APS: Think the "no move" campaign is going to work?

[Anonymous]

The optics of a forced move from Key still disturb me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ready to rip the bandaid off tomorrow and then move on to speculating / stressing about the boundary debates.

I wonder how long that will take? Is there a certain time it HAS to be resolved, like X months before Reed opens? We're in a PU that will certainly be affected and I'd rather know sooner than later where DC will be going.

The timeline has boundaries being finalized December 2020 so it will be ready for Kindergarten Info Night/registration that begins in January 2021.

That should be a fun ride. My kid will be aging out of elementary after next year, but I’m watching the drama with interest.

is life in Arlington that boring?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The optics of a forced move from Key still disturb me.

Stop. At this point, just stop.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The optics of a forced move from Key still disturb me.

Moving an immersion school from one location with a cluster of hispanic families to another location with a cluster of hispanic families. Opening up a school in a neighborhood where poorer kids who don't speak spanish can now walk? The teachers who don't want to move from the Key location have carefully crafted their message.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The optics of a forced move from Key still disturb me.

You’ll get over it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Heard a piece on NPR WAMU this morning discussing the vote tonight, and how they are moving the 3 schools.

The rationale for the move was only lightly touched on, but they interviewed a Key parent who said that transportation would be an issue at the new ATS site; no mention by reporter that they would have the option to return to a neighborhood school.

why should they have to?

It was clearly a Key parent who essentially used WAMU as a PR hatchet job.

They talked about how 2500 students would be moved without mentioning that NOT moving them would require thousands more to moved because of capacity imbalance

If anyone knows someone at WAMU, they should let them know they were played for fools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The optics of a forced move from Key still disturb me.

Stop. At this point, just stop.

Yeah, paying to move a Spanish program with declining native Spanish enrollment and participation is a waste of money, and with our budget crunch it looks terrible to waste money moving a fading program.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The optics of a forced move from Key still disturb me.

DP - I think those optics are good.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The optics of a forced move from Key still disturb me.

The optics of an extremely well resourced option school (Key has a huge PTA budget) intentionally misleading the public so they can stay in a certain building at the expense of neighborhood students disturbs me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The optics of a forced move from Key still disturb me.

The optics of an extremely well resourced option school (Key has a huge PTA budget) intentionally misleading the public so they can stay in a certain building at the expense of neighborhood students disturbs me.

Key’s 2018 tax filing shows they had net income of $128K. Wow!

https://pdf.guidestar.org/PDF_Images/2018/541/260/2018-541260487-10480451-Z.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He may be right. If they were just switching ATS with Key they could say it’s an option location issue, but declaring that all of McKinley’s planning units are being reassigned sounds more like a boundary change. What procedural defect is being claimed? Even though they’ve called it not a boundary process, it does seem like they’ve given tons of notice and opportunity to comment etc., and presumably that’s basically what is required. That, and a school board vote. The proposed swap was procedurally defective because they let the superintendent declare it a go, when it probably qualified as a boundary change thus necessitating a school board vote. Does the failure to call it a boundary decision create a problem?

Here's what the policy says you need to do for a boundary change:

When the Superintendent has determined that one or more of the conditions above exists and that boundary changes should be considered, the Superintendent shall recommend to the SchoolBoard the process for consideration of boundary changes. The recommended framework shall include:

1.The proposed schedule for the boundary change process,
2.Identification of the schools and communities to be affected, and
3.A community engagement plan and process to keep affected schools and communities informed throughout the consideration of boundary changes.

The School Board shall act on the recommendation

So yeah, they've done that.

The one question I have is why they’ve refused to call this a boundary change. Are there annoying procedural requirements you can avoid by treating it as something other than a boundary process? Or maybe they’re just trying to be very clear about this being a 2-step process. I’m not familiar enough with school board rules to know if they were trying to bypass something or if this really is just semantics. Aside from calling it not a boundary change, they seem to have followed the rule quoted above.

Semantics.
It's not a boundary process because they are not determining specific boundaries. Of course boundaries to be determined are impacted by this decision; but that doesn't make this an actual boundary process.

I think I understand the argument now. If they say it’s not a boundary decision, they don’t need to account for the cost. This may present a legitimate problem for the school board if the decision gets challenged and we’ll have to go through this whole process over again. I think calling it not a boundary decision is incorrect, but I had assumed it was a trivial technicality because it looked as if the school board had jumped through the same procedural and data hoops as would be required for a boundary decision. But maybe not?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He may be right. If they were just switching ATS with Key they could say it’s an option location issue, but declaring that all of McKinley’s planning units are being reassigned sounds more like a boundary change. What procedural defect is being claimed? Even though they’ve called it not a boundary process, it does seem like they’ve given tons of notice and opportunity to comment etc., and presumably that’s basically what is required. That, and a school board vote. The proposed swap was procedurally defective because they let the superintendent declare it a go, when it probably qualified as a boundary change thus necessitating a school board vote. Does the failure to call it a boundary decision create a problem?

