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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I actually respected how she professionally handled the process and parents at McKinley - until now. This is lower than the trash that McKrazy and Data Dudes were spewing out.

Eh...I felt very silenced as a pro-move McKinley parent and I know others felt exactly the same. Pretty much out of the gate, the emails were - here's what we think, here's your talking points, here's your chance to go tell the Board how anti-move you are. No balance AT ALL. Very uncomfortable. After a few of those emails, who is going to show up at a PTA meeting or a SB meeting and openly disagree? A total silencing effect.

I'm sure she'd say the people in the room at a first PTA meeting to discuss this issue all agreed with her. See: self-selection. You are representing a lot more people than the people who show up to one of your insular, clubby PTA meetings. Or you're supposed to at least.

I'm sorry, you deserved better from your PTA. It's bugged me that the PTA took sides on an issue where the central question was: who gets to stay in our community? Families in McKinley's walk zone seemed content to wave good-bye to the McKinley families north of I-66 and take away any chance of them staying in the program once Reed opens, so that walkers could keep walking. PTAs shouldn't be picking sides on issues like that, at least not without a broad base of support that includes families who would be worse off. That would require giving all affected families a genuine opportunity to be heard before deciding the PTA's position. It's sad that this didn't happen here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

“Apparently Claremont is running a "50:50" model program with 28% Spanish speakers, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem to keep it.”

Where did you pull these numbers from? Looks like Claremont is 51.8% Hispanic according to the APS Stats.

Yes, not all Hispanics are Spanish speakers. But I highly doubt there is that much of a drop off.

https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Civil-Rights-Table-1-2019-12-13-web-002.pdf

Questions 12 and 13 have different percentages, 39% and 28%, not sure what the difference is

https://www.apsva.us/engage/planning-for-2020-elementary-school-boundary-process/faqs-elementary-school-planning-for-2021-boundary/

28% is the Sept 2019 percentage. I think 39% was from 2 years prior. Quite a drop. I didn’t realize it was that low.

[Anonymous]

I don’t know. I think McK PTA could rightfully advocate for their school to survive. I think where they went wrong was in not seeing the move to Reed as part of its survival and advocating HARD as part of a deal to support the moves that a very high percentage of its current walkers get bussed to Reed. That would’ve been fighting for the community writ large. But she really flubbed that. The letter to WaPo has nothing to say about McKinley. She’s way off topic as a PTA President. Feel mostly sorry for all the nice McK families I know. What a toxic situation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know. I think McK PTA could rightfully advocate for their school to survive. I think where they went wrong was in not seeing the move to Reed as part of its survival and advocating HARD as part of a deal to support the moves that a very high percentage of its current walkers get bussed to Reed. That would’ve been fighting for the community writ large. But she really flubbed that. The letter to WaPo has nothing to say about McKinley. She’s way off topic as a PTA President. Feel mostly sorry for all the nice McK families I know. What a toxic situation.

That's the thing, they weren't concerned about the community, they were fighting for walkability.

Because moving the reed keeps the community together the most; advocating for grandfathering of walkers or a bused boundary would have been way more doable (and still is, if they haven't poisoned the well completely)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know. I think McK PTA could rightfully advocate for their school to survive. I think where they went wrong was in not seeing the move to Reed as part of its survival and advocating HARD as part of a deal to support the moves that a very high percentage of its current walkers get bussed to Reed. That would’ve been fighting for the community writ large. But she really flubbed that. The letter to WaPo has nothing to say about McKinley. She’s way off topic as a PTA President. Feel mostly sorry for all the nice McK families I know. What a toxic situation.

Spot on. Agree with every word.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Right, EVERYONE should be doing that, not just the parents who support the moves. They didn't word it "help hold APS accountable", they said "hold APS accountable". Implying it wasn't their responsibility.

We will see what they actually do when it comes down to it. Will they be spiteful or constructive?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/arlington-makes-a-bad-move-on-elementary-schools/2020/02/09/e4812398-4a9d-11ea-8a1f-de1597be6cbc_story.html

I can’t access it. Who wrote it?

The McKinley PTA president. Her gotcha points are that they didn't follow the boundary procedure and that it hurts poor minority kids. Apparently she didn't see the inherent contradiction in this sentence: "One of these programs, Key Immersion, will be moved into a building where it will have to try to function at 152 percent capacity. Many Spanish-speaking families won’t be able to move with Key to its new location."

When I read it I couldn't believe she put those two things back to back. Um, you just solved the problem! Not everyone will move with the program, which solves the capacity issue. They can figure out future enrollment once they see how many Key Immersion families move.

I actually respected how she professionally handled the process and parents at McKinley - until now. This is lower than the trash that McKrazy and Data Dudes were spewing out.

Yes, the op-ed was slimy. Very misleading and such an obvious ploy for sympathy. She is exploiting those at-risk families.

