Specifically on-topic contributors to the Drew boundary issue only please -

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I thought Gilliam Place was only passed because it was seniors housing. Why are we assuming so many kids?

No, silly. The push-back from neighbor's only resulting in the entire building not being family-sized units. Only a small number are age-limited. But, even grandparents can have custody of minor children sometimes. I don't think there will be as many as other CAFs, but there will still be more. That block had no housing, now it will have over 100 units, all of the people in those units are low-income. Just how many kids is still a guessing game. Arlington Mill PU has over 88 ED students. Worth it to note that this was a Safeway and incorporated no housing prior to being built. Buchanan Gardens PU had been mainly 1 bedrooms and had few children. It was renovated to 2 and 3 bedrooms and now has over 90 ED students living in that PU. I don't think it's right that all three CAFs should be zoned to one school, especially when only one of those 3 is in the Barcroft walk zone. Gilliam should go to Fleet and the Henry PUs south of the Pike should go to Drew.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought Gilliam Place was only passed because it was seniors housing. Why are we assuming so many kids?

No, silly. The push-back from neighbor's only resulting in the entire building not being family-sized units. Only a small number are age-limited. But, even grandparents can have custody of minor children sometimes. I don't think there will be as many as other CAFs, but there will still be more. That block had no housing, now it will have over 100 units, all of the people in those units are low-income. Just how many kids is still a guessing game. Arlington Mill PU has over 88 ED students. Worth it to note that this was a Safeway and incorporated no housing prior to being built. Buchanan Gardens PU had been mainly 1 bedrooms and had few children. It was renovated to 2 and 3 bedrooms and now has over 90 ED students living in that PU. I don't think it's right that all three CAFs should be zoned to one school, especially when only one of those 3 is in the Barcroft walk zone. Gilliam should go to Fleet and the Henry PUs south of the Pike should go to Drew.

Ok. Yeah I agree.
I’m wondering about long term for CAF’s though.
As I understand, dedicated low rent apartments see much less turn over? Is that correct? Is it possible these buildings will eventually start sending considerably fewer kids? I know that doesn’t help now, but could we start seeing a shift in 10 years?

[Anonymous]

Uh, it wasn't a Safeway, it was a Presbyterian Church. Have you ever been on Columbia Pike? But yes, will will have lots and lots of kids. And no, if the kids move out, then the family will need less space and move to a smaller unit (and pay less). So these units will still have turnover. That's not changing. These are family units intended for people with kids.

[Anonymous]

It would be helpful to know more about the plans for Drew next year. The choice of principal seems positive, based on the growth of Hoffman-Boston, but overall, being redistricted to Drew is being treated as a punishment, not as something that could be positive.

Assuming the Montessori teachers are moving to Henry, what is the plan for hiring new staff? Is the expectation that teachers will be transferred from the sending schools?

Is the plan to keep a STEAM focus at Drew? How is that being implemented?

How do they plan to integrate 400 new students into the school- are they keeping the existing traditions, or do they plan to develop new traditions?

It looks like Drew has Odyssey of the Mind and Model UN teams- will those continue when Montessori moves?

Give people reasons to be excited about Drew. Otherwise, we're assuming it will be test prep, tutoring and Saturday school, like Carlin Springs, given the 80% predicted FARMS rate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Uh, it wasn't a Safeway, it was a Presbyterian Church. Have you ever been on Columbia Pike? But yes, will will have lots and lots of kids. And no, if the kids move out, then the family will need less space and move to a smaller unit (and pay less). So these units will still have turnover. That's not changing. These are family units intended for people with kids.

Arlington Mill was a Safeway, Gilliam was a church. Like I said.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Uh, it wasn't a Safeway, it was a Presbyterian Church. Have you ever been on Columbia Pike? But yes, will will have lots and lots of kids. And no, if the kids move out, then the family will need less space and move to a smaller unit (and pay less). So these units will still have turnover. That's not changing. These are family units intended for people with kids.

Since when? It was a Safeway when I was a child in the 80s. It was remade into a school for troubled kids in the 90s. Was it a church in the 70s?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought Gilliam Place was only passed because it was seniors housing. Why are we assuming so many kids?

