What do you expect from APS staff (option/neighborhood) on 4/30?
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Anonymous
My guess is they declined to condense it into a easy-to-read format because a) they didn't have time, and b) that would make it easier for people to see their conclusions. Here's the upshot: Key - should become a neighborhood school Cambell - should remain EL Carlin Springs - should become an immersion school Sites being considered for the remaining two programs (non-Carlin Springs immersion and ATS): Barcroft ATS Nottingham Claremont |
Anonymous
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So no swap for Key-ASFS. Interesting.
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Anonymous
Re Claremont, I should note that while Claremont is still up for consideration as an option site, the staff specifically noted that if it become a neighborhood school, it could serve the area currently zoned for Carlin Springs. Assuming Carlin Springs becomes immersion, I think there is zero chance they keep Claremont as immersion as well. It seems like the two scenarios they're working on now are moving the other immersion program to Barcroft and keeping ATS where it is, or moving the other immersion to the ATS site and moving ATS to Nottingham. The analysis says Nottingham is a poor candidate for an immersion school, so they could only move ATS there. |
Anonymous
| Huh, moving the 2 immersion programs closer together to be near the highest concentration of Spanish speaking students while also addressing some of the insane inequality in elementary schools. That's actually a good idea! |
Anonymous
Because that was the staff plan at the outset of this process. |
Anonymous
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Once again, the whole thing is such a farce and isn't really about the data they're analyzing. If you look at NW and were to recreate the table they used last time, it suggests a very different result. For those who haven't read it, they've dropped the "Growth" consideration and have added in things like proportion of economically disadvantaged students, transfer rates, accessibility via mass transit, but for more of them they don't really draw any conclusions and just say they need to look at them further. The only criteria for which they include hard analysis and recommendations of sites that are relevant to the NW schools are Walkers, Buses and Geography. It's worth noting that they have once again baked in the Geography exception for Nottingham under Walkers that they previously acknowledged was an error and pulled out. Whether this is because they were sloppy or because they were disingenuous when they pulled it out before is anyone's guess. For Buses, they made the list of schools that made the cut much shorter, so the school that actually made the cut got a check in my table. However, there was a clear break between schools needing 4 or fewer buses and schools needing 7 or more buses, so those that need 7 or more but didn't make the top three in the county were given a half check in my table. Here's the result:
Ashlawn gets a check for Geography, half a check for Buses, nothing for Walkers = 2.5 Barrett gets a check for Geography, nothing else = 1 Discovery gets half a check for Buses, nothing else = .5 Jamestown gets checks for Walkers and Buses, not for Geography = 2 McKinley gets a half check for Buses, nothing else = .5 Nottingham was given a check by the staff under Walkers again, but if they were to correct it the same way as last time would have zero checks: 1* Tuckahoe was given no checks = 0 So even if you accept their Walker exception for Nottingham, that's only a 1-check school, while Ashlawn is a 2.5 and Jamestown is a 2. McKinley is really interesting, because even though it missed all of the check marks (save the .5 I gave them for buses), it falls just outside the top candidates in all three criteria. If you were to rank the schools in each criteria (1 being most favorable for neighborhood and 7 being most favorable for option) and then add up the scores across all three categories, here's where you end up, in ranked order by final score: Ashlawn = 16 Jamestown = 15 McKinley = 15 Discovery = 11 Barrett = 9 Tuckahoe = 7 Nottingham = 6 So if you actually look at their data and criteria, the staff has pulled Nottingham out as a top candidate despite it actually being a really crappy candidate. Meanwhile, they've ignored Ashlawn, Jamestown and McKinley, all of which are are potentially strong candidates. So yep, ATS to Nottingham. |
Anonymous
| I think the fact that they continue to ignore Jamestown is quite telling. |
Anonymous
I would say that it’s less about ignoring Jamestown (since as PP pointed out, several other schools “scored” around Jamestown), and more that they continue to focus on Nottingham. |
Anonymous
It's all about the boundary lines, that's all the staff cares about in NW. All I can say is that when they have to give the recommendation in the fall with proposed boundaries, those had better be compact boundaries like no one has even dreamed of to justify this joke of a process. And no, that's not because we're Nottingham, I would just rather than don't turn Discovery into a shithole for us as a result of their poor planning. |
Anonymous
Interesting -- could you explain this a bit more? Why couldn't Claremont and Carlin Springs both be immersion, given that the document emphasizes some benefits of putting two immersion schools in close proximity to one another? (I'm not challenging you -- just trying to understand. I found the document a bit dense...though it doesn't help that I'm reading it on my lunch break on a busy day! =) |
Anonymous
Because if they put option schools at Carlin Springs, Campbell and Claremont, they will create a boundary mess trying to push all of the current Carlin Springs students into Barcroft. The current enrollment of Carlin Springs is 641 and Barcroft can only has building capacity of 460, so they have no place to put over 200 students if you assume Barcroft would keep its walk zone. |
Anonymous
Whoever you are, you are singing my song! Did anyone else download and save the original excel file before staff realized they'd uploaded a bit too much information that shouldn't be public? If you go through the different sheets of that file, it becomes blatantly obvious that facts have no role here. |
Anonymous
PP again, wanted to add that if they do want to put the immersion schools close together, Barcroft is even closer to Carlin Springs than Claremont and has the advantage of being more centrally located, so that factor argues for Barcroft being the option school rather than Claremont. |
Anonymous
What did Nottingham do to P!SS off the staff so much? |
Anonymous
| Towards the end of the document they talk about "other considerations based on school board discussion," and that list includes transit score. (Each school's transit score is provided by www.walkscore.com) Maybe I'm stupid, but how are they using the transit score- how does a high or low score translate into a school being a better or worse candidate for one kind of program vs another? |