Loudoun Now for Aug. 22, 2019

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LOUDOUN COUNTY’S COMMUNITY-OWNED NEWS SOURCE

LoudounNow

[ Vol. 4, No. 40 ]

[ loudounnow.com ]

Featured Restaurants on pages 22 & 23

[ August 22, 2019 ]

After a Decade of Growth, Redistricting Looms BY RENSS GREENE

Renss Greene/Loudoun Now

Home of the Piranhas: The corner of Belmont Ridge Road and Waxpool Road in Ashburn has always been a gathering place for locals, but now it will be Waxpool Elementary School, not Tillet’s Auction Barn, as the main attraction. The opening of Waxpool Elementary and Independence High School bring the tally of Loudoun’s public schools up to 94.

It’s Back to Class for 83,762 Students LOUDOUN NOW STAFF REPORT Loudoun County’s 94 public schools will open on Thursday, with 83,762 students expected to show up for class. The new school year also brings 800 new employees to the school district, although administrators said last week they were still working to fill some slots. One hundred of the newly hired teachers are Loudoun County Public Schools graduates themselves. Students will be able to ease their way back into the grind. After starting off

with a two-day week, they’ll get a fourday weekend next week because state law requires school divisions that begin classes before Labor Day to close the Friday prior to Labor Day. The school opening also means a return of post-vacation traffic levels on area roads. Not only does that translate to longer commutes, but also heightened traffic enforcement. Over the next several weeks, the Sheriff ’s Office will be conducting speed and traffic safety details around schools, including the use of speed measurement devices, variable

message boards to display safety messages and marked and unmarked cruisers, as well as the agency’s motor unit. The largest elementary school class will be the fifth grade, with 6,409 students. The largest middle school class will be 6,694 students in the sixth grade. The largest high school class is the sophomore class with 6,793 students. The Class of 2019 is composed of 6,379 seniors enrolled in the county’s 15 high schools. Independence High School in Ashburn opens without a senior class.

When the Board of Supervisors last drew up Loudoun’s local election districts in 2011, One Loudoun was still a construction site, the recently decommissioned space shuttle Discovery had not yet been placed in the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, and supervisors hadn’t yet decided to bring Metrorail to Loudoun. Since the last U.S. Census in 2010, Loudoun has grown by more than 100,000 people. That census counted 312,311 Loudouners; today, the county government estimates there are almost 413,000 people living in Loudoun. And after the 2020 U.S. Census comes up with an official figure, the Board of Supervisors will have to draw new election districts with roughly equal numbers of people in each. And while estimates vary exactly how out of balance the districts are today, one thing is clear—they will have to change. When the districts were drawn, they were calculated to have between 40,464 residents in the Algonkian District, which was the largest district at the time, and 38,001 residents in the Sterling District. The Department of Justice, which must approve districting plans, approved the districts the county has today in June 2011. The Census Bureau estimates that as of 2017, the district populations ranged from 41,292 in the Sterling District to 58,718 in the expansive Blue Ridge District— one that covers half of the county’s land area, stretching from Rt. 9’s crossing into West Virginia to the county’s southern border, and picks up some of the county’s fastREDISTRICTING >> 42

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