NW APS parents, can we talk?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can we be more specific about the location of these open seats? Are we talking North of 50 and west of Old Dominion or Glebe? Should empty schools like Jamestown be included?

The excess seats will happen when Reed opens in 2021. Given that there are lots of different ways they could draw the Reed boundaries to shift populations, the extra seats could end up pretty much wherever the board/staff want them to be. But generally speaking, yes, the seats will be north of 50 and West of Glebe.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m new to Arlington and am currently zoned to one of the listed schools. Silly me thought I could send my kids to the neighborhood school 2 blocks to my house. Can someone please explain to me why the option programs are preferable to having kids attend a neighborhood school and allow transfers in from overcrowded schools?

It's not that they're preferable, just that they have them already and are considering moving them to make the system more efficient.

You are not guaranteed to go to the school closest to your house, ever, even if there were only neighborhood schools in APS. The boundary has to be drawn somewhere, sometimes even 2 blocks from the school.

[Anonymous]

We can talk but as APS keeps changing the criteria and what it seems to want, I don’t know how effective any discussions would be.

We need to see what they come up with on April 30 and what this new questionnaire asks about. Frankly, having had my kids go through hellish overcrowding I want to make sure they share the love on that going forward. And I feel like they have to do something about schools that are under capacity. Yes, I’m talking about Jamestown. It was so underenrolled they had to under the cover of night move preschools programs there to make it look less ridiculous. It has a ton of land for trailers too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We can talk but as APS keeps changing the criteria and what it seems to want, I don’t know how effective any discussions would be.

We need to see what they come up with on April 30 and what this new questionnaire asks about. Frankly, having had my kids go through hellish overcrowding I want to make sure they share the love on that going forward. And I feel like they have to do something about schools that are under capacity. Yes, I’m talking about Jamestown. It was so underenrolled they had to under the cover of night move preschools programs there to make it look less ridiculous. It has a ton of land for trailers too.

How big are preschool classrooms? 24 or less? Does APS bus those preschoolers up to Jamestown...or are parents responsible for transportation?

Seems like Jamestown has become the latest Option Program in Arlington. Preschool Option for the rich North Arlingtons.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m new to Arlington and am currently zoned to one of the listed schools. Silly me thought I could send my kids to the neighborhood school 2 blocks to my house. Can someone please explain to me why the option programs are preferable to having kids attend a neighborhood school and allow transfers in from overcrowded schools?

Taking a bus won’t make whatever school you may be at in the future any less of a neighborhood school. It’s a neighborhood school because the kids in your neighborhood go there. Lots of us already bus our kids. It’s no big deal. None of these schools are far away. My kid is on the bus maybe 10-15 minutes a day and as a side bonus, he loves it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We can talk but as APS keeps changing the criteria and what it seems to want, I don’t know how effective any discussions would be.

We need to see what they come up with on April 30 and what this new questionnaire asks about. Frankly, having had my kids go through hellish overcrowding I want to make sure they share the love on that going forward. And I feel like they have to do something about schools that are under capacity. Yes, I’m talking about Jamestown. It was so underenrolled they had to under the cover of night move preschools programs there to make it look less ridiculous. It has a ton of land for trailers too.

How big are preschool classrooms? 24 or less? Does APS bus those preschoolers up to Jamestown...or are parents responsible for transportation?

Seems like Jamestown has become the latest Option Program in Arlington. Preschool Option for the rich North Arlingtons.

Google Virginia Preschool Initiative. There are income eligibility requirements to attend any of the VPI classrooms in elementary schools. Definitely not an option for “rich North Arlington’s.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We can talk but as APS keeps changing the criteria and what it seems to want, I don’t know how effective any discussions would be.

We need to see what they come up with on April 30 and what this new questionnaire asks about. Frankly, having had my kids go through hellish overcrowding I want to make sure they share the love on that going forward. And I feel like they have to do something about schools that are under capacity. Yes, I’m talking about Jamestown. It was so underenrolled they had to under the cover of night move preschools programs there to make it look less ridiculous. It has a ton of land for trailers too.

How big are preschool classrooms? 24 or less? Does APS bus those preschoolers up to Jamestown...or are parents responsible for transportation?

Seems like Jamestown has become the latest Option Program in Arlington. Preschool Option for the rich North Arlingtons.

Google Virginia Preschool Initiative. There are income eligibility requirements to attend any of the VPI classrooms in elementary schools. Definitely not an option for “rich North Arlington’s.”

The Jamestown preschool is Montessori, not VPI, and is only open to families living in North Arlington.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We can talk but as APS keeps changing the criteria and what it seems to want, I don’t know how effective any discussions would be.

We need to see what they come up with on April 30 and what this new questionnaire asks about. Frankly, having had my kids go through hellish overcrowding I want to make sure they share the love on that going forward. And I feel like they have to do something about schools that are under capacity. Yes, I’m talking about Jamestown. It was so underenrolled they had to under the cover of night move preschools programs there to make it look less ridiculous. It has a ton of land for trailers too.

How big are preschool classrooms? 24 or less? Does APS bus those preschoolers up to Jamestown...or are parents responsible for transportation?

Seems like Jamestown has become the latest Option Program in Arlington. Preschool Option for the rich North Arlingtons.

Google Virginia Preschool Initiative. There are income eligibility requirements to attend any of the VPI classrooms in elementary schools. Definitely not an option for “rich North Arlington’s.”

Read the APS website maybe you will learn something. VPI children could go to school closer to home if it was only VPI. Instead it looks like we bus VPI across the county so rich kids can do Montessori.

https://www.apsva.us/early-childhood-prek/

[Anonymous]

True that. APS subsidizes rich kids in a boutique Montessori program. I dream about APS cutting the entire program after they kick them out of Henry.

