APS Middle School Boundaries?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I bet they delay it for another year or two. People in pretty much every middle school were furious about having to move, and that eventually is inevitable. But it's easier to just kick the can for a few years.

I haven't heard that much furor. The loudest are a few Taylor parents who don't think their kids should have to move to WMS, but that will likely be ignored as ridiculous. And two Ashlawn PUs that don't want to be carved off the rest of the elementary school, but I think that can pretty easily be fixed. No one else has posted a significant number of comments.

I agree with this. It's really not that big of a deal. The Hamm people are just nuts.

Sure you can call us names, but delaying won’t end end the outrage. The angriest people are those with little kids at Taylor who bought a home walking distance to an elementary and middle school, usually two working parent households where having walkable and independent students is a huge time savings.

We will be angry in two years, angry in 5 years, and likely will STILL campaign against the stupid “bus half the walkzone away” decision in perpetuity.

Kids will waste so much time waiting for and riding a bus needlessly. So this fight will only be over in December if the school board does the right thing, and moves Immersion to the school with the greatest capacity and uses the plan that minimizes bus costs and staffing. That is probably moving it to WMS, but math whizs are welcome to prove otherwise.

Haven't you read your own posts? It doesn't matter how far away MS is located because parents NEVER have to go there and MS students are 100% fine taking the bus by themselves. Transportation isn't an issue by MS, right? That's what Taylor parents are posting.

APS changes boundaries roughly every year. If anyone bought not knowing that, then they should have done more research. It's not exactly a secret.

It’s about independence and wasting time on a longer than necessary bus ride. Taylor students are almost universally ridiculously close to Hamm, and busing to WMS takes a circuitous route through neighborhoods.

It’s okay for option because that is part of the deal which you can always walk away from, to coin a phrase.

People who chose neighborhood prioritized proximity and short commutes to school. They don’t have a fallback.

And boundaries shouldn’t be changing every year, if they would just invest appropriately in facilities rather than blowing the budget on slides and award winning urban schools.

Boundaries don’t change every year. And boundaries changing this time has zero to do with past buildings having amenities you don’t approve of.

Doesn’t even make any sense.

DHMS opened in 2019, 4 years later we are RADICALLY redrawing boundaries. Maybe not “yearly” but incompetence and misguided investment. They should have made HBW bigger when they blew $100M, or maybe enlarged the other middle schools and built them a standard building for $50M.

OMG! There WAS an option to build Hamm larger to accommodate 1300 students instead of 1000. The neighbhorhood around Hamm rejected it and the board listened and voted it down. Now this same neighbhorhood doesnt' want to be moved away because, wait for it, Hamm is too small. So there you are, you are living with the consequences of your OWN actions.

Don’t be obtuse. Hamm is ALREADY at the LARGEST capacity middle school. They should have expanded the other middle schools, especially HBW, which blew all the money on their award winning building.

The affected families are less than 500 ft from the school, if they made Hamm 1300 seats, they would have moved Immersion there and still kicked out the walkzone.

How exactly am I being obtuse? There was the option to build Hamm at 1300 at the time of the renovation. Your neighbhohood lobbied against it and won. Sorry you don't like the consequences.

Why should just Hamm be 30% larger than ALL other middle schools while HBW complains it can’t enlarge a smidgen because of its “philosophy”. So because Hamm advocated to be in line with other middle schools, it gets penalized by nuking its walkzone?

There was a time when HB could have been larger back when it was on its old site. But then that neighborhood lobbied HARD to kick HB out and move it to a tiny, tiny site in Rosslyn. And you got the larger site for Hamm. This means HB can't expand, there's no room to. That site can't take trailers. For some reason you also lobbied against making the Hamm building larger. So again you got what you asked for - now deal with the consequences.

That’s BS. The Heights site was slated to be a 1300 seat neighborhood middle school. They could have expanded HB at Heights to 1000 no problem.

I'm not so sure about that. HB is not the only program at that site. The Shriver program has part of the building. There are significant space requirements for the program that serves the most disabled kids in APS. But I doubt you care.

I accounted for Shriver by saying they would go to 1000; as neighborhood school it was slated for 1300. I think space for 300 seats is appropriate.

The Shriver program takes up a lot more space than typical middle school students.

And there are way. Less than 300 Shriner students. So a 300 seat allotment took that into consideration

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hamm is bigger than WMS and Swanson FYI.

