McKinley stop hiding - The numbers show you are the ideal option school :

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Reed only overlaps with McKinley. It isn't really that close to other schools. That doesn't fit the narrative for some, but it's the truth.

You are kidding, right? Staff used one mile. Draw the radius. It is like 1.01 from Tuckahoe and just a tad further to Nottingham. You can’t use Goodgle maps. You have to draw the point to point distance. And isn’t it pretty darn close to ATS. And Glebe.

You are kidding, right? Look at the analysis. It is only within 1 mile of 1 school.

Can you read? One mile is an arbitrary cut off staff used. Reed is just over a mile to many schools.

[Anonymous]

I can read and I know the 1 mile cut off makes you mad, but they had to make the cutoff somewhere. If you want to go to 1.5 miles, Reed will intersect with more schools, but so will all the other ones.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I can read and I know the 1 mile cut off makes you mad, but they had to make the cutoff somewhere. If you want to go to 1.5 miles, Reed will intersect with more schools, but so will all the other ones.

Staff may have had to make sense of its nonsensical analysis. But I guarantee you the SB won’t give itself such a rigid cut off in thinking about these issues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Reed only overlaps with McKinley. It isn't really that close to other schools. That doesn't fit the narrative for some, but it's the truth.

You are kidding, right? Staff used one mile. Draw the radius. It is like 1.01 from Tuckahoe and just a tad further to Nottingham. You can’t use Goodgle maps. You have to draw the point to point distance. And isn’t it pretty darn close to ATS. And Glebe.

You are kidding, right? Look at the analysis. It is only within 1 mile of 1 school.

Can you read? One mile is an arbitrary cut off staff used. Reed is just over a mile to many schools.

It's not arbitrary, it's aimed at identifying areas where you may not be able to create compact boundaries for one school without taking from another school's walk zone where APS wouldn't otherwise have to provide transportation. One mile is the cut-off for bus service at the elementary level.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:McKinley's size would make it a good choice for a hybrid program. With both expeditionary learning and neighborhood walkers OP has an interesting idea.

McKinley as a location for an expeditionary learning program??? Sorry, just snorted the coffee out of my nose. Clearly you have never been to McKinley's campus. Unless those kids are going to be crawling through the backyards of Madison Manor, where exactly are these kids doing their "outdoor" learning?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When will these Nottingham parents give it a rest already

These are not necessarily Nottingham parents. There's a significant contingency that doesn't want either Key or ASFS to become an option school because they want more neighborhood schools over there. And there are several others schools that didn't make the top five in this round but are well aware they could become leading contenders if the criteria shifts a bit, especially around traffic and transit issues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Haha these numbers are pretty interesting - did you have to poke the bear? I think McKinley and Ashlawn have the largest number of students who transfer to ATS. That would be a great program to put at McKinley since the nearby communities have such high regard for ATS.

Glebe and Ashlawn have the highest number of transfers to ATS (~25% of ATS).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:McKinley's size would make it a good choice for a hybrid program. With both expeditionary learning and neighborhood walkers OP has an interesting idea.

McKinley as a location for an expeditionary learning program??? Sorry, just snorted the coffee out of my nose. Clearly you have never been to McKinley's campus. Unless those kids are going to be crawling through the backyards of Madison Manor, where exactly are these kids doing their "outdoor" learning?

On the three blades of grass over by the trailers!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Haha these numbers are pretty interesting - did you have to poke the bear? I think McKinley and Ashlawn have the largest number of students who transfer to ATS. That would be a great program to put at McKinley since the nearby communities have such high regard for ATS.

Glebe and Ashlawn have the highest number of transfers to ATS (~25% of ATS).

Highest number and also the closest schools. Wherever you move it, kids around it will apply in disproportionate numbers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:McKinley's size would make it a good choice for a hybrid program. With both expeditionary learning and neighborhood walkers OP has an interesting idea.

McKinley as a location for an expeditionary learning program??? Sorry, just snorted the coffee out of my nose. Clearly you have never been to McKinley's campus. Unless those kids are going to be crawling through the backyards of Madison Manor, where exactly are these kids doing their "outdoor" learning?

There is nothing in the expeditionary learning model that is specifically tied to outdoor/natural environment education, that's just the way APS/Campbell have decided to implement it. You can have expeditionary learning in the middle of a dense city, you just implement it differently. Not that I'm signing on the idea of McKinley as an option school, just making the broader point.

