Academies of Loudoun (AOL) and TJ

Today, let's talk about Academies of Loudoun (AOL) and Thomas Jefferson High School (TJ) in Fairfax County.

When summer began, I started my election campaign by walking through neighborhoods and handing out my “business cards.” Interestingly, the people I ran into most often were LCPS teachers—likely because they had just started their summer break and were taking time to relax after a demanding school year.

During my conversation with a male middle school teacher, he asked why parents still want to send their children to TJ instead of AOL. I paused for a moment and gave him this answer: AOL is not a full-scale high school; it is just a “program.” Its students only go there on alternate days.

My son was at AOS (back then in 2008 it was called AOS—the Academy of Science). That created some logistical problems of its own. Each AOS day, one or two hours were spent in traffic. Many times, I had to drive my son and his classmates myself just to save them time.

To help make up for this, a kind English teacher from Briar Woods High School volunteered to teach extra English writing during zero period—I am still grateful to her for that. Overall, from my experience, it was not an ideal situation. How much has changed? Probably not much—I just heard that zero period has been cancelled altogether.

To make AOL competitive with TJ, we have to put it on equal footing—namely, by making it a magnet high school. Some may argue that the AOL campus doesn’t have the space for a full-scale school. Currently, AOL consists of three parts: the Academy of Science (AOS) for STEM, the Academy of Engineering and Technology (AET) for engineering, and the Monroe Advanced Technical Academy (MATA) for career and technical education programs.

My proposal would be to move AET and MATA back to individual high schools so more students can have access to and early exposure to these programs. That would also solve the space problem, allowing AOL to become AOS again—but this time as a full high school that could compete directly with TJ.

It’s only my personal thought, or even a dream, but we have to deal with reality. We need to keep sending qualified students to TJ so they can receive the fuller STEM education TJ was designed to provide. I disagree with some school board members—who argue that too much money is spent on sending students to TJ. In fact, the actual cost per student isn’t much different from the average cost per student in LCPS.

We need to be open-minded. The money we spend on those students, including transportation, is a small, forward-looking investment to prepare more STEM students for the country’s needs and future. Cutting transportation for TJ students would be a disservice to the very purpose of STEM education.

So, let’s focus on getting the results the country badly needs—well-educated people who can compete in the STEM fields. There is plenty of fat in LCPS’s $2 billion budget that can be trimmed, but not the funds for TJ transportation.