APS middle school boundary process

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Folks, in this fight diversity means economic diversity, not racial diversity.

Making Kenmore more balanced, yet unbalancing Jefferson isn't really solving the segregation in this county, it is just moving it from one school to another. The wealthy north Arlington middle schools need some diversity. Separate is NOT EQUAL.

North Arlington parents, you throw a fit and block any effort by the county and developers to build low income housing in your neighborhood so your neighborhoods and neighborhood schools don't have really any poorer kids. Hmmm, then you cry about how you want your kids to walk to your "neighborhood" school. So, you are enabling and reinforcing the segregation in our county. Yes, in 2017 we have to talk about segregation. Shame on you.

Welcome to America. It's that way everywhere...and pretty much most of Europe as well. The poor live in lower cost areas. Sometimes also in public housing.

When people achieve success/upward mobility, they move their families to better school districts.

You are very lucky to be in Arlington County, because unlike the District and other parts of the Country, you have the same high caliber teachers and principals and $$ per pupil in even the more diverse and lower SES schools.

Quit acting like a goddamn crime is being committed. The only crime is that you were banking on moving or the schools to have gentrified more before your snowflake was of school age. You got the bigger lot/nicer house for less $ per square foot because of the school zone. Some of us went the other way with shit shacks in school zones we wanted.

I hope your house is really sh;tty. I hope you are miserable in it every day.

Enjoy the Columbia Pike Streetcar.

Enjoy your off street parking. Enjoy waiting for a smoking metro train. Enjoy your tiny kitchen. Enjoy having no closets. Enjoy your sloped backyard. Enjoy schlepping jr down to Barcroft to play ball, because your neighbor's won't allow you to have lit fields nearby. Enjoy it all.
We'll enjoy schools without drug pressure and bullying.
I'm beginning to see the light regarding demographics. I feel guilty, because the middle class kids will all be fine. Our less advantaged kids need the integration, but oh well. We can make due.
I don't want you people in my schools. Keep south Arlington dickhead free.

Great. Quit bitching like a whiny, entitled tw@t.

[This is great vocabulary building, kids.]

[Anonymous]

Enjoy the Columbia Pike Streetcar.


Enjoy your off street parking. Enjoy waiting for a smoking metro train. Enjoy your tiny kitchen. Enjoy having no closets. Enjoy your sloped backyard. Enjoy schlepping jr down to Barcroft to play ball, because your neighbor's won't allow you to have lit fields nearby. Enjoy it all.
We'll enjoy schools without drug pressure and bullying.
I'm beginning to see the light regarding demographics. I feel guilty, because the middle class kids will all be fine. Our less advantaged kids need the integration, but oh well. We can make due.
I don't want you people in my schools. Keep south Arlington dickhead free.

Great. Quit bitching like a whiny, entitled tw@t.

[This is great vocabulary building, kids.]



Not bitching. Totally fine. Really glad to be far away from you people. Honestly I think it's better for the less advantaged kids as well. It's better for everyone.

[Anonymous]

We need efficiency and relief of overcrowding. I can't deal with the people who whine that "my kids won't be able to go to school with all the same kids from their previous school" - if you pull your kids and go to private, they still won't know anyone. And even in the maps where they break up schools, there will be some kids that travel together. That's not a factor that's worth tying maps up in knots. If you look at the alignment map, you have kids not able to go to the school across the street from their house -- kind of like the stupidity of Science Focus' boundary now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Folks, in this fight diversity means economic diversity, not racial diversity.

Making Kenmore more balanced, yet unbalancing Jefferson isn't really solving the segregation in this county, it is just moving it from one school to another. The wealthy north Arlington middle schools need some diversity. Separate is NOT EQUAL.

North Arlington parents, you throw a fit and block any effort by the county and developers to build low income housing in your neighborhood so your neighborhoods and neighborhood schools don't have really any poorer kids. Hmmm, then you cry about how you want your kids to walk to your "neighborhood" school. So, you are enabling and reinforcing the segregation in our county. Yes, in 2017 we have to talk about segregation. Shame on you.

Welcome to America. It's that way everywhere...and pretty much most of Europe as well. The poor live in lower cost areas. Sometimes also in public housing.

When people achieve success/upward mobility, they move their families to better school districts.

You are very lucky to be in Arlington County, because unlike the District and other parts of the Country, you have the same high caliber teachers and principals and $$ per pupil in even the more diverse and lower SES schools.

Quit acting like a goddamn crime is being committed. The only crime is that you were banking on moving or the schools to have gentrified more before your snowflake was of school age. You got the bigger lot/nicer house for less $ per square foot because of the school zone. Some of us went the other way with shit shacks in school zones we wanted.

Well, it's also true that most of this country is segregated. Yay us! We're not better than anywhere! And thanks for your "generosity" by allowing us to live in the same county. So charming to be reminded to kiss the rings. Can you print a sign and put it in your front yard, just in case we forget? Something like, "All are welcome here. Well not actually here, but you get the idea."

I still only see like one scenario that I'd expect people to get all riled up about. And I would like to know whether this option actually creates more bus riders or just different bus riders.

Which one? Are you referring to one of the 5 combined? Or was it G demographics on the original slide deck from 9/12? I live in n. Arlington, I am not a huge rah, rah, everything is secondary to diversity, but G seemed to be the "most equitable" in terms of distributing poverty as much as possible across all 6 schools. OTOH, I did watch that shit show train wreck when Kaninen came in at the final hour and managed to get the least number of kids transferred to Yorktown. (So they might have a trailer in the 4th year, but let's just ensure WL gets trailers for 3 of 4 years instead. How is that fair, bi#ch? Sorry, I digress.). As I was saying, given how many shenanigans get pulled by the SB, I would very much doubt seeing that kind of distribution ever.