That said, developing a whole new curriculum is expensive, so I think the SB will be very reluctant to move Campbell to a location that would make the nature-based curriculum infeasible. Which is why this whole notion the staff came up with of choosing the locations and first and then not deciding which goes where later was always foolish, and I'm glad the SB has finally said so. It would be such a disaster to choose a slate of option schools only to realize after the decision is made that you don't have a suitable site for one of the schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:McKinley's size would make it a good choice for a hybrid program. With both expeditionary learning and neighborhood walkers OP has an interesting idea.

McKinley as a location for an expeditionary learning program??? Sorry, just snorted the coffee out of my nose. Clearly you have never been to McKinley's campus. Unless those kids are going to be crawling through the backyards of Madison Manor, where exactly are these kids doing their "outdoor" learning?

There is nothing in the expeditionary learning model that is specifically tied to outdoor/natural environment education, that's just the way APS/Campbell have decided to implement it. You can have expeditionary learning in the middle of a dense city, you just implement it differently. Not that I'm signing on the idea of McKinley as an option school, just making the broader point.

That said, developing a whole new curriculum is expensive, so I think the SB will be very reluctant to move Campbell to a location that would make the nature-based curriculum infeasible. Which is why this whole notion the staff came up with of choosing the locations and first and then not deciding which goes where later was always foolish, and I'm glad the SB has finally said so. It would be such a disaster to choose a slate of option schools only to realize after the decision is made that you don't have a suitable site for one of the schools.

Tuckahoe's "theme" is nature and it already has an extensive garden-- and it borders an Arlington park. If Campbell has to move, the Tuckahoe building is the closest thing to replicating what Campbell has now. As an alternative, the thing Nottingham has going for it over Tuckahoe is that Nottingham is on a much, much bigger piece of property and could expand to hold more students than Tuckahoe with trailers. Picking McKinley as the option site doesn't solve the fundamental problem of the overlapping walk zones among Discovery-Nottingham-Tuckahoe, not to mention that the SB had to move a bunch of preschool classes to Jamestown after Discovery opened because otherwise Jamestown would have had a bunch of empty classrooms too. The walk zones of McKinley and Reed don't overlap by that much-- mainly 14040, 14041, and 14042 (currently 103 kids total) and McKinley is overcapacity already by 100+ students and needed to shed about that many kids anyway. You could drawn the McKinley/Reed/Ashlawn/Glebe lines a number of different ways, but all three schools will easily fill to capacity with kids currently living in 22205. It is an entirely different story once you push into 22207 and 22213-- that's where APS has built too many neighborhood seats in the NW corner where it is less densely populated, especially when you add Jamestown into the Discovery-Tuckahoe-Nottingham equation. I am guessing APS would love to be able to move the preschool kids currently at Jamestown to a more centrally-located building too. It makes sense to shift more K-5 kids from Discovery to Jamestown, more Nottingham to Discovery, and then consolidate whatever is left of Nottingham and Tuckahoe into one of those two buildings. If Reed or McKinley or Ashlawn end up with extra space, then you bring the Jamestown preschool kids to one of those buildings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:McKinley's size would make it a good choice for a hybrid program. With both expeditionary learning and neighborhood walkers OP has an interesting idea.

McKinley as a location for an expeditionary learning program??? Sorry, just snorted the coffee out of my nose. Clearly you have never been to McKinley's campus. Unless those kids are going to be crawling through the backyards of Madison Manor, where exactly are these kids doing their "outdoor" learning?

There is nothing in the expeditionary learning model that is specifically tied to outdoor/natural environment education, that's just the way APS/Campbell have decided to implement it. You can have expeditionary learning in the middle of a dense city, you just implement it differently. Not that I'm signing on the idea of McKinley as an option school, just making the broader point.

That said, developing a whole new curriculum is expensive, so I think the SB will be very reluctant to move Campbell to a location that would make the nature-based curriculum infeasible. Which is why this whole notion the staff came up with of choosing the locations and first and then not deciding which goes where later was always foolish, and I'm glad the SB has finally said so. It would be such a disaster to choose a slate of option schools only to realize after the decision is made that you don't have a suitable site for one of the schools.

