APS HWB 90 minute blocks

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:HB doesn’t have a large cafeteria. Students can eat anywhere around the school- there is a big terraced indoor area, there are multiple outdoor areas, some kids eat in favorite classrooms or have a spot where they meet friends in the halls. Most kids do not eat in the cafeteria.
Can’t speak to the cafeteria line as my kids bring lunch or sometimes leave campus to get something, which high schoolers are allowed to do. Middle schoolers can also leave but have a more limited area they are permitted to go.

I’ve had kids at both HB and a neighborhood high school. Neither school did any “college counseling” in terms of giving my kid input on their list or helping them develop their list of schools. Both had parent and student meetings for how the application process worked at each schools to make sure applications were complete, how to get recommendations, etc. Most schools require a counselor letter of recommendation and the advantage here is that your TA class teacher is the person who serves as your counselor so they know you quite well from multiple years as opposed to your neighborhood school counselor who may have 100+ seniors on their counseling roster.

I have had kids at both too. The information given out by the counseling office at the home school was much much more extensive and useful than what HB gave out. And I do like HB, but in this respect it was really lacking. Probably because HB has no counseling office. My other kid's high school has a counselor just dedicated to college stuff in addition to all the other counselors. It was a big difference.

Again, HB kids do very well and typically better than the neighborhood high school kids on the college front so it couldn't have been a "big difference."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've had a kid at HB and a kid at another APS school. HB's college counseling is basically non existent.

Yea, now you're really grasping at straws. I've had kids at both too, and counseling at both is basically non existent. These are public schools, remember?

Also, for being non existent at HB, their kids sure still manage to get into many, many excellent colleges and typically do better on the college front than the neighborhood schools.

What do you mean I'm grasping at straws? I'm just sharing our family's experience having seen the college process at two different schools - -- one HB and one not HB. Sorry that doesn't align with your agenda.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:HB doesn’t have a large cafeteria. Students can eat anywhere around the school- there is a big terraced indoor area, there are multiple outdoor areas, some kids eat in favorite classrooms or have a spot where they meet friends in the halls. Most kids do not eat in the cafeteria.
Can’t speak to the cafeteria line as my kids bring lunch or sometimes leave campus to get something, which high schoolers are allowed to do. Middle schoolers can also leave but have a more limited area they are permitted to go.

I’ve had kids at both HB and a neighborhood high school. Neither school did any “college counseling” in terms of giving my kid input on their list or helping them develop their list of schools. Both had parent and student meetings for how the application process worked at each schools to make sure applications were complete, how to get recommendations, etc. Most schools require a counselor letter of recommendation and the advantage here is that your TA class teacher is the person who serves as your counselor so they know you quite well from multiple years as opposed to your neighborhood school counselor who may have 100+ seniors on their counseling roster.

I have had kids at both too. The information given out by the counseling office at the home school was much much more extensive and useful than what HB gave out. And I do like HB, but in this respect it was really lacking. Probably because HB has no counseling office. My other kid's high school has a counselor just dedicated to college stuff in addition to all the other counselors. It was a big difference.

Again, HB kids do very well and typically better than the neighborhood high school kids on the college front so it couldn't have been a "big difference."

Well. I don't know what to tell you, but yes it was. I had to do a lot more research on my own for HB kid and rely on information friends gave me from their counseling office at another APS high school. When it came to kid #2 at a regular APS high school, I was amazed how much more of a process they had, how much more information they gave to parents and students, and the resources they provided, including drop ins with the dedicated college counselor on the daily. It was night and day.

I'm not talking about individual advising on which colleges to apply to and how to be a better applicant. Neither school did that. I'm talking about direction through the many steps involved in the process - all the steps/deadlines in Naviance/SchoolLinks, deadlines, etc.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:The devolution of the choice school threads is always entertaining at least.

I guess. I can't imagine dipping into a thread about a school my kids don't attend and calling other parents liars. Aren't there a million other things a person could do with their time? Or, at least, a million other threads on DCUM you could comment on? It's like a social media version of the perverts who run up to women and flash them from under a trenchcoat, they get a weird thrill and everyone else finds it gross.

I know. I have kids at two choice schools and it's crazy the misinformation and fantasies. Like HB being like a private school. Not so sure about that...I have another kid at a private middle and it's not the same. Yes, the building is over-architected and maybe some private schools are too but the school lunch still sucks and there's a long line for it.

The private school parallel is to its size, which is part of why many families attend private to avoid the supersized neighborhood schools.

You know that, you are being coy.

Many private schools have terrible lunch, and how long can the line freaking be with 100 students per grade??

Own your privilege.

Someone spelled out the differences between a private school and a small public school upthread, school size is not the only thing. For example, at private schools you're typically paying for smaller class sizes (<18), while H-B has the same class sizes as other schools (the same planning factors for all subjects and similar actual enrollment for most core classes, according to the traffic light report).

And there is one lunch period so it is a long line.

Many expensive Catholic schools cost $$$ but still have the same class size as HBW, and even a larger student body.

Ohhh, one lunch period for 400 kids. There are nearly 3000 students at WL, so do they have 7 “lunch” periods (ie lunch during breakfast time?).

The Heights site originally planned for a 1300 seat MIDDLE SCHOOL. They should have increased HBW to 1300 just like they had planned for the neighborhood school, but HBW claimed their small size was “critical” to their program.

400? Now you're just making things up. HB enrolls more than 700 kids.

400 high school students. Do middle school and high school students eat lunch together, I am surprised.

Well then be surprised. All you people have such strong opinions about HB without actually knowing the first thing about the school. How about you stick to your own kids' school?

700 kids is still smaller than one lunch at WL, so I really don’t get all high and mighty.

so it's high and mighty to correct you when you made wrong statements about HB?

My point was the lunch line is just as long at the huge neighborhood schools.

And honestly I’m a little skeptical that 6th graders are eating the same cafeteria with Seniors, I think you making things up.

My kid hasn't stood in the HB lunch line since 6th grade because you basically have to be on line before lunch starts (some teachers seem to end class a little early) to have a decent amount of time to eat. Also the older the kid is, the higher up in the building they're likely to have class, so it takes more time to get to the cafeteria.

Very true. My kid tried buying lunch; didn't work. Not only do we make their lunch but they have an emergency lunch in their locker of shelf stable favorites.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I'm not talking about individual advising on which colleges to apply to and how to be a better applicant. Neither school did that. I'm talking about direction through the many steps involved in the process - all the steps/deadlines in Naviance/SchoolLinks, deadlines, etc.

This is interesting because I have had seniors at HB in 2022 and Yorktown 2024 and both schools had meetings for seniors/rising seniors that detailed the process and explained the steps. The process was slightly different between the schools because the numbers are much higher at YHS so they have a specific procedure required to manage requests but neither one was poorly managed.

[Anonymous]

We had a student go through HB. Her TA (advisor) was her college counselor and also was her teacher for a class twice during HS. She had several meetings with us, and probably dozens with our student about selecting colleges to apply to and talking about timelines/recommendations/etc. We were in pretty consistent contact from spring of 11th grade through acceptance. There were also evening events for 11th and 12th grade parents for questions about the process.