening of the first phase of Metrorail’s Silver Line. Up next week: The Silver Line’s impact on Loudoun.
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OPINION 52
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Metro To Open Silver Line’s Phase I
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Ready To Roll: Brian Trompeter
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fter years of construction detours and months of additional delays, Northern Virginia commuters soon will hear two magic words: “Doors
opening.” The long-awaited first train of Metrorail’s Silver Line is scheduled to depart Wiehle-Reston East station in Reston at 12:03 p.m. Saturday, July 26, following opening-day ceremonies at 10 a.m. at the station. The guest list for the ceremony still is being finalized, but organizers have invited
all local, state and federal officials who played roles in the new Metrorail line’s creation, Michael Caplin, executive director of the Tysons Partnership, said. The Silver Line, operated by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, will change the Washington area’s employment picture as Tysons Corner companies begin recruiting workers who previously were unable to commute via automobile, Caplin said. “The Silver Line means that people who want to live in DC can still pursue a professional career based in Tysons,” he said. “They can think about moving here later.
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The first phase of Silver Line opens July 26 and includes Wiehle-Reston East station, above, and four other stations between Reston and East Falls Church.
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ronically, Hillsboro Elementary School will begin this school year with more students than it’s had since 2010 and the smallest staff than it’s had in recent history. As Loudoun County School Board members searched for savings to bridge a multi-million dollar budget gap in April, they put out a system-wide call to school staff and parents for any suggestions for cuts or reductions.
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a lottery process and be guaranteed a spot in the charter school, if the School Board approves the application for the Hillsboro Charter Academy. “Be a HCA Founding Family!” the group announced on its Facebook. After a well-attended April 21 community meeting about the group’s plans to convert the elementary school into a public charter school, requests to be transferred flooded in from families throughout western Loudoun. “We were just blown away to see the passion and the creativity of the teachers,” Stacey Bassett said after attending the meeting. She and her husband Andrew filled out the required paper work to transfer their 6-year-old son from Lovettsville Ele-
ECRWSS
ess than four months after Hillsboro Elementary faced threats of closure, the county’s smallest and oldest school is seeing enrollment numbers tick up for the first time in seven years. The school, set against the Blue Ridge Mountains on Loudoun County’s western edge, is expected to begin the school year Sept. 2 with 81 students, up from 63 last year. Thirty-one of those transferred through the school system’s open enrollment policy. Hillsboro’s enrollment has steadily declined since 2009 as new, larger elementary schools were built in western Loudoun. Although students who live outside the
school’s attendance boundaries were welcome to attend, few took the school up on that invitation—until now. In the midst of the emotional budget season this past spring that had Hillsboro and three other rural schools under consideration for closure to help fill a $38 million funding gap, Hillsboro parents and teachers started a campaign of sorts. They set out to advertise their plans to convert the 140-year-old school into a public charter school, and encouraged families who live outside Hillsboro to join the movement. Through pamphlets handed out at budget public hearings, Facebook posts and word of mouth, the school community encouraged families to transfer to Hillsboro through open enrollment. And, they reminded those families that students who attend the school this fall could bypass
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Danielle Nadler
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Charter Hopes Draw Students To Hillsboro Elementary
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