IMO a good letter and well reasoned.

Pretty sure this has to be Mary.

So she is an officer in McKinely PTA, https://mckinleypta.org/family-fun/back-to-school-social/, yet in her our letter to the editor about the injustice of the program moves, no where does she mention her affiliation to McKinely.

The piece was riddled with lies, but whatever. What surprises me is that she is an Educational consultant, and wading in to the muck with the school fight seems like a poor career choice. I mean, they had police officers at the SB meetings largely because of her outbursts. When people google her name, it will be tied to all this bad behavior.

As a side note, she is in her 50s -- how old are her kids, really how long was she going to in elementary anyways??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Right, EVERYONE should be doing that, not just the parents who support the moves. They didn't word it "help hold APS accountable", they said "hold APS accountable". Implying it wasn't their responsibility.

We will see what they actually do when it comes down to it. Will they be spiteful or constructive?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/arlington-makes-a-bad-move-on-elementary-schools/2020/02/09/e4812398-4a9d-11ea-8a1f-de1597be6cbc_story.html

I can’t access it. Who wrote it?

The McKinley PTA president. Her gotcha points are that they didn't follow the boundary procedure and that it hurts poor minority kids. Apparently she didn't see the inherent contradiction in this sentence: "One of these programs, Key Immersion, will be moved into a building where it will have to try to function at 152 percent capacity. Many Spanish-speaking families won’t be able to move with Key to its new location."

When I read it I couldn't believe she put those two things back to back. Um, you just solved the problem! Not everyone will move with the program, which solves the capacity issue. They can figure out future enrollment once they see how many Key Immersion families move.

I actually respected how she professionally handled the process and parents at McKinley - until now. This is lower than the trash that McKrazy and Data Dudes were spewing out.

Yes, the op-ed was slimy. Very misleading and such an obvious ploy for sympathy. She is exploiting those at-risk families.

IMO a good letter and well reasoned.

Thanks Mary for joining the conversation - please move along.

Is Mary McKrazy or there two unhinged McKinely moms?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Right, EVERYONE should be doing that, not just the parents who support the moves. They didn't word it "help hold APS accountable", they said "hold APS accountable". Implying it wasn't their responsibility.

We will see what they actually do when it comes down to it. Will they be spiteful or constructive?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/arlington-makes-a-bad-move-on-elementary-schools/2020/02/09/e4812398-4a9d-11ea-8a1f-de1597be6cbc_story.html

I can’t access it. Who wrote it?

The McKinley PTA president. Her gotcha points are that they didn't follow the boundary procedure and that it hurts poor minority kids. Apparently she didn't see the inherent contradiction in this sentence: "One of these programs, Key Immersion, will be moved into a building where it will have to try to function at 152 percent capacity. Many Spanish-speaking families won’t be able to move with Key to its new location."

When I read it I couldn't believe she put those two things back to back. Um, you just solved the problem! Not everyone will move with the program, which solves the capacity issue. They can figure out future enrollment once they see how many Key Immersion families move.

I actually respected how she professionally handled the process and parents at McKinley - until now. This is lower than the trash that McKrazy and Data Dudes were spewing out.

Yes, the op-ed was slimy. Very misleading and such an obvious ploy for sympathy. She is exploiting those at-risk families.

IMO a good letter and well reasoned.

Thanks Mary for joining the conversation - please move along.

Is Mary McKrazy or there two unhinged McKinely moms?

Until this op-ed, Mary seemed reasonable albeit uninformed -- perhaps relying on her data people too much to wishfully support a narrative.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some Key families—rich or not rich- are there to escape from their neighborhood school.

And some Key families (who don't live by Key) are there because it's close to the Metro on their way to work (not kidding).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Right, EVERYONE should be doing that, not just the parents who support the moves. They didn't word it "help hold APS accountable", they said "hold APS accountable". Implying it wasn't their responsibility.

We will see what they actually do when it comes down to it. Will they be spiteful or constructive?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/arlington-makes-a-bad-move-on-elementary-schools/2020/02/09/e4812398-4a9d-11ea-8a1f-de1597be6cbc_story.html

I can’t access it. Who wrote it?

The McKinley PTA president. Her gotcha points are that they didn't follow the boundary procedure and that it hurts poor minority kids. Apparently she didn't see the inherent contradiction in this sentence: "One of these programs, Key Immersion, will be moved into a building where it will have to try to function at 152 percent capacity. Many Spanish-speaking families won’t be able to move with Key to its new location."

When I read it I couldn't believe she put those two things back to back. Um, you just solved the problem! Not everyone will move with the program, which solves the capacity issue. They can figure out future enrollment once they see how many Key Immersion families move.

I actually respected how she professionally handled the process and parents at McKinley - until now. This is lower than the trash that McKrazy and Data Dudes were spewing out.

