Would looming N. Arlington school boundary changes prevent you from moving there?

[Anonymous]

Only high school will be rezoned according to the presentations and live discussions. If you had a kid in middle school, that might be worth considering, but younger kids have 10+ years before it matters. You are more likely to move in ten years again anyways.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But what are the alternatives? FCCPS and FCPS are both insanely overcrowded (and FCCPS has nowhere to go AT ALL) and I've heard both of those are also in decline due to budgetary issues. ACPS are already well known as being low quality. So does that mean everyone's moving either to Montgomery County, MD or out to Prince William/Loudon Counties?

The situation in FCPS is definitely better, particularly in the McLean/Falls Church/Vienna region. FCPS has expanded multiple MS and HS in that area, and has the ability to convert several former elementary schools in Falls Church and Dunn Loring back into full-time schools and redistrict if necessary.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Only high school will be rezoned according to the presentations and live discussions. If you had a kid in middle school, that might be worth considering, but younger kids have 10+ years before it matters. You are more likely to move in ten years again anyways.

so the elementary schools are all maintaining their boundaries? i read in a thread somewhere that parents were concerned about their ES kids being bussed away from their neighborhood school TO others further away? or maybe i misunderstood

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Only high school will be rezoned according to the presentations and live discussions. If you had a kid in middle school, that might be worth considering, but younger kids have 10+ years before it matters. You are more likely to move in ten years again anyways.

so the elementary schools are all maintaining their boundaries? i read in a thread somewhere that parents were concerned about their ES kids being bussed away from their neighborhood school TO others further away? or maybe i misunderstood

The general principle they try to follow is not to make a particular child move more than once. But, they've also acknowleged that boundary shifts may start to happen more frequently as population bumps impact schools. The one everyone is talking about these days is the western part of 22205 and 22207 in the McKinley, Nottingham, Tuckahoe, Glebe cluster-f*ck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Only high school will be rezoned according to the presentations and live discussions. If you had a kid in middle school, that might be worth considering, but younger kids have 10+ years before it matters. You are more likely to move in ten years again anyways.

so the elementary schools are all maintaining their boundaries? i read in a thread somewhere that parents were concerned about their ES kids being bussed away from their neighborhood school TO others further away? or maybe i misunderstood

Kids will not be bused away from neighborhood schools.

The only potential busing across county would be if you applied to have your child go to a choice school, like Spanish Immersion, Montessori, ATS, Campbell, IB (not a current option but proposed). The district is proposing an East/West division of the county for assignment to option schools for immersion and IB while county-wide schools remain for Campbell, ATS, Montessori. That would mean some families in N. Arlington that want immersion would have to send their kids to Claremont in S. Arlington (rather than current option of Key in N. Arlington) and actually share classrooms with more poor and/or brown-skinned children.

Boundaries for neighborhood schools may get adjusted but there is really very little difference between all the N. Arlington elementary schools. I wouldn't worry about it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Only high school will be rezoned according to the presentations and live discussions. If you had a kid in middle school, that might be worth considering, but younger kids have 10+ years before it matters. You are more likely to move in ten years again anyways.

so the elementary schools are all maintaining their boundaries? i read in a thread somewhere that parents were concerned about their ES kids being bussed away from their neighborhood school TO others further away? or maybe i misunderstood

I think you may have misunderstood. There is a fair amount of discussion from people who live near ASFS, but are bussed to Taylor. The issue is that Key is an immersion school with a neighborhood boundary. ASFS is a choice school, but it prioritizes admission to those who live in the Key boundary, but don't want immersion. The population has exploded such that ASFS completely fills with students in the Key boundary. Thus, those who live near ASFS can't attend, b/c they are in the Taylor boundary.
As part of the revisions to the options policy, APS intends to stop calling ASFS a choice school and label it a neighborhood school. It is currently unclear whether they will redo the map to allow the immediately surrounding neighborhood to be in bounds for ASFS.
With that minor exception- you can always go to your neighborhood school and are never forced on a bus.

I don't think there is a plan for massive redrawing of boundaries.
If they open the Reed school as a neighborhood school instead of a choice school there will be some redrawing.
Honestly- I would be happy at any North Arlington school and most South ARlington ones- I wouldn't worry about redistricting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you look at yorktown's ratings it has plummeted. This is really going to cause another major negative shift down and make north Arlington undesirable.