[Anonymous]

Wow, we managed to make it all the way to page 2 before started acting like assholes. Well done, everyone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:True that. APS subsidizes rich kids in a boutique Montessori program. I dream about APS cutting the entire program after they kick them out of Henry.

It is the Upper North Arlington version of Integration Station What a great way to let your kids mingle with the poors. Jamestown busing in diversity....Thanks North Arlington!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are not going to have an excess of 500-600 seats. I don't know where you got that number, but that ain't happening in 2021 when Reed opens.

Do you know they are building 27 townhouses on Lee Highway? Nine single family homes at Sycamore across the street from the metro? My street alone has four new houses going in where there were three homes (and no school aged children).

Also, APS is assuming in all of this that all schools has the same number of transfers. Tuckahoe and Nottingham COMBINED had fewer than Jamestown.

Of course we want to talk and come up with a solution. We are likely losing a school. But, we can't roll over and let APS use their same awful projections and data to overcrowd us the day Reed opens.

Everyone needs to be willing to listen to these types of things. Those of you who don't care or are doing math on the back of an envelope need to listen to those of us who have been screwed over and over by APS.

OP here, I agree we need to be talking about this. As to the 500-600 figure, 600 is APS’s estimate, 500 seemed more reasonable to me because of things like the townhouses. But even if the real number is 350 we’re still getting a program, so maybe a good starting point for the discussion is to say we should only be considering sites with smaller capacities. If we set the cap at 600 (because we can’t reasonably expect to convince APS to back off their numbers, we’re going to have to work with them) that would narrow the pool of candidate sites we should consider to Barrett, Jamestown, Nottingham and Tuckahoe (my school is on that list, so this isn’t self-serving). Thoughts?

APS said it wants sites that can add capacity via trailers. Barrett has far too many walkers and wouldn't be considered in the NW quadrant where they are targeting.

For this to happen, I want APS to show the SB how it calculated savings in transportation costs and what kids are going to be going to school further away from their home vs. those now going closer. The whole scenario with Key becoming a neighborhood school makes sense to me, but I don't live there and my kids aren't in immersion. If that decision is made and Key goes somewhere else, I'm guessing it won't come to the NW Quadrant. So what would they put there? ATS? That would be ridiculous to move that program further North.

I want to find solutions, but I want a better identification of the problem now and some thought into the problems that might be created by these solutions. Is it better to draw odd boundaries than have ATS at Nottingham/Tuckahoe/Discovery etc? What about the cluster of five schools within one mile of one another in S. Arlington? How will moving an option program there impact boundaries and how far kids travel on the bus?

I think ultimately moving Key immersion out of the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor will be what pushes an option program into NW. if you look at the list of schools assigned to the Key immersion program, the only potential sites near any kind of Spanish-speaking population are Long Branch, ATS and Barrett. Putting it at Long Branch undermines the goal of moving it away from Key, so that’s probably a non-starter. That means the option program in NW will either be Immersion at Barrett or ATS at one of the other schools (it could be any of them but won’t be Barrett, because there would be no point to moving two option programs instead of one to end up using the same sites).

I hear what you’re saying about Barrett walkers, the same argument applies to Nottingham. If we accepted that argument it would point to the best solution being ATS to Jamestown or Tuckahoe so Immersion could go to ATS, but those outcomes would also be problematic for how rich/white the ATS program would become (especially at Jamestown), so I’m not sure we should eliminate either Barrett or Nottingham just yet.

The difference between the Barrett walkers and the Nottingham walkers is that many of those walkers' families don't have a car, or have one car in the household, or have single working parents, or any other number of complicating logistical factors that make walking to school a necessity and not a perk. If that population had to rely on parents driving to pick up kids from extended day or attend parent teacher conferences or after school activities it could be extremely difficult and/or impossible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:True that. APS subsidizes rich kids in a boutique Montessori program. I dream about APS cutting the entire program after they kick them out of Henry.

Actually, once you factor in the extra sessions at Barcroft and the immersion schools, they cost as much or more per student than Montessori does.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:True that. APS subsidizes rich kids in a boutique Montessori program. I dream about APS cutting the entire program after they kick them out of Henry.

Actually, once you factor in the extra sessions at Barcroft and the immersion schools, they cost as much or more per student than Montessori does.

Also, 2/3rds of preschool Montessori seats are reserved for families making less than 80k a year. Children with aps preschool experience are guaranteed access to the Drew Henry program, and they mostly fill it. so basically, rich kids are by design a minority of the Montessori students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We can talk but as APS keeps changing the criteria and what it seems to want, I don’t know how effective any discussions would be.

We need to see what they come up with on April 30 and what this new questionnaire asks about. Frankly, having had my kids go through hellish overcrowding I want to make sure they share the love on that going forward. And I feel like they have to do something about schools that are under capacity. Yes, I’m talking about Jamestown. It was so underenrolled they had to under the cover of night move preschools programs there to make it look less ridiculous. It has a ton of land for trailers too.

How big are preschool classrooms? 24 or less? Does APS bus those preschoolers up to Jamestown...or are parents responsible for transportation?

Seems like Jamestown has become the latest Option Program in Arlington. Preschool Option for the rich North Arlingtons.

Google Virginia Preschool Initiative. There are income eligibility requirements to attend any of the VPI classrooms in elementary schools. Definitely not an option for “rich North Arlington’s.”

The Jamestown preschool is Montessori, not VPI, and is only open to families living in North Arlington.

Not true. 2/3 of the seats at all Montessori classes are reserved for low income.