Thursday, August 02, 2007

On-post school enrollment open only to residents

Due to the recent growth in population of Fort Belvoir, Fort Belvoir Elementary School will only be accepting students who live on post for new enrollment.

“Fort Belvoir Elementary is closed to new pupil placement,” said Marie Balocki, Fort Belvoir School Liaison Officer.  “Only children living on Fort Belvoir can attend the school.”

Balocki mentioned that the reason Fort Belvoir Elementary is not able to accept any new students who live off post is because the school is reaching its capacity.

“They were allowing those children to come, but they have reached their capacity,” said Balocki.  “They are not allowing any more new pupil placement.  They are letting the ones that have already been accepted to stay, but there is no more new placement. New students will have to live on post.  Before the policy change, civilians also got pupil placement.  You could live off post, but as long as you worked on post, you could apply for your child to go to Fort Belvoir Elementary.”

The option of enrolling a child whose parent worked on Fort Belvoir was an attractive one, according to Balocki.  She mentioned that Fort Belvoir has some of the finest childcare in the county.

“Childcare was the major advantage for members of the Fort Belvoir community to send their children to Fort Belvoir Elementary,” said Balocki.  “They could use the School Age Services program and drop their kids off on their way to work.  We feed them breakfast.  They play games.  They do their homework.  The school bus picks them up at nine o’clock.  They go to school and the school bus brings them back here.  We give them an after school snack, they do their homework and play games and their parents pick them up at six p.m.  You can’t get that outside of the installation.”

Balocki cited the increase in quality of the housing at Fort Belvoir as a reason why the school is reaching capacity.

“The reason the school is getting to be at capacity is because of the new housing,” said Balocki. “It’s not that the families are bigger.  It’s that the occupancy rate is higher.  We have more families living on post.  All of the new development is bringing more families on post.  When I started this job, the occupancy rate was about 83 percent.  Now it’s about 95 percent.  That’s a huge increase.  I think the quarters are nicer and the turnaround on repairing is quicker.  The quarters don’t stay empty long.”

Balocki made it clear that students who are already enrolled in Fort Belvoir Elementary would be allowed to stay and complete sixth grade, but members of the Fort Belvoir Community who live off post and do not already have their children enrolled on post will have to make other arrangements.

“They are going to have send their child to the school they are zoned for,” said Balocki.  “They will have to figure out some type of childcare arrangement.”