APS Overcrowding - In 3 years it’s projected to start declining

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:APS admin isn't known for its ability to do math.

Or plan well.

What is their contingency if we don’t get population turnaround?

If the population grows instead? Virtual. They already wanted to offer virtual before the pandemic, too bad they already proved they can't pull that one off.

Well that is disheartening

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:APS admin isn't known for its ability to do math.

Or plan well.

What is their contingency if we don’t get population turnaround?

If the population grows instead? Virtual. They already wanted to offer virtual before the pandemic, too bad they already proved they can't pull that one off.

What about setting up HBW like programs in office buildings?

[Anonymous]

What APS got wrong before was parent’s willingness to live in a condo with school aged children. With traffic and DC’s issues, about 15-20 years ago that behavior changed and APS was way behind the curve. Now, if I’m only commuting 1-2 days per week, I would be much more willing to live further away to get more space for my money. We don’t know how things will look in a few years. Folks will be teleworking a lot more like they are now. How much and how that impacts where people live is hard to predict. Loudoun better bet on continuing to grow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What APS got wrong before was parent’s willingness to live in a condo with school aged children. With traffic and DC’s issues, about 15-20 years ago that behavior changed and APS was way behind the curve. Now, if I’m only commuting 1-2 days per week, I would be much more willing to live further away to get more space for my money. We don’t know how things will look in a few years. Folks will be teleworking a lot more like they are now. How much and how that impacts where people live is hard to predict. Loudoun better bet on continuing to grow.

Sure but we are building a ton of low income housing targeting families.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Read the report you linked to. It will tell you.

Births are declining, and they are projecting that this trend will continue. I'm not surprised. High density plus high rents equals more dogs, fewer children.

Well that is BS. Many families have babies in DC and move to Arlington for school. How do they even report births? If my kid is born in DC, does a DC hospital mail the county?

So in short, they are crafting the data to allow them to do nothing.

Trust me, looking at birth rates is a big improvement. Years ago, as birth rates exploded, anyone could see what was coming but APS did not look at birth rates back then. Hence the mess it got into with villages of trailers.

After a lot of people pointed out that they needed to do a far better job planning, they finally starting looking at birth rates.

[Anonymous]

I don’t understand. If they build a 4th high school, even if population drops they will still have 2000 students per school — it’s not like they will sit empty?

[Anonymous]

Where will they build this 4th High School?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Where will they build this 4th High School?

I think they could build it at the Barcroft Rec center but I doubt they ever would since they invested so much in the race facility there. But it has a lot of land and is off a main road.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Where will they build this 4th High School?

Kenmore

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where will they build this 4th High School?

I think they could build it at the Barcroft Rec center but I doubt they ever would since they invested so much in the race facility there. But it has a lot of land and is off a main road.

I think it would be a great idea to turn off community center Into a high school, it’s better for the entire community! Luckily, we are rich with community centers in Arlington so losing one would not be a great loss. However, county maintained assets are completely separate from school maintain assets so it’s not as if it’s an easy thing to do, unfortunately. Does anyone else have insight into this?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where will they build this 4th High School?

I think they could build it at the Barcroft Rec center but I doubt they ever would since they invested so much in the race facility there. But it has a lot of land and is off a main road.

I think it would be a great idea to turn off community center Into a high school, it’s better for the entire community! Luckily, we are rich with community centers in Arlington so losing one would not be a great loss. However, county maintained assets are completely separate from school maintain assets so it’s not as if it’s an easy thing to do, unfortunately. Does anyone else have insight into this?

The insight is this would never happen.

Barcroft is a heavily used rec center. The County runs all of its rec gymnastics programs out of this site, which are hugely popular. The fields and outdoor areas are heavily used by sports teams and field space is already tight in Arlington. So no, the County isn't going to tear down a relatively new rec center and give it to APS to build a school. Even if they wanted to, the community would flip out (and rightly so).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Where will they build this 4th High School?

Welcome to the fights of 2016 and 2017. The writing was on the wall that the population was going to explode at least through the mid to late '20s before it started to level off or decline. A large number of parents pushed hard for a 4th high school at the Kenmore site, which is the only available APS-owned property big enough to hold a full high school (including sports fields, etc). The battle was lost due to the argument that Carlin Springs Rd wasn't prepared for that volume of traffic and the only other exit point from the property was through Ffx County.

Instead they've continued to shove kids into the 3 primary high schools (not touching the precious HB Woodlawn population), created Arlington Tech which only solves a tiny bit of the problem, and otherwise put their heads in the sand letting an entire generation of Arlington kids deal with massively overcrowded schools.

During some joint CB/SB sessions in the mid-teens there were suggestions for virtual classes, shift schedules and basically anything besides providing more seats and space. The news that the school age population will start declining in a few years isn't news - it's the proverbial bubble finally starting to graduate. But, if the CB has their way pushing more low-income house and Missing Middle, they will do their best to ensure those numbers don't actually drop all that much.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where will they build this 4th High School?

Kenmore

Many of us hoped that would happened, but the impact to the neighborhoods, including neighboring for ffx County, always seem to derail the discussion. Traffic is already a disaster in this area, and it would make it much worse… according to their studies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where will they build this 4th High School?

I think they could build it at the Barcroft Rec center but I doubt they ever would since they invested so much in the race facility there. But it has a lot of land and is off a main road.

I think it would be a great idea to turn off community center Into a high school, it’s better for the entire community! Luckily, we are rich with community centers in Arlington so losing one would not be a great loss. However, county maintained assets are completely separate from school maintain assets so it’s not as if it’s an easy thing to do, unfortunately. Does anyone else have insight into this?

The insight is this would never happen.

Barcroft is a heavily used rec center. The County runs all of its rec gymnastics programs out of this site, which are hugely popular. The fields and outdoor areas are heavily used by sports teams and field space is already tight in Arlington. So no, the County isn't going to tear down a relatively new rec center and give it to APS to build a school. Even if they wanted to, the community would flip out (and rightly so).

I think you should use the Fairlington community center site. It already has a field/green space, aged building, etc..

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where will they build this 4th High School?

I think they could build it at the Barcroft Rec center but I doubt they ever would since they invested so much in the race facility there. But it has a lot of land and is off a main road.

I think it would be a great idea to turn off community center Into a high school, it’s better for the entire community! Luckily, we are rich with community centers in Arlington so losing one would not be a great loss. However, county maintained assets are completely separate from school maintain assets so it’s not as if it’s an easy thing to do, unfortunately. Does anyone else have insight into this?

The insight is this would never happen.

Barcroft is a heavily used rec center. The County runs all of its rec gymnastics programs out of this site, which are hugely popular. The fields and outdoor areas are heavily used by sports teams and field space is already tight in Arlington. So no, the County isn't going to tear down a relatively new rec center and give it to APS to build a school. Even if they wanted to, the community would flip out (and rightly so).

I think you should use the Fairlington community center site. It already has a field/green space, aged building, etc..

That site is nowhere near big enough for a high school. You need a lot of land.