Those schools were not undergoing a reno. Would have been easy and cost effective to make Hamm bigger at that time. But YOU didn't want that for your snowflakes. And the result is they have to go to WMS. Sorry you don't like the results of what you yourself wanted.

Cost effective is an empty phrase when they blew $100M on the Heights for 700 students. Carve off $40M and they could have expanded WMS and Swanson and the Heights would still be the nicest middle school.

anything to justify your position against expanding Hamm...and I see why you're trying so hard.... because it sure came back to bite you in the you know where.

So a neighborhood asking for a neighborhood middle school of similar size and quality as all other existing middle schools is unreasonable.

But again, the glee from some PP that students are being kicked from the walkzone, a school boundary unlike any in Arlington.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I bet they delay it for another year or two. People in pretty much every middle school were furious about having to move, and that eventually is inevitable. But it's easier to just kick the can for a few years.

I haven't heard that much furor. The loudest are a few Taylor parents who don't think their kids should have to move to WMS, but that will likely be ignored as ridiculous. And two Ashlawn PUs that don't want to be carved off the rest of the elementary school, but I think that can pretty easily be fixed. No one else has posted a significant number of comments.

I agree with this. It's really not that big of a deal. The Hamm people are just nuts.

Sure you can call us names, but delaying won’t end end the outrage. The angriest people are those with little kids at Taylor who bought a home walking distance to an elementary and middle school, usually two working parent households where having walkable and independent students is a huge time savings.

We will be angry in two years, angry in 5 years, and likely will STILL campaign against the stupid “bus half the walkzone away” decision in perpetuity.

Kids will waste so much time waiting for and riding a bus needlessly. So this fight will only be over in December if the school board does the right thing, and moves Immersion to the school with the greatest capacity and uses the plan that minimizes bus costs and staffing. That is probably moving it to WMS, but math whizs are welcome to prove otherwise.

Haven't you read your own posts? It doesn't matter how far away MS is located because parents NEVER have to go there and MS students are 100% fine taking the bus by themselves. Transportation isn't an issue by MS, right? That's what Taylor parents are posting.

APS changes boundaries roughly every year. If anyone bought not knowing that, then they should have done more research. It's not exactly a secret.

It’s about independence and wasting time on a longer than necessary bus ride. Taylor students are almost universally ridiculously close to Hamm, and busing to WMS takes a circuitous route through neighborhoods.

It’s okay for option because that is part of the deal which you can always walk away from, to coin a phrase.

People who chose neighborhood prioritized proximity and short commutes to school. They don’t have a fallback.

And boundaries shouldn’t be changing every year, if they would just invest appropriately in facilities rather than blowing the budget on slides and award winning urban schools.

Boundaries don’t change every year. And boundaries changing this time has zero to do with past buildings having amenities you don’t approve of.

Doesn’t even make any sense.

DHMS opened in 2019, 4 years later we are RADICALLY redrawing boundaries. Maybe not “yearly” but incompetence and misguided investment. They should have made HBW bigger when they blew $100M, or maybe enlarged the other middle schools and built them a standard building for $50M.

OMG! There WAS an option to build Hamm larger to accommodate 1300 students instead of 1000. The neighbhorhood around Hamm rejected it and the board listened and voted it down. Now this same neighbhorhood doesnt' want to be moved away because, wait for it, Hamm is too small. So there you are, you are living with the consequences of your OWN actions.

Don’t be obtuse. Hamm is ALREADY at the LARGEST capacity middle school. They should have expanded the other middle schools, especially HBW, which blew all the money on their award winning building.

The affected families are less than 500 ft from the school, if they made Hamm 1300 seats, they would have moved Immersion there and still kicked out the walkzone.

How exactly am I being obtuse? There was the option to build Hamm at 1300 at the time of the renovation. Your neighbhohood lobbied against it and won. Sorry you don't like the consequences.

Why should just Hamm be 30% larger than ALL other middle schools while HBW complains it can’t enlarge a smidgen because of its “philosophy”. So because Hamm advocated to be in line with other middle schools, it gets penalized by nuking its walkzone?

There was a time when HB could have been larger back when it was on its old site. But then that neighborhood lobbied HARD to kick HB out and move it to a tiny, tiny site in Rosslyn. And you got the larger site for Hamm. This means HB can't expand, there's no room to. That site can't take trailers. For some reason you also lobbied against making the Hamm building larger. So again you got what you asked for - now deal with the consequences.

