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Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)
How exactly do Arlington's cluster schools work - Key/SF/Taylor/Jamestown
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Anonymous
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We are considering buying in the Key district which, as I understand it, gives our children the automatic option to go to Science Focus instead if we choose. I also see that they are also entitled to apply to Taylor or Jamestown. I have read and read the APS website, andd all the previous posts on this group of elementary schools, but can any APS parents out there tell me in practicality how does this work? It looks like there is bus service to all 4 schools -- is that really true that 4 different buses would come to pick up the ES kids on our street and shuttle kids off to 4 different schools? Also, how easy or hard is it to go to Taylor or Jamestown if we decide to do that? A long shot, or does everyone get in? If its tough, then how is that different than if we lived in, say the Long Branch district and requested a transfer? I guess I don't really understand how the cluster works exactly.
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Anonymous
| I am in a different cluster in Arlington, but from what I understand, because it is getting more and more crowded in N. Arlington schools, it is no longer a given that you can transfer to any school in your cluster. Like you said because you are in Key you automatically can go to Science Focus, but other than that, it would be very difficult. Taylor had huge growth last year and had to add two more K classes than they thought, so they are way overcrowded. If you lived in Long Branch, I don't think transferring would even be an option. We are in the Glebe district and technically can apply to transfer to Barrett and Key. But a neighbor applied to Key for K and is like #35 on the list. They told us at the Arlington County K Fair to not even bother applying to transfer to Barrett, since they, too, are way overcrowded. I guess what I am saying is that if you buy in the Key district, you should be OK with your child either going to Key or Science Focus with the slim chance they could transfer to Taylor or Jamestown. As for transportation, yes, the county will bus your child to whatever school they get into in your cluster. |
Anonymous
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I live in the cluster and I don't understand how it works, either. Our neighborhood is Key, but our kids go to Taylor. When we were looking, the principal of Jamestown said that somehow it always worked out; that the number of families wanting to transfer into a particular school always ended up balancing out the number who wanted to transfer out.
I don't know if that's true. I do know that Taylor has one grade with six classes, so many kids wanted to be there that year. So the schools do what they can to accommodate intra-team transfers. Science Focus seems to attract a lot of true believers. I suspect, based on nothing, that that makes it easier to transfer from the Key/ASFS cluster out: If you don't want Key, ASFS has to take you, so it's just as easy to pass you along to Taylor or Jamestown. Yes, no matter which school you pick, there will be a bus (except maybe to your neighborhood school, depending on how close you are). Transferring into one of the team schools from outside the area is unlikely. Maybe for Key? But the only out-of-team transfer Taylor took this year was someone with sibling preference. |
Anonymous
8:51 here. I stand corrected...but I do wonder if this is changing somewhat. It would be interesting to know how much of the growth in K at Taylor this year was based on transfers and how much of it was just kids living in the neighborhood. Seems like everyone I know who has a kid going to K this fall is in the Taylor district. |
Anonymous
8:54 here. Well, maybe not corrected. Because our oldest is in one of the later grades, our younger children are getting in based on sibling preference. Maybe my theory about transferring out of Key/ASFS is just a whole lotta manure! But if you look at the numbers on the APS site, there are just a whole lotta kids going to all four schools. |
Anonymous
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OP here -- thank you, this is very helpful!! My child is not school age yet, so I don't know yet whether Key/SF will be a good fit. I think they are great options, but if it turns out that a more traditional ES would be better, I want to know how easy or hard it would be to get into Taylor or Jamestown. It sounds like if we know for certain that we definately want Taylor or Jamestown, then it would be wiser to just buy in one of those areas. But if its not too difficult to get in, then buying in Key would give us the best of both worlds.
PP with the child at Taylor -- do you have a sense of how many kids at Taylor live out of boundary? Are your kids one of the rare few, or are there plenty of kids getting bused in from the Key area? I wonder what the chances are that my child will have friends living nearby. |
Anonymous
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Outdated, but maybe still a little useful:
http://www.apsva.us/15401081104241813/lib/15401081104241813/TransferReport_07-08.pdf |
Anonymous
I will have a child in K this fall and from what little I know, it seems like the overcrowding really started happening within the last couple of years or so, so it is hard to say what will be happening by the time your child is ready for school. I would call Taylor or Jamestown and ask them how many of the K students from this current year are out of boundary and also how many may have registered for this coming school year. They should also be able to give you an idea of what your chances might be of getting in out of bounds in the future. From what I see in my own neighborhood, there are so many young children who will be entering school in the next 3-5 years that I think this is going to be an even bigger issue as time goes on. |
Anonymous
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There are quite a few Taylor kids on my the bus, but most of them get off at other stops. I think that's partly a result of what you're thinking about: if everyone on a block goes to School X, all things being equal, the parents will tend to send their kids where the neighbors' kids are.
The biggest group of students at Taylor were born in 2002. Maybe there will be another big group born in late 2010, thanks to the blizzards? |
Anonymous
OP here -- Thanks for finding this, it is super helpful! This is a little old, but if the policies remain the same it looks like normally out of boundary transfers are normally limited to 5% of the population, but this particular cluster is not bound by that. So it seems like this cluster is unique in APS for their transfer policies. But then at the end of this paragraph, it also says transfers are limited by space availability. So if its true that Taylor is getting really overcrowded, transferring may not be an option. "Team – Arlington Science Focus (ASF), Jamestown, Key, and Taylor schools together are considered a team for enrollment purposes. ASF and Key share the same boundaries. Students from the team schools may be placed at any of the other team schools without being included in the five percent limit applied to regular transfers. The number of transfers allowed is limited to the space availability at each site." |
Anonymous
Thanks! I am so impressed by the amount of info APS provides. Perfect for obsessives like me! |
Anonymous
This is also an interesting one - the projected enrollment for the next 5 years. http://www.apsva.us/15401081104241813/lib/15401081104241813/FallProjections09-14.pdf You can see how it was off though. Taylor was project to get 92 K students this past fall (09) - they got 136. This coming fall they are projected to get 91 K students which seems low to me. The projection for grade 1 this fall is also low compared to what they have in K now - only 93 for grade 1. So, that would mean they will lose 42 students over the summer which I doubt will happen. The projections are from 2008, and need to be revised. |
Anonymous
I was wrong - they do have an updated one from March of this year: http://www.apsva.us/15401081104241813/lib/15401081104241813/SprProjections2010FALL.pdf Now they are saying 112 for K and 141 for grade 1 which seems more accurate. |
Anonymous
| So do people buy in Key "planning" to go to Taylor. Or buy in Taylor "planning" to go to Jamestown? |