Yes, the op-ed was slimy. Very misleading and such an obvious ploy for sympathy. She is exploiting those at-risk families.

IMO a good letter and well reasoned.

Thanks Mary for joining the conversation - please move along.

Is Mary McKrazy or there two unhinged McKinely moms?

Different people...but I think something is in the water there. The county look into it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Right, EVERYONE should be doing that, not just the parents who support the moves. They didn't word it "help hold APS accountable", they said "hold APS accountable". Implying it wasn't their responsibility.

We will see what they actually do when it comes down to it. Will they be spiteful or constructive?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/arlington-makes-a-bad-move-on-elementary-schools/2020/02/09/e4812398-4a9d-11ea-8a1f-de1597be6cbc_story.html

I can’t access it. Who wrote it?

The McKinley PTA president. Her gotcha points are that they didn't follow the boundary procedure and that it hurts poor minority kids. Apparently she didn't see the inherent contradiction in this sentence: "One of these programs, Key Immersion, will be moved into a building where it will have to try to function at 152 percent capacity. Many Spanish-speaking families won’t be able to move with Key to its new location."

When I read it I couldn't believe she put those two things back to back. Um, you just solved the problem! Not everyone will move with the program, which solves the capacity issue. They can figure out future enrollment once they see how many Key Immersion families move.

I actually respected how she professionally handled the process and parents at McKinley - until now. This is lower than the trash that McKrazy and Data Dudes were spewing out.

Yes, the op-ed was slimy. Very misleading and such an obvious ploy for sympathy. She is exploiting those at-risk families.

IMO a good letter and well reasoned.

Pretty sure this has to be Mary.

So she is an officer in McKinely PTA, https://mckinleypta.org/family-fun/back-to-school-social/, yet in her our letter to the editor about the injustice of the program moves, no where does she mention her affiliation to McKinely.

The piece was riddled with lies, but whatever. What surprises me is that she is an Educational consultant, and wading in to the muck with the school fight seems like a poor career choice. I mean, they had police officers at the SB meetings largely because of her outbursts. When people google her name, it will be tied to all this bad behavior.

As a side note, she is in her 50s -- how old are her kids, really how long was she going to in elementary anyways??

Word is she’s going to run for school board eventually. Not this time but another round.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Right, EVERYONE should be doing that, not just the parents who support the moves. They didn't word it "help hold APS accountable", they said "hold APS accountable". Implying it wasn't their responsibility.

We will see what they actually do when it comes down to it. Will they be spiteful or constructive?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/arlington-makes-a-bad-move-on-elementary-schools/2020/02/09/e4812398-4a9d-11ea-8a1f-de1597be6cbc_story.html

I can’t access it. Who wrote it?

The McKinley PTA president. Her gotcha points are that they didn't follow the boundary procedure and that it hurts poor minority kids. Apparently she didn't see the inherent contradiction in this sentence: "One of these programs, Key Immersion, will be moved into a building where it will have to try to function at 152 percent capacity. Many Spanish-speaking families won’t be able to move with Key to its new location."

When I read it I couldn't believe she put those two things back to back. Um, you just solved the problem! Not everyone will move with the program, which solves the capacity issue. They can figure out future enrollment once they see how many Key Immersion families move.

I actually respected how she professionally handled the process and parents at McKinley - until now. This is lower than the trash that McKrazy and Data Dudes were spewing out.

Yes, the op-ed was slimy. Very misleading and such an obvious ploy for sympathy. She is exploiting those at-risk families.

IMO a good letter and well reasoned.

Pretty sure this has to be Mary.

So she is an officer in McKinely PTA, https://mckinleypta.org/family-fun/back-to-school-social/, yet in her our letter to the editor about the injustice of the program moves, no where does she mention her affiliation to McKinely.

The piece was riddled with lies, but whatever. What surprises me is that she is an Educational consultant, and wading in to the muck with the school fight seems like a poor career choice. I mean, they had police officers at the SB meetings largely because of her outbursts. When people google her name, it will be tied to all this bad behavior.

As a side note, she is in her 50s -- how old are her kids, really how long was she going to in elementary anyways??

Word is she’s going to run for school board eventually. Not this time but another round.

She sure has lost my vote. I would vote for Cristina or even Krieger over her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I actually respected how she professionally handled the process and parents at McKinley - until now. This is lower than the trash that McKrazy and Data Dudes were spewing out.

Eh...I felt very silenced as a pro-move McKinley parent and I know others felt exactly the same. Pretty much out of the gate, the emails were - here's what we think, here's your talking points, here's your chance to go tell the Board how anti-move you are. No balance AT ALL. Very uncomfortable. After a few of those emails, who is going to show up at a PTA meeting or a SB meeting and openly disagree? A total silencing effect.