That’s BS. The Heights site was slated to be a 1300 seat neighborhood middle school. They could have expanded HB at Heights to 1000 no problem.

I'm not so sure about that. HB is not the only program at that site. The Shriver program has part of the building. There are significant space requirements for the program that serves the most disabled kids in APS. But I doubt you care.

I accounted for Shriver by saying they would go to 1000; as neighborhood school it was slated for 1300. I think space for 300 seats is appropriate.

The Shriver program takes up a lot more space than typical middle school students.

And there are way. Less than 300 Shriner students. So a 300 seat allotment took that into consideration

Sorry autocorrect

* Shriver

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hamm is bigger than WMS and Swanson FYI.

Those schools were not undergoing a reno. Would have been easy and cost effective to make Hamm bigger at that time. But YOU didn't want that for your snowflakes. And the result is they have to go to WMS. Sorry you don't like the results of what you yourself wanted.

Cost effective is an empty phrase when they blew $100M on the Heights for 700 students. Carve off $40M and they could have expanded WMS and Swanson and the Heights would still be the nicest middle school.

anything to justify your position against expanding Hamm...and I see why you're trying so hard.... because it sure came back to bite you in the you know where.

So a neighborhood asking for a neighborhood middle school of similar size and quality as all other existing middle schools is unreasonable.

But again, the glee from some PP that students are being kicked from the walkzone, a school boundary unlike any in Arlington.

New elementary schools in Arlington are built to a much larger specification (they seat around 700 students) than existing ones. Which is reasonable. Times and needs change.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hamm is bigger than WMS and Swanson FYI.

Those schools were not undergoing a reno. Would have been easy and cost effective to make Hamm bigger at that time. But YOU didn't want that for your snowflakes. And the result is they have to go to WMS. Sorry you don't like the results of what you yourself wanted.

Cost effective is an empty phrase when they blew $100M on the Heights for 700 students. Carve off $40M and they could have expanded WMS and Swanson and the Heights would still be the nicest middle school.

anything to justify your position against expanding Hamm...and I see why you're trying so hard.... because it sure came back to bite you in the you know where.

So a neighborhood asking for a neighborhood middle school of similar size and quality as all other existing middle schools is unreasonable.

But again, the glee from some PP that students are being kicked from the walkzone, a school boundary unlike any in Arlington.

New elementary schools in Arlington are built to a much larger specification (they seat around 700 students) than existing ones. Which is reasonable. Times and needs change.

Not only new ones, elementary schools being renovated are now expected to be larger.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I bet they delay it for another year or two. People in pretty much every middle school were furious about having to move, and that eventually is inevitable. But it's easier to just kick the can for a few years.

I haven't heard that much furor. The loudest are a few Taylor parents who don't think their kids should have to move to WMS, but that will likely be ignored as ridiculous. And two Ashlawn PUs that don't want to be carved off the rest of the elementary school, but I think that can pretty easily be fixed. No one else has posted a significant number of comments.

I agree with this. It's really not that big of a deal. The Hamm people are just nuts.

What are they doing that is nuts?

Suggesting that the County's middle school immersion program should move to the opposite corner of the Couty from its current location and bulk of current students. Oh also that part of the County has extremely limited native spanish speakers nearby pretty much ensuring the program will ultimately fail. Behaving as if the option schools should just take whatever crumbs are left and like it and they have no right to complain or advocate as neighborhood schools are the priority. I don't even have kids in an option school and most of the arguments are both ignorant and entitled.

I’m pretty sure it’s Kenmore parents advocating for immersion to be moved somewhere besides their school. They are (understandably) opposed to losing their neighborhood seats.

Nah, read the beginning of this thread. It is mostly Taylor parents. Kenmore parents wouldn't be fixated on WMS, as the Immersion program could stay at Gunston or move to another MS and solve their concerns. It's only the Taylor parents who specifically want immersion at WMS because otherwise they are likely to be moved.

If you read the APS Thought Exchange, you'd see that the immersion community is supportive of the program being sited anywhere centrally located in Arlington or staying at Gunston. They are being pretty darn reasonable. It's APS that said that TJ isn't an option because of IB and Gunston isn't an option because of overcrowding. Swanson isn't an option because it's already over crowded so too many kids would need to move. If IB isn't an issue for moving the program to TJ, then Kenmore should figure out why APS is wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hamm is bigger than WMS and Swanson FYI.