It's one of the blended: scenario H, the Blended Demographics one. I am not surprised that this is not a popular option for the families currently zoned to Swanson, but I would still like to know whether more bus riders are created, or whether it's a shuffling of who is getting on a bus.

I don't really think any of the other scenarios rise to the charge of "busing." Will the kids getting on a bus change in some scenarios? Perhaps, but that's to be expected during a boundary change. The question is: would more students, overall, require transportation?

Now that I've had some time to think, I'd like to see what happens with some tweaks to option "B." Move some of the northern most planning units around Langston out of Kenmore over to Stratford, move Ashton Heights back into Jefferson, move Barcroft neighborhood back into Kenmore, and keep the new APAH units in Westover at Swanson, you know, for proximity, instead of busing them to Kenmore. What do these tweaks do to proximity, demographics, and capacity?

[Anonymous]

Looks like they've added data

https://www.apsva.us/middle-school-boundary-illustrative-draft-maps/

[Anonymous]

Why would APAH housing in Westover get sent to Kenmore. It should stay in N Arlington. Kenmore cannot absorb any more low income kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Looks like they've added data

https://www.apsva.us/middle-school-boundary-illustrative-draft-maps/

OMG. 1H is insane for Swanson.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why would APAH housing in Westover get sent to Kenmore. It should stay in N Arlington. Kenmore cannot absorb any more low income kids.

Good question. It's really odd that they carved that block out of Westover and sent it to Kenmore in scenario B.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Looks like they've added data

https://www.apsva.us/middle-school-boundary-illustrative-draft-maps/

OMG. 1H is insane for Swanson.

Yes, but also insane are the options that raise the fr/l numbers at Kenmore or Jefferson by over 5 percentage points, while lowering them at Swanson or Williamsburg by 5 or more percentage points. These options need changes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We need efficiency and relief of overcrowding. I can't deal with the people who whine that "my kids won't be able to go to school with all the same kids from their previous school" - if you pull your kids and go to private, they still won't know anyone. And even in the maps where they break up schools, there will be some kids that travel together. That's not a factor that's worth tying maps up in knots. If you look at the alignment map, you have kids not able to go to the school across the street from their house -- kind of like the stupidity of Science Focus' boundary now.

+1

Except for one in MS, my kids are in college now. We live in a Taylor planning unit but they went to Science Focus (as the PP noted re stupidity of some boundaries, we live two blocks from Science Focus). After Science Focus they went to Swanson and then W-L. At every stage of their schooling they continued with a few friends while others went to different middle schools and high schools, including a few privates. Along the way my kids met classmates they had known from sports, from church, from summer camps, from scouts, etc. By the time they were in HS they had friends all over Arlington. Alignment really is not that important in a county the size of Arlington.

[Anonymous]

^^ I think it's very important in elementary school to go to school with your neighbors. The kids make friends a few doors down or a short walk. They can run back and forth to each other's houses. Play dates aren't a major pain in the ass with having to pick a kid up on the other side of town sitting in rush hioir traffic on Lee highway.

Most of our neighborhood goest to the same school, but there is a large portion from all the way across town. I've had to really cut back on play dates with any of those kids because it's just too much of a pain. The kids in the neighborhood will get together a lot and in nights they have practices they can still have short play dates beforehand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We need efficiency and relief of overcrowding. I can't deal with the people who whine that "my kids won't be able to go to school with all the same kids from their previous school" - if you pull your kids and go to private, they still won't know anyone. And even in the maps where they break up schools, there will be some kids that travel together. That's not a factor that's worth tying maps up in knots. If you look at the alignment map, you have kids not able to go to the school across the street from their house -- kind of like the stupidity of Science Focus' boundary now.

+1

Except for one in MS, my kids are in college now. We live in a Taylor planning unit but they went to Science Focus (as the PP noted re stupidity of some boundaries, we live two blocks from Science Focus). After Science Focus they went to Swanson and then W-L. At every stage of their schooling they continued with a few friends while others went to different middle schools and high schools, including a few privates. Along the way my kids met classmates they had known from sports, from church, from summer camps, from scouts, etc. By the time they were in HS they had friends all over Arlington. Alignment really is not that important in a county the size of Arlington.

Okay, so which of these options do you like, and what is your highest priority? Genuinely curious.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why would APAH housing in Westover get sent to Kenmore. It should stay in N Arlington. Kenmore cannot absorb any more low income kids.

There is no scenario under which this happens.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^^ I think it's very important in elementary school to go to school with your neighbors. The kids make friends a few doors down or a short walk. They can run back and forth to each other's houses. Play dates aren't a major pain in the ass with having to pick a kid up on the other side of town sitting in rush hioir traffic on Lee highway.

Most of our neighborhood goest to the same school, but there is a large portion from all the way across town. I've had to really cut back on play dates with any of those kids because it's just too much of a pain. The kids in the neighborhood will get together a lot and in nights they have practices they can still have short play dates beforehand.

But now we're talking about MS. Shouldn't kids worlds be expanding at this point?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^ I think it's very important in elementary school to go to school with your neighbors. The kids make friends a few doors down or a short walk. They can run back and forth to each other's houses. Play dates aren't a major pain in the ass with having to pick a kid up on the other side of town sitting in rush hioir traffic on Lee highway.

Most of our neighborhood goest to the same school, but there is a large portion from all the way across town. I've had to really cut back on play dates with any of those kids because it's just too much of a pain. The kids in the neighborhood will get together a lot and in nights they have practices they can still have short play dates beforehand.

But now we're talking about MS. Shouldn't kids worlds be expanding at this point?

MS --I want the closest school to my house. More sleep. Shorter time getting to and from.

My kids have friends all over the County because of camps and sports.