I'm sure she'd say the people in the room at a first PTA meeting to discuss this issue all agreed with her. See: self-selection. You are representing a lot more people than the people who show up to one of your insular, clubby PTA meetings. Or you're supposed to at least.

I'm sorry, you deserved better from your PTA. It's bugged me that the PTA took sides on an issue where the central question was: who gets to stay in our community? Families in McKinley's walk zone seemed content to wave good-bye to the McKinley families north of I-66 and take away any chance of them staying in the program once Reed opens, so that walkers could keep walking. PTAs shouldn't be picking sides on issues like that, at least not without a broad base of support that includes families who would be worse off. That would require giving all affected families a genuine opportunity to be heard before deciding the PTA's position. It's sad that this didn't happen here.

DP here. I agree with what PP says. However, if a PTA does not have a broad base of active parents and doesn't receive feedback from the whole community, it can't really represent the spectrum of perspectives from the community. It can only represent the feedback it receives. I'm not at McKinley; so I don't know how much pro-move expression there was at the beginning of the process So I'm not saying that's what was done there. Just pointing out the limitations of any PTA fully representing its community.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Key did this all wrong. They should have accepted that they were moving early on and spent their efforts advocating for a move to a building that meets their needs.

They really aren't in a bad position right now all things considered. They got THE central location in the county and there is already a feasibility study underway for an addition. All they have to do is advocate hard for the addition to be done as quickly as possible (preferably without being jerks) and they are golden.

If 40% of the current Key isn't going to move, why do they need an addition?
But seriously, if they can't get more Spanish speaking applicants, than they probably don't need an addition. I think they only got 35 Spanish speaking applicants last year, it will be interesting to see how many they get this year. If the number doesn't go up, than they need to reduce the number of Kindergarten classrooms.


If there is room for more seats there we should build them. (Since we need seats and all)

They can change to a different model (not 50/50) if the current one isn’t working.

Question - are there enough Spanish language students near the ATS site to make an expanded Key work? Is the move + potentially building more seats going to lead to the collapse of Key just like they feared but for different reasons? In following this board it seems like:

1. Spanish language community is not all that into immersion.

2. English language families were only using Key for location/metro proximity and may not want to move. Plus many parents pulled their kids out in later years anyway due to immersion causing them falling behind in math & other core competencies.

3. Alot of potential english language families who were in the Key zone and paying attention to all of this were turned off by the behavior of parents and teachers there and are no longer interested in sending their kid to such a toxic community.

Who does that leave to go to new Key? Looking at the geographic eligibility - most of the Key zone are people who Key tried to throw under the bus in their many many maps. There aren't even any South Arlington "bad" School refugees to opt in purely to escape there neighborhood schools. Key only pulls from Fleet which has some of the best demographics south of 50. Maybe they zone Barcroft into new Key eligibility and thats who opts in?

Answer: there are plenty of Spanish speakers; but until APS engages in serious outreach about the benefits of the program and does a lot of recruiting, they're not going to swarm the lottery and the program will continue to struggle to fill those seats. Perhaps a neighborhood school location with a majority of Spanish speakers - like Carlin Springs or Barcroft - would be more successful by nature. But not necessarily. Campbell is more walkable than Carlin Springs and if they had followed their original proposal #2, Campbell would have been converted to the area neighborhood school with Carlin SPrings being immersion. Many of these families merely go to the school they are assigned, and if it's a walkable school v immersion? APS needs to do heavy outreach and recruitment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Key did this all wrong. They should have accepted that they were moving early on and spent their efforts advocating for a move to a building that meets their needs.

They really aren't in a bad position right now all things considered. They got THE central location in the county and there is already a feasibility study underway for an addition. All they have to do is advocate hard for the addition to be done as quickly as possible (preferably without being jerks) and they are golden.

If 40% of the current Key isn't going to move, why do they need an addition?
But seriously, if they can't get more Spanish speaking applicants, than they probably don't need an addition. I think they only got 35 Spanish speaking applicants last year, it will be interesting to see how many they get this year. If the number doesn't go up, than they need to reduce the number of Kindergarten classrooms.

If there is room for more seats there we should build them. (Since we need seats and all)

They can change to a different model (not 50/50) if the current one isn’t working.

Absolutely not. Why should we be building more option seats for UMC white kids? That actually worsens segregation, dilutes the program, and doesn’t have anything to do with equity or better serving the needs of the least privileged and at-risk students. If the programs can’t attract more low-income Spanish speakers, it needs to shrink the number of English speakers admitted. Otherwise we’re fueling economic segregation, and at a big financial and environmental cost all those buses to transport UMC kids further from home, to what end? To a majority whites and wealthy school? That’s not equity. We have the good fortune to have a significant Spanish speaking population in Arlington. If this program isn’t actually going to serve them, it should not exist.