Discussion Boundary Map out for APS- elementary schools

[Anonymous]

The problem with the option school parents- those that say things like 'moving ATS north would be inequitable' and 'you don't understand immersion- we have to stay in Courthouse'- is that they generally think of themselves as 'better' more diverse people than the rest of us plebes at neighborhood schools. They are for the most part social justice minded. Thus, they can't admit even to themselves that they are really promoting their own interests in their current locations- so they come up with specious arguments like the above, then get a lot of validation of the arguments from other option school parents. The reasoning does sound good at first- but when you probe it you realize both that it is not really true, or doesn't hold up to competing reasoning.
e.g. some version of options schools have to be centrally located to be accessible to everyone. That's great in theory- and if we had a multitude of centrally located school sites I don't think anyone would object. But surely you can't think it is more 'equitable' to keep ATS centrally located, and bus kids who are currently west of the Pike past 1) Campbell; 2) Carlin Springs; 3)Ashlawn;4) ATS; 5)Barrett- all the way to McKinley so as to keep the option schools centrally located?

Or alternatively- surely APS can do a better job of finding school sites that are centrally located. I have a pipe dream of building another school on top of Key- pursue that at the cost of a bizillian dollars and several additional years of suffocating overcrowding rather than making me leave the Key school site.

Obviously, this self interest disguised as others interest is not limited to option school parents- see the flip out in Westover over the map as the Westover residents realize that they are going to have to use the Reed school site for kids other than their own.

[Anonymous]

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The issue with Immersion to ATS is that it doesn't help break up the high poverty schools along the west Pike. There is literally nothing that can be done to address demographics at Carlin Springs or Barcroft if they are neighborhood schools. There's more flex if the surrounding PUs to either of those schools can be dispersed to multiple schools.

And, in theory, there's tons of potential Immersion/Spanish students right there in the school's neighborhood. APS has all kinds of surveys showing that most parents want a close-by school, even including Spanish-speaking families who we the UMC community think might be better off in an immersion program. So, let's put the program we think will serve them best as close as possible and see how things shake out. ATS is in an okay location for Spanish speakers but probably not closer to them than Barrett already is.[/quote]

This post, like so many others, seems to misunderstand the nature of the APS two-way immersion program. SMH.[/quote]

I sometimes feel there is someone pulling us by pretending to be from Key, to be as tone deaf as this. Same as the PPs who complained about overcrowding at ATS... can these people be for real??[/quote]

Again: immersion is not a safety valve for UMC wealthy people to point to as a means of dispersing “the poors.”[/quote]

It doesn't have to be immersion per se. It's more about which location for an option program would ripple effect other boundaries to help foster more socioeconomically diverse schools - particularly those non SED schools on the western end of the Pike.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm thinking it might be a helpful exercise to actually start with the middle schools and try to balance those for enrollment and demographics. Then you could set up elementary schools to feed into the middle schools. Maybe just as a thought exercise. But I would love to see APS not separate small groups of students as they go through levels.

One more thought: It's so clear looking at this map that Key should be a neighborhood school.

Yes!! This would hopefully help them avoid another situation where the schools are left with giant capacity imbalances immediately after the boundary is drawn. And, would hopefully help them avoid misaligning a handful of planning units, or moving an option program out of convenience rather than for an instructional reason.

First, they need to decide what the MS options are going to be, then decide which locations make the most sense for those options (not just plop a program somewhere based on available capacity and it’s the easiest thing to do, but base it on INSTRUCTION). For instance, Kenmore would be a good candidate for the arts program, since they already have the nicest arts facilities. I think Spanish immersion could work here as well, given the population. It could also work at Jefferson, and it dovetails with IB, like they plan for the new IB ES). Montessori could go to Hamm or WMS or Swanson, or stay at Gunston. Maybe they might consider where the ES program will eventually relocate and move the MS Montessori close to that. Then they count how many spaces they’d like to make available to the MS option lottery, and then move that exact number of kids out of each the zoned boundaries, plus however many they need to balance capacity somewhat equally. Then work the ES boundaries based on that plan, to minimize the alignment problems.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The problem with the option school parents- those that say things like 'moving ATS north would be inequitable' and 'you don't understand immersion- we have to stay in Courthouse'- is that they generally think of themselves as 'better' more diverse people than the rest of us plebes at neighborhood schools. They are for the most part social justice minded. Thus, they can't admit even to themselves that they are really promoting their own interests in their current locations- so they come up with specious arguments like the above, then get a lot of validation of the arguments from other option school parents. The reasoning does sound good at first- but when you probe it you realize both that it is not really true, or doesn't hold up to competing reasoning.
e.g. some version of options schools have to be centrally located to be accessible to everyone. That's great in theory- and if we had a multitude of centrally located school sites I don't think anyone would object. But surely you can't think it is more 'equitable' to keep ATS centrally located, and bus kids who are currently west of the Pike past 1) Campbell; 2) Carlin Springs; 3)Ashlawn;4) ATS; 5)Barrett- all the way to McKinley so as to keep the option schools centrally located?