Those schools were not undergoing a reno. Would have been easy and cost effective to make Hamm bigger at that time. But YOU didn't want that for your snowflakes. And the result is they have to go to WMS. Sorry you don't like the results of what you yourself wanted.

Cost effective is an empty phrase when they blew $100M on the Heights for 700 students. Carve off $40M and they could have expanded WMS and Swanson and the Heights would still be the nicest middle school.

anything to justify your position against expanding Hamm...and I see why you're trying so hard.... because it sure came back to bite you in the you know where.

So a neighborhood asking for a neighborhood middle school of similar size and quality as all other existing middle schools is unreasonable.

But again, the glee from some PP that students are being kicked from the walkzone, a school boundary unlike any in Arlington.

There's no glee. There's practicality.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I bet they delay it for another year or two. People in pretty much every middle school were furious about having to move, and that eventually is inevitable. But it's easier to just kick the can for a few years.

I haven't heard that much furor. The loudest are a few Taylor parents who don't think their kids should have to move to WMS, but that will likely be ignored as ridiculous. And two Ashlawn PUs that don't want to be carved off the rest of the elementary school, but I think that can pretty easily be fixed. No one else has posted a significant number of comments.

I agree with this. It's really not that big of a deal. The Hamm people are just nuts.

What are they doing that is nuts?

Suggesting that the County's middle school immersion program should move to the opposite corner of the Couty from its current location and bulk of current students. Oh also that part of the County has extremely limited native spanish speakers nearby pretty much ensuring the program will ultimately fail. Behaving as if the option schools should just take whatever crumbs are left and like it and they have no right to complain or advocate as neighborhood schools are the priority. I don't even have kids in an option school and most of the arguments are both ignorant and entitled.

I’m pretty sure it’s Kenmore parents advocating for immersion to be moved somewhere besides their school. They are (understandably) opposed to losing their neighborhood seats.

Nah, read the beginning of this thread. It is mostly Taylor parents. Kenmore parents wouldn't be fixated on WMS, as the Immersion program could stay at Gunston or move to another MS and solve their concerns. It's only the Taylor parents who specifically want immersion at WMS because otherwise they are likely to be moved.

If you read the APS Thought Exchange, you'd see that the immersion community is supportive of the program being sited anywhere centrally located in Arlington or staying at Gunston. They are being pretty darn reasonable. It's APS that said that TJ isn't an option because of IB and Gunston isn't an option because of overcrowding. Swanson isn't an option because it's already over crowded so too many kids would need to move. If IB isn't an issue for moving the program to TJ, then Kenmore should figure out why APS is wrong.

From Thought Exchange, it looks like the big issue for Kenmore parents is that they are moving most Ashlawn students to Swanson and leaving just a few at Kenmore. But that should be pretty easily fixable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hamm is bigger than WMS and Swanson FYI.

Those schools were not undergoing a reno. Would have been easy and cost effective to make Hamm bigger at that time. But YOU didn't want that for your snowflakes. And the result is they have to go to WMS. Sorry you don't like the results of what you yourself wanted.

Cost effective is an empty phrase when they blew $100M on the Heights for 700 students. Carve off $40M and they could have expanded WMS and Swanson and the Heights would still be the nicest middle school.

anything to justify your position against expanding Hamm...and I see why you're trying so hard.... because it sure came back to bite you in the you know where.

So a neighborhood asking for a neighborhood middle school of similar size and quality as all other existing middle schools is unreasonable.

But again, the glee from some PP that students are being kicked from the walkzone, a school boundary unlike any in Arlington.

New elementary schools in Arlington are built to a much larger specification (they seat around 700 students) than existing ones. Which is reasonable. Times and needs change.

OK? When they designed the DHMS SEVEN years ago and did increase the overall middle school capacity to excess.

But PP was saying they wanted a “smalll” school, when it was just the current trend. Now the current trend has changed you say? OK but no other middle school has been expanded in that time, so no the trend hasn’t even changed yet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hamm is bigger than WMS and Swanson FYI.

Those schools were not undergoing a reno. Would have been easy and cost effective to make Hamm bigger at that time. But YOU didn't want that for your snowflakes. And the result is they have to go to WMS. Sorry you don't like the results of what you yourself wanted.

