LoudounNow LOUDOUN COUNTY’S COMMUNITY-OWNED NEWS SOURCE
[ Vol. 1, No. 20 ]
[ loudounnow.com ]
[ March 14 – 30, 2016 ]
JOIN THE HUNT .... 21
FIGHTING HEROIN: Victims’ families call for more help .............................3
County Honors Madison Small BY RENSS GREENE
Renss Greene/Loudoun Now
Tiffany Cruz, a second-grader who may be reassigned schools, listens to the Educate Don’t Segregate presentation at the Rust Library. The Loudoun County School Board is scheduled to adopt a new attendance map Tuesday.
‘EDUCATE DON’T SEGREGATE’ Activist group forms ahead of Leesburg school boundary vote
BY DANIELLE NADLER
T
here have been a dozen meetings about Leesburg school attendance zone boundaries in the past two months, but none like this. A standing-room-only crowd of about 200 parents and students packed a room at the Rust Library on Tuesday to protest a proposal by the Loudoun County School Board to reassign hundreds of low-income and non-English-speaking elementary students to schools closer to their homes. It would reverse a 2011 board decision that distributes about 700 elementary students living in apartments and townhouses near Edwards Ferry Road and Plaza Street to schools as far as three miles away. But that change would also concentrate most of the town’s low-income and Hispanic el-
ementary students to two schools, Leesburg and Frederick Douglass. That community is at the center of the debate. Few of the residents who live in the neighborhood have attended the School Board’s public hearings. But Educate Don’t Segregate, a group formed in the past week out of the heated debate, did its part to mobilize those families during Tuesday’s session. “You are a part of our community. We are stronger for having you here. We need your voice in this conversation,” Evan Macbeth, a Frederick Douglass Elementary parent who led the meeting, said to loud cheers. An interpreter stood alongside Macbeth and translated his comments in Spanish throughout the meeting. And sheets of paper were distributed outlining—in both English and Spanish—principles that the
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group is urging the School Board to follow as it draws attendance lines. “We want to make sure everyone in the room understands what we’re talking about,” Macbeth said. The elementary attendance lines have to be redrawn to reduce overcrowding at Evergreen Mill Elementary School. The Educate Don’t Segregate group favors reassigning just enough students, about 200, to reduce enrollment at that school. But some School Board members see the boundary process as an opportunity to reverse what they consider an unwarranted distribution of the town’s poorest and non-English-speaking students. They have said that families will have more opportunity to be involved in a school that is closer to their homes.
The county will remember Madison Small by naming two softball fields, her old stomping grounds at Trailside Park, in her honor. The Madison Small Softball Complex, as it will now be known, saw a lot of the ebullient teenager. She played in the Ashburn Girls Softball League there, and after practice, she would play with her dad, Tim, and younger sister, Jordan, until the groundskeeper turned off the lights. “We got to know the light guy pretty well,” Tim remembered. “Manny. Emanuel was wonderful. We would always tell him, ‘OK, Manny, as soon as you need to go, let us know. Just give us five minutes’ warning.’” Madison was in her senior year, with plans to MADISON SMALL >> 38
Shelley Larrabee Photography
Madison Small, who died a year ago at the age of 18, will be memorialized with a sign at Trailside Park, where she spent countless hours practicing softball.
BOUNDARY PROTEST >> 27
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