Or alternatively- surely APS can do a better job of finding school sites that are centrally located. I have a pipe dream of building another school on top of Key- pursue that at the cost of a bizillian dollars and several additional years of suffocating overcrowding rather than making me leave the Key school site.

Obviously, this self interest disguised as others interest is not limited to option school parents- see the flip out in Westover over the map as the Westover residents realize that they are going to have to use the Reed school site for kids other than their own.

What are you talking about?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem with the option school parents- those that say things like 'moving ATS north would be inequitable' and 'you don't understand immersion- we have to stay in Courthouse'- is that they generally think of themselves as 'better' more diverse people than the rest of us plebes at neighborhood schools. They are for the most part social justice minded. Thus, they can't admit even to themselves that they are really promoting their own interests in their current locations- so they come up with specious arguments like the above, then get a lot of validation of the arguments from other option school parents. The reasoning does sound good at first- but when you probe it you realize both that it is not really true, or doesn't hold up to competing reasoning.
e.g. some version of options schools have to be centrally located to be accessible to everyone. That's great in theory- and if we had a multitude of centrally located school sites I don't think anyone would object. But surely you can't think it is more 'equitable' to keep ATS centrally located, and bus kids who are currently west of the Pike past 1) Campbell; 2) Carlin Springs; 3)Ashlawn;4) ATS; 5)Barrett- all the way to McKinley so as to keep the option schools centrally located?

Or alternatively- surely APS can do a better job of finding school sites that are centrally located. I have a pipe dream of building another school on top of Key- pursue that at the cost of a bizillian dollars and several additional years of suffocating overcrowding rather than making me leave the Key school site.

Obviously, this self interest disguised as others interest is not limited to option school parents- see the flip out in Westover over the map as the Westover residents realize that they are going to have to use the Reed school site for kids other than their own.

What are you talking about?

Pp knows what everyone “else” is thinking, and none of it is good.

[Anonymous]

Why are people even discussing this map. It will not happen... APS can't even handle the bussing situation as it currently stands.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why are people even discussing this map. It will not happen... APS can't even handle the bussing situation as it currently stands.

Of course the map won’t be realized, but it informs what needs to happen. That’s the point of it, and why we’re discussing it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why are people even discussing this map. It will not happen... APS can't even handle the bussing situation as it currently stands.

The sole point of the map is to generate discussion.

[Anonymous]

Too much discussion means that the perfect becomes the enemy of the good (with the ironclad exception that rich whited in the north always win out). Once upon a time this county had some smart decision makers. Is that still the case now?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I sometimes feel there is someone pulling us by pretending to be from Key, to be as tone deaf as this. Same as the PPs who complained about overcrowding at ATS... can these people be for real??

wait, why can't people complain about overcrowding at ATS be 'for real'? it is over capacity as far as i know and has many trailers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It is completely inequitable to move ATS to far NW Arlington. It needs to be central. There’s only one. If you move it to the wealthiest enclaves then those will be the only families who can make the trek across the county. You will lose all/most lower income families. I sure hope APS is not that clueless.

Good. Move it and make it look like the inadequate enclave within a segregated school system that it is. And, make it an even more inconvenient escape valve for UMC South Arlington parents. Option schools are a complete sop to those latter parents designed only to quiet down what would otherwise be loud and widespread outrage over the egregious economic segregation in Arlington schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is completely inequitable to move ATS to far NW Arlington. It needs to be central. There’s only one. If you move it to the wealthiest enclaves then those will be the only families who can make the trek across the county. You will lose all/most lower income families. I sure hope APS is not that clueless.