No, silly. The push-back from neighbor's only resulting in the entire building not being family-sized units. Only a small number are age-limited. But, even grandparents can have custody of minor children sometimes. I don't think there will be as many as other CAFs, but there will still be more. That block had no housing, now it will have over 100 units, all of the people in those units are low-income. Just how many kids is still a guessing game. Arlington Mill PU has over 88 ED students. Worth it to note that this was a Safeway and incorporated no housing prior to being built. Buchanan Gardens PU had been mainly 1 bedrooms and had few children. It was renovated to 2 and 3 bedrooms and now has over 90 ED students living in that PU. I don't think it's right that all three CAFs should be zoned to one school, especially when only one of those 3 is in the Barcroft walk zone. Gilliam should go to Fleet and the Henry PUs south of the Pike should go to Drew.

Agree with this. It is way past time to confront elected leaders and convince them that they need to coordinate and plan and distribute affordable housing in south Arlington, or get replaced by politicians who will. Yes, there is less market rate affordable housing in arlington than there was in the 1990s, but that trend is separate from our schools, which are more segregated and have a higher percentage of disadvantaged studentd than they did in the 1990s. That is because the people who use affordable housing now are families, whereas before they were working age adults. We simply can't keep building these 200 unit complexes without any foresight or evaluation of the impact on infrastructure, or any discussion at all, simply because AH is a political sacred cow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought Gilliam Place was only passed because it was seniors housing. Why are we assuming so many kids?

No, silly. The push-back from neighbor's only resulting in the entire building not being family-sized units. Only a small number are age-limited. But, even grandparents can have custody of minor children sometimes. I don't think there will be as many as other CAFs, but there will still be more. That block had no housing, now it will have over 100 units, all of the people in those units are low-income. Just how many kids is still a guessing game. Arlington Mill PU has over 88 ED students. Worth it to note that this was a Safeway and incorporated no housing prior to being built. Buchanan Gardens PU had been mainly 1 bedrooms and had few children. It was renovated to 2 and 3 bedrooms and now has over 90 ED students living in that PU. I don't think it's right that all three CAFs should be zoned to one school, especially when only one of those 3 is in the Barcroft walk zone. Gilliam should go to Fleet and the Henry PUs south of the Pike should go to Drew.

Agree with this. It is way past time to confront elected leaders and convince them that they need to coordinate and plan and distribute affordable housing in south Arlington, or get replaced by politicians who will. Yes, there is less market rate affordable housing in arlington than there was in the 1990s, but that trend is separate from our schools, which are more segregated and have a higher percentage of disadvantaged studentd than they did in the 1990s. That is because the people who use affordable housing now are families, whereas before they were working age adults. We simply can't keep building these 200 unit complexes without any foresight or evaluation of the impact on infrastructure, or any discussion at all, simply because AH is a political sacred cow.

OP here. Couldn't agree more. Now, what can we do to make the new boundaries better across schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Uh, it wasn't a Safeway, it was a Presbyterian Church. Have you ever been on Columbia Pike? But yes, will will have lots and lots of kids. And no, if the kids move out, then the family will need less space and move to a smaller unit (and pay less). So these units will still have turnover. That's not changing. These are family units intended for people with kids.

Since when? It was a Safeway when I was a child in the 80s. It was remade into a school for troubled kids in the 90s. Was it a church in the 70s?

PP was confused, which is understandable considering HOW MANY new CAFs are being built while not a single solitary unit of market rate AH is being torn down along Columbia Pike. Arlington Mill was a Safeway. Not housing. Gilliam Place was a church, not housing. Columbia Hills was a parking lot, and it will now be housing.

Anyway, back to the point, how can APS do the best job with what they have inherited, which is concentrated poverty and residential segregation. I think they have to try to do a slightly better job with the Drew/Fleet/Barcroft/Abingdon boundary. I could see pulling from across 4MR if it was doing something for diversity, because it doesn't really make sense in any other context. But it doesn't seem to really be doing that, either. The PUs from Abingdon are further away and won't do anything on the diversity end. I think they have gotten it right for Oakridge and Hoffman-Boston, or as right as they could given the constraints. I think the middle Pike area needs some work. Alcova to Fleet, taking Gilliam, Henry PUs S of the Pike to Drew, and Abingdon PUs that were slated for Drew up to Barcroft. I don't believe their fr/l numbers take Gilliam into account, since those kids aren't living there yet. There is no way that the school will be at 40/50% fr/l with three large CAFs zoned to it. They only project seats, not future fr/l rates. They aren't doing Barcroft any favors with the current map, either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought Gilliam Place was only passed because it was seniors housing. Why are we assuming so many kids?