Cost effective is an empty phrase when they blew $100M on the Heights for 700 students. Carve off $40M and they could have expanded WMS and Swanson and the Heights would still be the nicest middle school.

anything to justify your position against expanding Hamm...and I see why you're trying so hard.... because it sure came back to bite you in the you know where.

So a neighborhood asking for a neighborhood middle school of similar size and quality as all other existing middle schools is unreasonable.

But again, the glee from some PP that students are being kicked from the walkzone, a school boundary unlike any in Arlington.

There's no glee. There's practicality.

“ because it sure came back to bite you in the you know where.”

That’s practically and not reveling in other’s discomfort?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I bet they delay it for another year or two. People in pretty much every middle school were furious about having to move, and that eventually is inevitable. But it's easier to just kick the can for a few years.

I haven't heard that much furor. The loudest are a few Taylor parents who don't think their kids should have to move to WMS, but that will likely be ignored as ridiculous. And two Ashlawn PUs that don't want to be carved off the rest of the elementary school, but I think that can pretty easily be fixed. No one else has posted a significant number of comments.

I agree with this. It's really not that big of a deal. The Hamm people are just nuts.

What are they doing that is nuts?

Suggesting that the County's middle school immersion program should move to the opposite corner of the Couty from its current location and bulk of current students. Oh also that part of the County has extremely limited native spanish speakers nearby pretty much ensuring the program will ultimately fail. Behaving as if the option schools should just take whatever crumbs are left and like it and they have no right to complain or advocate as neighborhood schools are the priority. I don't even have kids in an option school and most of the arguments are both ignorant and entitled.

I’m pretty sure it’s Kenmore parents advocating for immersion to be moved somewhere besides their school. They are (understandably) opposed to losing their neighborhood seats.

Nah, read the beginning of this thread. It is mostly Taylor parents. Kenmore parents wouldn't be fixated on WMS, as the Immersion program could stay at Gunston or move to another MS and solve their concerns. It's only the Taylor parents who specifically want immersion at WMS because otherwise they are likely to be moved.

If you read the APS Thought Exchange, you'd see that the immersion community is supportive of the program being sited anywhere centrally located in Arlington or staying at Gunston. They are being pretty darn reasonable. It's APS that said that TJ isn't an option because of IB and Gunston isn't an option because of overcrowding. Swanson isn't an option because it's already over crowded so too many kids would need to move. If IB isn't an issue for moving the program to TJ, then Kenmore should figure out why APS is wrong.

A bunch of immersion Parents calling WMS unreasonable does not make it so. Locating immersion centrally was not a priority except for the vision board. Option should go where this is capacity and not displace neighborhoods

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I bet they delay it for another year or two. People in pretty much every middle school were furious about having to move, and that eventually is inevitable. But it's easier to just kick the can for a few years.

I haven't heard that much furor. The loudest are a few Taylor parents who don't think their kids should have to move to WMS, but that will likely be ignored as ridiculous. And two Ashlawn PUs that don't want to be carved off the rest of the elementary school, but I think that can pretty easily be fixed. No one else has posted a significant number of comments.

I agree with this. It's really not that big of a deal. The Hamm people are just nuts.

Sure you can call us names, but delaying won’t end end the outrage. The angriest people are those with little kids at Taylor who bought a home walking distance to an elementary and middle school, usually two working parent households where having walkable and independent students is a huge time savings.

We will be angry in two years, angry in 5 years, and likely will STILL campaign against the stupid “bus half the walkzone away” decision in perpetuity.

Kids will waste so much time waiting for and riding a bus needlessly. So this fight will only be over in December if the school board does the right thing, and moves Immersion to the school with the greatest capacity and uses the plan that minimizes bus costs and staffing. That is probably moving it to WMS, but math whizs are welcome to prove otherwise.

Haven't you read your own posts? It doesn't matter how far away MS is located because parents NEVER have to go there and MS students are 100% fine taking the bus by themselves. Transportation isn't an issue by MS, right? That's what Taylor parents are posting.

APS changes boundaries roughly every year. If anyone bought not knowing that, then they should have done more research. It's not exactly a secret.

It’s about independence and wasting time on a longer than necessary bus ride. Taylor students are almost universally ridiculously close to Hamm, and busing to WMS takes a circuitous route through neighborhoods.

It’s okay for option because that is part of the deal which you can always walk away from, to coin a phrase.

People who chose neighborhood prioritized proximity and short commutes to school. They don’t have a fallback.