Good. Move it and make it look like the inadequate enclave within a segregated school system that it is. And, make it an even more inconvenient escape valve for UMC South Arlington parents. Option schools are a complete sop to those latter parents designed only to quiet down what would otherwise be loud and widespread outrage over the egregious economic segregation in Arlington schools.

This. How many parents apply to ATS because they really think it's a better academic philosophy for their child, versus how many because they want to escape their neighborhood school. Personally, I think the same thing about HB. I know many people looking at it simply because it is a small setting compared to the overcrowded mega high schools.

ATS is primarily served by busses, which can drive anywhere. Put it at Tuckahoe along major commute lines. Move immersion out of Rosslyn to ATS or even to Carlin Springs. Again, this map is to show that option schools need to be on the table for movement. They are a privilege not a right for any family in this school system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I sometimes feel there is someone pulling us by pretending to be from Key, to be as tone deaf as this. Same as the PPs who complained about overcrowding at ATS... can these people be for real??

wait, why can't people complain about overcrowding at ATS be 'for real'? it is over capacity as far as i know and has many trailers.

I don't think the larger class sizes at ATS are permanent though. They added larger class sizes right now because they had to figure out a way to funnel more kids away from McKinley, Glebe, and Ashlawn-- all of which are out of space, even with trailers. The transfer report will show you that about 1/4 of ATS pulls from those three school boundaries, which makes sense given the current ATS location. Once Reed opens, I thought the plan is for ATS to go back to being smaller. That's also why APS was eyeing the Nottingham site location last year as a possible location switch-- that's one of the smaller elementary school buildings, but it does have capacity for trailers if ATS needs to ramp up enrollment in the future again to help with another population boom. APS staff explained that pretty clearly at one of the work sessions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I sometimes feel there is someone pulling us by pretending to be from Key, to be as tone deaf as this. Same as the PPs who complained about overcrowding at ATS... can these people be for real??

wait, why can't people complain about overcrowding at ATS be 'for real'? it is over capacity as far as i know and has many trailers.

I don't think the larger class sizes at ATS are permanent though. They added larger class sizes right now because they had to figure out a way to funnel more kids away from McKinley, Glebe, and Ashlawn-- all of which are out of space, even with trailers. The transfer report will show you that about 1/4 of ATS pulls from those three school boundaries, which makes sense given the current ATS location. Once Reed opens, I thought the plan is for ATS to go back to being smaller. That's also why APS was eyeing the Nottingham site location last year as a possible location switch-- that's one of the smaller elementary school buildings, but it does have capacity for trailers if ATS needs to ramp up enrollment in the future again to help with another population boom. APS staff explained that pretty clearly at one of the work sessions.

But they also said in recent work sessions that we are going to need to add capacity to every school that isn't currently at 752. So I would guess that ATS will not scale back down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I sometimes feel there is someone pulling us by pretending to be from Key, to be as tone deaf as this. Same as the PPs who complained about overcrowding at ATS... can these people be for real??

wait, why can't people complain about overcrowding at ATS be 'for real'? it is over capacity as far as i know and has many trailers.

I don't think the larger class sizes at ATS are permanent though. They added larger class sizes right now because they had to figure out a way to funnel more kids away from McKinley, Glebe, and Ashlawn-- all of which are out of space, even with trailers. The transfer report will show you that about 1/4 of ATS pulls from those three school boundaries, which makes sense given the current ATS location. Once Reed opens, I thought the plan is for ATS to go back to being smaller. That's also why APS was eyeing the Nottingham site location last year as a possible location switch-- that's one of the smaller elementary school buildings, but it does have capacity for trailers if ATS needs to ramp up enrollment in the future again to help with another population boom. APS staff explained that pretty clearly at one of the work sessions.

But they also said in recent work sessions that we are going to need to add capacity to every school that isn't currently at 752. So I would guess that ATS will not scale back down.

It depends on the facility that houses it. They will size the program to fit the facility. They don't have that luxury with neighborhood schools.