No, silly. The push-back from neighbor's only resulting in the entire building not being family-sized units. Only a small number are age-limited. But, even grandparents can have custody of minor children sometimes. I don't think there will be as many as other CAFs, but there will still be more. That block had no housing, now it will have over 100 units, all of the people in those units are low-income. Just how many kids is still a guessing game. Arlington Mill PU has over 88 ED students. Worth it to note that this was a Safeway and incorporated no housing prior to being built. Buchanan Gardens PU had been mainly 1 bedrooms and had few children. It was renovated to 2 and 3 bedrooms and now has over 90 ED students living in that PU. I don't think it's right that all three CAFs should be zoned to one school, especially when only one of those 3 is in the Barcroft walk zone. Gilliam should go to Fleet and the Henry PUs south of the Pike should go to Drew.

Agree with this. It is way past time to confront elected leaders and convince them that they need to coordinate and plan and distribute affordable housing in south Arlington, or get replaced by politicians who will. Yes, there is less market rate affordable housing in arlington than there was in the 1990s, but that trend is separate from our schools, which are more segregated and have a higher percentage of disadvantaged studentd than they did in the 1990s. That is because the people who use affordable housing now are families, whereas before they were working age adults. We simply can't keep building these 200 unit complexes without any foresight or evaluation of the impact on infrastructure, or any discussion at all, simply because AH is a political sacred cow.

OP here. Couldn't agree more. Now, what can we do to make the new boundaries better across schools?

Frankly, I think we should implement the discussion map optimized for "demographics". After all, aps staff basically proposed the "efficiency" discussion map without modification. Even with that demographics map, rates would vary from 35 to 64 across the schools. That's a hell of a lot better than 32-92 under the proposal shown Wednesday.

[Anonymous]

I wish I had a way of overlaying the demographics and the proximity maps on top of each other. I think they intentionally find the stupidest map they can create for demographics just to make people see how ridiculous boundaries would be if we consider diversity.

Someone who has a better visualization ability than I do: what would things look like if we concocted a mash-up of proximity and diversity?

[Anonymous]

I thought from the beginning it should have been the diversity map. After releasing this ridiculous map, it should have been obvious to all.
Also. Randolph is 92% Farms.
92% and no one cares.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wish I had a way of overlaying the demographics and the proximity maps on top of each other. I think they intentionally find the stupidest map they can create for demographics just to make people see how ridiculous boundaries would be if we consider diversity.

Someone who has a better visualization ability than I do: what would things look like if we concocted a mash-up of proximity and diversity?

You don't need a mapping program or spatial analysis to do this. Low income students are highly, highly concentrated in specific planning units. Basically, the Pike west of Glebe needs to be cracked across as many schools as possible so that SFH have a prayer of kinda balancing out AH at each school. Unfortunately it's a matter of busing apartment dwellers out because, I'm pretty sure, they vastly outnumber kids in SFH. It's a little different t than busing in the 70s and 80, because Nauck is largely a neighborhood of SFH and duplexes, then and now. We could have bused white kids in but that was a political no go, then as now too. Can't really bus kids into Randolph and Barcroft and Drew and carlin that aren't already zoned there, there just aren't enough.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I thought from the beginning it should have been the diversity map. After releasing this ridiculous map, it should have been obvious to all.
Also. Randolph is 92% Farms.
92% and no one cares.

And no one will care. We're at 50% farms and the AH mafia will never stop; it's their job to do this, it's their paycheck, literally, and it's how people in NA sleep at night and call themselves liberal. AH industry won't ever say, ok, that's enough, and put them selves out of work. things will only change when NA feels the consequences or gets tired of paying for this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish I had a way of overlaying the demographics and the proximity maps on top of each other. I think they intentionally find the stupidest map they can create for demographics just to make people see how ridiculous boundaries would be if we consider diversity.

Someone who has a better visualization ability than I do: what would things look like if we concocted a mash-up of proximity and diversity?

You don't need a mapping program or spatial analysis to do this. Low income students are highly, highly concentrated in specific planning units. Basically, the Pike west of Glebe needs to be cracked across as many schools as possible so that SFH have a prayer of kinda balancing out AH at each school. Unfortunately it's a matter of busing apartment dwellers out because, I'm pretty sure, they vastly outnumber kids in SFH. It's a little different t than busing in the 70s and 80, because Nauck is largely a neighborhood of SFH and duplexes, then and now. We could have bused white kids in but that was a political no go, then as now too. Can't really bus kids into Randolph and Barcroft and Drew and carlin that aren't already zoned there, there just aren't enough.

There are more than 100 UMC kids in the Fairlington unit across 395. It is already a bused unit- so not a walk zone issue. Move it to drew making room for Columbia Forest at Abingdon. It would make a dramatic difference.