And boundaries shouldn’t be changing every year, if they would just invest appropriately in facilities rather than blowing the budget on slides and award winning urban schools.

Boundaries don’t change every year. And boundaries changing this time has zero to do with past buildings having amenities you don’t approve of.

Doesn’t even make any sense.

DHMS opened in 2019, 4 years later we are RADICALLY redrawing boundaries. Maybe not “yearly” but incompetence and misguided investment. They should have made HBW bigger when they blew $100M, or maybe enlarged the other middle schools and built them a standard building for $50M.

OMG! There WAS an option to build Hamm larger to accommodate 1300 students instead of 1000. The neighbhorhood around Hamm rejected it and the board listened and voted it down. Now this same neighbhorhood doesnt' want to be moved away because, wait for it, Hamm is too small. So there you are, you are living with the consequences of your OWN actions.

Don’t be obtuse. Hamm is ALREADY at the LARGEST capacity middle school. They should have expanded the other middle schools, especially HBW, which blew all the money on their award winning building.

The affected families are less than 500 ft from the school, if they made Hamm 1300 seats, they would have moved Immersion there and still kicked out the walkzone.

How exactly am I being obtuse? There was the option to build Hamm at 1300 at the time of the renovation. Your neighbhohood lobbied against it and won. Sorry you don't like the consequences.

Because you see they are important people so the school should be not too big and not too small and not too fancy but just nice enough and not too crowded either and it's for THEIR kids. Not any other kids. They bought their house and this was the understanding that came with the house.

See? We are simply advocating to be treated like other schools, and you insult and put out personal attacks.

Go through the thread. At no point have any Hamm parents called someone crazy, entitled or mocked them.

No, you aren’t advocating to be treated like other schools. That is the whole point of this thread. APS has been doing boundary shifts forever which always impacts someone negatively. Again, you aren’t that special.

They have never bused away half a walkzone

Bellevue Forest.

Hamm to Lorcam (the proposed boundary is 400 ft. BF is 2000 ft and across military road from Taylor. Pretty egregious, but if you make the Hamm boundary 2000 ft radius, I think a lot of Taylor would be mollified.

So this is unprecedented. Just look at the middle school boundary maps. None have their boundary steps from the school.

How do you not know how to spell Lorcom Lane? Don’t you live right there?

I have three kids at hamm— no one at Hamm at least publicly is acting this way! These “hamm” posters are trolls.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I bet they delay it for another year or two. People in pretty much every middle school were furious about having to move, and that eventually is inevitable. But it's easier to just kick the can for a few years.

I haven't heard that much furor. The loudest are a few Taylor parents who don't think their kids should have to move to WMS, but that will likely be ignored as ridiculous. And two Ashlawn PUs that don't want to be carved off the rest of the elementary school, but I think that can pretty easily be fixed. No one else has posted a significant number of comments.

I agree with this. It's really not that big of a deal. The Hamm people are just nuts.

Sure you can call us names, but delaying won’t end end the outrage. The angriest people are those with little kids at Taylor who bought a home walking distance to an elementary and middle school, usually two working parent households where having walkable and independent students is a huge time savings.

We will be angry in two years, angry in 5 years, and likely will STILL campaign against the stupid “bus half the walkzone away” decision in perpetuity.

Kids will waste so much time waiting for and riding a bus needlessly. So this fight will only be over in December if the school board does the right thing, and moves Immersion to the school with the greatest capacity and uses the plan that minimizes bus costs and staffing. That is probably moving it to WMS, but math whizs are welcome to prove otherwise.

Haven't you read your own posts? It doesn't matter how far away MS is located because parents NEVER have to go there and MS students are 100% fine taking the bus by themselves. Transportation isn't an issue by MS, right? That's what Taylor parents are posting.

APS changes boundaries roughly every year. If anyone bought not knowing that, then they should have done more research. It's not exactly a secret.

It’s about independence and wasting time on a longer than necessary bus ride. Taylor students are almost universally ridiculously close to Hamm, and busing to WMS takes a circuitous route through neighborhoods.

It’s okay for option because that is part of the deal which you can always walk away from, to coin a phrase.

People who chose neighborhood prioritized proximity and short commutes to school. They don’t have a fallback.

And boundaries shouldn’t be changing every year, if they would just invest appropriately in facilities rather than blowing the budget on slides and award winning urban schools.

