Origins of Falls Church City Aren’t So Noble
Editor,
Susan Kearney, in her September 18, 2014 Guest Commentary “The Capital Allocation Process & Our Schools” seemed to base her essay on the premise that, as she put it, ‘Given that the city was founded on a platform of better education for the children…”
This comment is at best inaccurate and misleading, conscious or not; at worst, it is self-delusional hypocrisy. Citizens here should not live in a mythical world in which the benign residents simply decided to have better schools.
The real history about what created the current boundaries in 1948 of the independent city of Falls Church should be told and acknowledged. Those boundaries clearly and purposely excluded black sections of the town and cleared the way for the “better white schools” to follow. The few remaining black kids remaining in the City were farmed out to Fairfax County at a cost the City was happy to pay. Granted, later measures were taken in 1961 by the school board, as allowed by Virginia’s “Freedom of Choice” law, which permitted token black enrollment, but it is patently wrong to boast our City’s origins to have been so noble.
Duane Myers
Falls Church
F.C. Renters Do Not Get A ‘Free Ride’
Editor,
I do not necessarily disagree with David Rifkin’s point made in his letter to the editor in the October 2-8 issue regarding the need for better stewardship of educational facilities in Falls Church. I must take issue, however, with his characterization of renters with children in the schools as “free riders.”
I own a home in the City of Falls Church and pay property taxes. The owners of apartment complexes also pay property taxes, however, and those costs are rolled into the rent that the tenants pay.
I can assure you they are not getting a “free ride.”
Kathy Rondon
Falls Church
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