Nice try, South Arlington. You are extremely bitter. That's no way to live life.

Hahaha.
No honey. Try McLean and Langley... eating your lunch.

[Anonymous]

I wouldn't let boundary changes prevent you from moving to Arl. All of the schools are good. We've been redistricted twice since we moved and could be again depending on what happens at Reed. Still happy we live there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wouldn't let boundary changes prevent you from moving to Arl. All of the schools are good. We've been redistricted twice since we moved and could be again depending on what happens at Reed. Still happy we live there.

Why are trying to convince people to move here? There's more than enough empty nesters, college students clamoring to here, let the people with kids move to Fairfax county. We have more than enough people in arlington.

[Anonymous]

We chose McLean over N. Arlington for a few reasons. First, both school systems absolutely have their problems and are overcrowded, and FCPS is losing great teachers everyday $$$ to Arlington and Loudoun. That said, with Arlington being so much smaller than FCPS, we felt that you'd probably be more likely to get a "surprise" at some point in Arlington than would be likely in McLean. Our McLean elementary is far from Tysons and pretty well insulated by a blanket of cash, for miles. Who knows what the next 15 years will bring and it will only take one hot shot superintendent in Arlington to do some crazy redistricting that iwould be deemed more fair to lower income students. In other words, if they wanted to bus kids from South Arlington to North Arlington for elementary school, it wouldn't be nearly the difficult logistical undertaking that it would be in FCPS. I also agree that Yorktown is slipping.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We chose McLean over N. Arlington for a few reasons. First, both school systems absolutely have their problems and are overcrowded, and FCPS is losing great teachers everyday $$$ to Arlington and Loudoun. That said, with Arlington being so much smaller than FCPS, we felt that you'd probably be more likely to get a "surprise" at some point in Arlington than would be likely in McLean. Our McLean elementary is far from Tysons and pretty well insulated by a blanket of cash, for miles. Who knows what the next 15 years will bring and it will only take one hot shot superintendent in Arlington to do some crazy redistricting that iwould be deemed more fair to lower income students. In other words, if they wanted to bus kids from South Arlington to North Arlington for elementary school, it wouldn't be nearly the difficult logistical undertaking that it would be in FCPS. I also agree that Yorktown is slipping.

Yeah. Arlington, I think, is way more likely to end up with a creative solution of this nature.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We chose McLean over N. Arlington for a few reasons. First, both school systems absolutely have their problems and are overcrowded, and FCPS is losing great teachers everyday $$$ to Arlington and Loudoun. That said, with Arlington being so much smaller than FCPS, we felt that you'd probably be more likely to get a "surprise" at some point in Arlington than would be likely in McLean. Our McLean elementary is far from Tysons and pretty well insulated by a blanket of cash, for miles. Who knows what the next 15 years will bring and it will only take one hot shot superintendent in Arlington to do some crazy redistricting that iwould be deemed more fair to lower income students. In other words, if they wanted to bus kids from South Arlington to North Arlington for elementary school, it wouldn't be nearly the difficult logistical undertaking that it would be in FCPS. I also agree that Yorktown is slipping.

Yeah. Arlington, I think, is way more likely to end up with a creative solution of this nature.

Here's hoping. Lots of really bad press this year. It would be great to see some action on this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We chose McLean over N. Arlington for a few reasons. First, both school systems absolutely have their problems and are overcrowded, and FCPS is losing great teachers everyday $$$ to Arlington and Loudoun. That said, with Arlington being so much smaller than FCPS, we felt that you'd probably be more likely to get a "surprise" at some point in Arlington than would be likely in McLean. Our McLean elementary is far from Tysons and pretty well insulated by a blanket of cash, for miles. Who knows what the next 15 years will bring and it will only take one hot shot superintendent in Arlington to do some crazy redistricting that iwould be deemed more fair to lower income students. In other words, if they wanted to bus kids from South Arlington to North Arlington for elementary school, it wouldn't be nearly the difficult logistical undertaking that it would be in FCPS. I also agree that Yorktown is slipping.

We are also in McLean and our schools hasn't lost any good teachers to Arlington. Any teachers who have left for financial reasons have gone to areas with a much lower COL than Arlington.

[Anonymous]

Our Arl. school has picked up several Mclean teachers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our Arl. school has picked up several Mclean teachers.

They aren't the good ones, at least not yet.