Boundaries don’t change every year. And boundaries changing this time has zero to do with past buildings having amenities you don’t approve of.

Doesn’t even make any sense.

DHMS opened in 2019, 4 years later we are RADICALLY redrawing boundaries. Maybe not “yearly” but incompetence and misguided investment. They should have made HBW bigger when they blew $100M, or maybe enlarged the other middle schools and built them a standard building for $50M.

OMG! There WAS an option to build Hamm larger to accommodate 1300 students instead of 1000. The neighbhorhood around Hamm rejected it and the board listened and voted it down. Now this same neighbhorhood doesnt' want to be moved away because, wait for it, Hamm is too small. So there you are, you are living with the consequences of your OWN actions.

Don’t be obtuse. Hamm is ALREADY at the LARGEST capacity middle school. They should have expanded the other middle schools, especially HBW, which blew all the money on their award winning building.

The affected families are less than 500 ft from the school, if they made Hamm 1300 seats, they would have moved Immersion there and still kicked out the walkzone.

How exactly am I being obtuse? There was the option to build Hamm at 1300 at the time of the renovation. Your neighbhohood lobbied against it and won. Sorry you don't like the consequences.

Because you see they are important people so the school should be not too big and not too small and not too fancy but just nice enough and not too crowded either and it's for THEIR kids. Not any other kids. They bought their house and this was the understanding that came with the house.

See? We are simply advocating to be treated like other schools, and you insult and put out personal attacks.

Go through the thread. At no point have any Hamm parents called someone crazy, entitled or mocked them.

No, you aren’t advocating to be treated like other schools. That is the whole point of this thread. APS has been doing boundary shifts forever which always impacts someone negatively. Again, you aren’t that special.

They have never bused away half a walkzone

Bellevue Forest.

Hamm to Lorcam (the proposed boundary is 400 ft. BF is 2000 ft and across military road from Taylor. Pretty egregious, but if you make the Hamm boundary 2000 ft radius, I think a lot of Taylor would be mollified.

So this is unprecedented. Just look at the middle school boundary maps. None have their boundary steps from the school.

How do you not know how to spell Lorcom Lane? Don’t you live right there?

I have three kids at hamm— no one at Hamm at least publicly is acting this way! These “hamm” posters are trolls.

Hamm parents won’t be affected, it’s Taylor parents so you are dealing with 6 grades of fury.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I bet they delay it for another year or two. People in pretty much every middle school were furious about having to move, and that eventually is inevitable. But it's easier to just kick the can for a few years.

I haven't heard that much furor. The loudest are a few Taylor parents who don't think their kids should have to move to WMS, but that will likely be ignored as ridiculous. And two Ashlawn PUs that don't want to be carved off the rest of the elementary school, but I think that can pretty easily be fixed. No one else has posted a significant number of comments.

I agree with this. It's really not that big of a deal. The Hamm people are just nuts.

What are they doing that is nuts?

Suggesting that the County's middle school immersion program should move to the opposite corner of the Couty from its current location and bulk of current students. Oh also that part of the County has extremely limited native spanish speakers nearby pretty much ensuring the program will ultimately fail. Behaving as if the option schools should just take whatever crumbs are left and like it and they have no right to complain or advocate as neighborhood schools are the priority. I don't even have kids in an option school and most of the arguments are both ignorant and entitled.

I’m pretty sure it’s Kenmore parents advocating for immersion to be moved somewhere besides their school. They are (understandably) opposed to losing their neighborhood seats.

Nah, read the beginning of this thread. It is mostly Taylor parents. Kenmore parents wouldn't be fixated on WMS, as the Immersion program could stay at Gunston or move to another MS and solve their concerns. It's only the Taylor parents who specifically want immersion at WMS because otherwise they are likely to be moved.

If you read the APS Thought Exchange, you'd see that the immersion community is supportive of the program being sited anywhere centrally located in Arlington or staying at Gunston. They are being pretty darn reasonable. It's APS that said that TJ isn't an option because of IB and Gunston isn't an option because of overcrowding. Swanson isn't an option because it's already over crowded so too many kids would need to move. If IB isn't an issue for moving the program to TJ, then Kenmore should figure out why APS is wrong.

A bunch of immersion Parents calling WMS unreasonable does not make it so. Locating immersion centrally was not a priority except for the vision board. Option should go where this is capacity and not displace neighborhoods

It's been explained ad nauseam why WMS is a bad idea. These reasons have been met with statements that option students should get the scraps leftover from APS for choosing not attend their neighborhood school and cries that option schools should be closed.