Here's what the policy says you need to do for a boundary change:

When the Superintendent has determined that one or more of the conditions above exists and that boundary changes should be considered, the Superintendent shall recommend to the SchoolBoard the process for consideration of boundary changes. The recommended framework shall include:

1.The proposed schedule for the boundary change process,
2.Identification of the schools and communities to be affected, and
3.A community engagement plan and process to keep affected schools and communities informed throughout the consideration of boundary changes.

The School Board shall act on the recommendation

So yeah, they've done that.

The one question I have is why they’ve refused to call this a boundary change. Are there annoying procedural requirements you can avoid by treating it as something other than a boundary process? Or maybe they’re just trying to be very clear about this being a 2-step process. I’m not familiar enough with school board rules to know if they were trying to bypass something or if this really is just semantics. Aside from calling it not a boundary change, they seem to have followed the rule quoted above.

Semantics.
It's not a boundary process because they are not determining specific boundaries. Of course boundaries to be determined are impacted by this decision; but that doesn't make this an actual boundary process.

I think I understand the argument now. If they say it’s not a boundary decision, they don’t need to account for the cost. This may present a legitimate problem for the school board if the decision gets challenged and we’ll have to go through this whole process over again. I think calling it not a boundary decision is incorrect, but I had assumed it was a trivial technicality because it looked as if the school board had jumped through the same procedural and data hoops as would be required for a boundary decision. But maybe not?

If you’re threatening a law suit because you didn’t get your way, you are trash.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He may be right. If they were just switching ATS with Key they could say it’s an option location issue, but declaring that all of McKinley’s planning units are being reassigned sounds more like a boundary change. What procedural defect is being claimed? Even though they’ve called it not a boundary process, it does seem like they’ve given tons of notice and opportunity to comment etc., and presumably that’s basically what is required. That, and a school board vote. The proposed swap was procedurally defective because they let the superintendent declare it a go, when it probably qualified as a boundary change thus necessitating a school board vote. Does the failure to call it a boundary decision create a problem?

Here's what the policy says you need to do for a boundary change:

When the Superintendent has determined that one or more of the conditions above exists and that boundary changes should be considered, the Superintendent shall recommend to the SchoolBoard the process for consideration of boundary changes. The recommended framework shall include:

1.The proposed schedule for the boundary change process,
2.Identification of the schools and communities to be affected, and
3.A community engagement plan and process to keep affected schools and communities informed throughout the consideration of boundary changes.

The School Board shall act on the recommendation

So yeah, they've done that.

The one question I have is why they’ve refused to call this a boundary change. Are there annoying procedural requirements you can avoid by treating it as something other than a boundary process? Or maybe they’re just trying to be very clear about this being a 2-step process. I’m not familiar enough with school board rules to know if they were trying to bypass something or if this really is just semantics. Aside from calling it not a boundary change, they seem to have followed the rule quoted above.

Semantics.
It's not a boundary process because they are not determining specific boundaries. Of course boundaries to be determined are impacted by this decision; but that doesn't make this an actual boundary process.

I think I understand the argument now. If they say it’s not a boundary decision, they don’t need to account for the cost. This may present a legitimate problem for the school board if the decision gets challenged and we’ll have to go through this whole process over again. I think calling it not a boundary decision is incorrect, but I had assumed it was a trivial technicality because it looked as if the school board had jumped through the same procedural and data hoops as would be required for a boundary decision. But maybe not?

There's nothing in the policy about needing to take cost into consideration. Honestly the only thing they MAYBE didn't cover explicitly is demographics, but they were implicitly considered. Otherwise the process followed this policy.

https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/arlington/Board.nsf/files/AZ2V3D5FA2B8/$file/B-2.1%20Boundaries.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think I understand the argument now. If they say it’s not a boundary decision, they don’t need to account for the cost. This may present a legitimate problem for the school board if the decision gets challenged and we’ll have to go through this whole process over again. I think calling it not a boundary decision is incorrect, but I had assumed it was a trivial technicality because it looked as if the school board had jumped through the same procedural and data hoops as would be required for a boundary decision. But maybe not?

By this logic, doing nothing is also a "boundary decision" because the imminent opening of Reed and the capacity shortage in the east would require redrawing boundaries too!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think I understand the argument now. If they say it’s not a boundary decision, they don’t need to account for the cost. This may present a legitimate problem for the school board if the decision gets challenged and we’ll have to go through this whole process over again. I think calling it not a boundary decision is incorrect, but I had assumed it was a trivial technicality because it looked as if the school board had jumped through the same procedural and data hoops as would be required for a boundary decision. But maybe not?

By this logic, doing nothing is also a "boundary decision" because the imminent opening of Reed and the capacity shortage in the east would require redrawing boundaries too!

It’s my post you’re responding to. Just to be clear, I take no position on the merits. Presumably the school board has staff lawyers who evaluate compliance with rules etc. I leave it to them to figure it all out.