Tuckahoe's "theme" is nature and it already has an extensive garden-- and it borders an Arlington park. If Campbell has to move, the Tuckahoe building is the closest thing to replicating what Campbell has now. As an alternative, the thing Nottingham has going for it over Tuckahoe is that Nottingham is on a much, much bigger piece of property and could expand to hold more students than Tuckahoe with trailers. Picking McKinley as the option site doesn't solve the fundamental problem of the overlapping walk zones among Discovery-Nottingham-Tuckahoe, not to mention that the SB had to move a bunch of preschool classes to Jamestown after Discovery opened because otherwise Jamestown would have had a bunch of empty classrooms too. The walk zones of McKinley and Reed don't overlap by that much-- mainly 14040, 14041, and 14042 (currently 103 kids total) and McKinley is overcapacity already by 100+ students and needed to shed about that many kids anyway. You could drawn the McKinley/Reed/Ashlawn/Glebe lines a number of different ways, but all three schools will easily fill to capacity with kids currently living in 22205. It is an entirely different story once you push into 22207 and 22213-- that's where APS has built too many neighborhood seats in the NW corner where it is less densely populated, especially when you add Jamestown into the Discovery-Tuckahoe-Nottingham equation. I am guessing APS would love to be able to move the preschool kids currently at Jamestown to a more centrally-located building too. It makes sense to shift more K-5 kids from Discovery to Jamestown, more Nottingham to Discovery, and then consolidate whatever is left of Nottingham and Tuckahoe into one of those two buildings. If Reed or McKinley or Ashlawn end up with extra space, then you bring the Jamestown preschool kids to one of those buildings.

If they do anticipate moving Expeditionary, I suspect Tuckahoe may not be as safe as everyone thinks. This was just an analysis, not a commitment to take all of those corner schools off the table. I think once they have the full application figures, they'll realize they can't move Expeditionary into a larger-capacity site because there will be too much risk of not being able to fill seats and wasting a site that easily accommodate relocatables that Expeditionary doesn't need, so it's not a good fit for Nottingham. Same reasoning applies to Carlin Springs and every other school identified as a top candidate in the first round of analysis.

Even though Tuckahoe is in that corner, the rationale for eliminating corner schools from the analysis doesn't really apply there because they do have a lot of options for Tuckahoe students between Nottingham, McKinley and Reed. Tuckahoe has a much better site for the current Expeditionary program, and then that quadrant (which has one of the higher population growth rates in the county) doesn't lose as many potential seats for neighborhood growth (which they'll need if they put an option school in the NW quadrant).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If they do anticipate moving Expeditionary, I suspect Tuckahoe may not be as safe as everyone thinks. This was just an analysis, not a commitment to take all of those corner schools off the table. I think once they have the full application figures, they'll realize they can't move Expeditionary into a larger-capacity site because there will be too much risk of not being able to fill seats and wasting a site that easily accommodate relocatables that Expeditionary doesn't need, so it's not a good fit for Nottingham. Same reasoning applies to Carlin Springs and every other school identified as a top candidate in the first round of analysis.

Even though Tuckahoe is in that corner, the rationale for eliminating corner schools from the analysis doesn't really apply there because they do have a lot of options for Tuckahoe students between Nottingham, McKinley and Reed. Tuckahoe has a much better site for the current Expeditionary program, and then that quadrant (which has one of the higher population growth rates in the county) doesn't lose as many potential seats for neighborhood growth (which they'll need if they put an option school in the NW quadrant).

This is what I don't understand about the rationale, and I haven't had the chance to watch the video of the work session to see if it was explained better than in the written analysis. They seem to be operating under the presumption that smaller neighborhood schools will be fine because enough people will self select to the option schools. What if they don't? Then you have hugely massively overcrowded neighborhood schools with larger option schools sitting with vacant seats. IMO, option schools are a nice to have in Arlington, but the vast majority of parents don't even attempt the lotteries which says to me that the priority is neighborhood seats.

[Anonymous]

They probably don;t want Tuckahoe because they county has eyes on putting up apartment buildings all along Lee and Washington Bllvd out that way. They don't want to bus all those kids as they build that out. Isn't that what Chadwick said during the presentation. They want future kids to be walkers. That screams Tuckahoe to me. But, all those same arguments apply to Jamestown, which is also in a corner and will never have a very high growth rate because it's just big houses on big lots up there. Also surrounded by parkland. Why not look there

[Anonymous]

They should be worried about filling EL if they move it out of S Arlington. I don’t know that it will catch on with N Arlington. And there’s really no data on its popularity county wide.