Taylor parents are screaming that it's 100% unreasonable to bus their students to WMS because the ride is too long and too burdensome, but at the same time says there is zero burden to for students to be bused from the Gunston neighborhood hub stops to WMS because they're "teens" and "independent." It's all bonkers. It all smells of "it's fine for them, but not for us." They also doubling down that if locating the program in the far Northern part of the county is detrimental to the program, then immersion families must not be "committed" or is preferable because they want to see the program killed. It's all hateful and bonkers.

These are MS kids. They all deserve reasonable transportation options, whether or not they're also studying Spanish. If Taylor or Kenmore parents want to propose a solution that isn't moving immersion to WMS (which would likely gut the program of native Spanish speakers), please make a proposal.

It isn't the responsibility of the Immersion program to solve for population growth in S Arlington. And if Immersion is used as the "solution" you'll see the program shrink, just initiating another round of boundary moves. It's not really a solve at all, despite all of the rabid screaming from Taylor parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I bet they delay it for another year or two. People in pretty much every middle school were furious about having to move, and that eventually is inevitable. But it's easier to just kick the can for a few years.

I haven't heard that much furor. The loudest are a few Taylor parents who don't think their kids should have to move to WMS, but that will likely be ignored as ridiculous. And two Ashlawn PUs that don't want to be carved off the rest of the elementary school, but I think that can pretty easily be fixed. No one else has posted a significant number of comments.

I agree with this. It's really not that big of a deal. The Hamm people are just nuts.

What are they doing that is nuts?

Suggesting that the County's middle school immersion program should move to the opposite corner of the Couty from its current location and bulk of current students. Oh also that part of the County has extremely limited native spanish speakers nearby pretty much ensuring the program will ultimately fail. Behaving as if the option schools should just take whatever crumbs are left and like it and they have no right to complain or advocate as neighborhood schools are the priority. I don't even have kids in an option school and most of the arguments are both ignorant and entitled.

I’m pretty sure it’s Kenmore parents advocating for immersion to be moved somewhere besides their school. They are (understandably) opposed to losing their neighborhood seats.

Nah, read the beginning of this thread. It is mostly Taylor parents. Kenmore parents wouldn't be fixated on WMS, as the Immersion program could stay at Gunston or move to another MS and solve their concerns. It's only the Taylor parents who specifically want immersion at WMS because otherwise they are likely to be moved.

If you read the APS Thought Exchange, you'd see that the immersion community is supportive of the program being sited anywhere centrally located in Arlington or staying at Gunston. They are being pretty darn reasonable. It's APS that said that TJ isn't an option because of IB and Gunston isn't an option because of overcrowding. Swanson isn't an option because it's already over crowded so too many kids would need to move. If IB isn't an issue for moving the program to TJ, then Kenmore should figure out why APS is wrong.

A bunch of immersion Parents calling WMS unreasonable does not make it so. Locating immersion centrally was not a priority except for the vision board. Option should go where this is capacity and not displace neighborhoods

It's been explained ad nauseam why WMS is a bad idea. These reasons have been met with statements that option students should get the scraps leftover from APS for choosing not attend their neighborhood school and cries that option schools should be closed.

Taylor parents are screaming that it's 100% unreasonable to bus their students to WMS because the ride is too long and too burdensome, but at the same time says there is zero burden to for students to be bused from the Gunston neighborhood hub stops to WMS because they're "teens" and "independent." It's all bonkers. It all smells of "it's fine for them, but not for us." They also doubling down that if locating the program in the far Northern part of the county is detrimental to the program, then immersion families must not be "committed" or is preferable because they want to see the program killed. It's all hateful and bonkers.

These are MS kids. They all deserve reasonable transportation options, whether or not they're also studying Spanish. If Taylor or Kenmore parents want to propose a solution that isn't moving immersion to WMS (which would likely gut the program of native Spanish speakers), please make a proposal.

It isn't the responsibility of the Immersion program to solve for population growth in S Arlington. And if Immersion is used as the "solution" you'll see the program shrink, just initiating another round of boundary moves. It's not really a solve at all, despite all of the rabid screaming from Taylor parents.

I haven’t seen anything rabid from Taylor parents. You, on the other hand, seem more than a bit unhinged.