APS: Elementary Walk Zone surveys out

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:https://www.arlnow.com/2018/02/26/county-board-approves-contested-ballston-development/
Oh look, more affordable housing and family units clustered right in Ballston. All to enrich developers. What school will reap the benefits of this decision? Glebe? Hey, as long as it's walkable who cares about overcrowding. Good thing the superintendent is increasing class sizes.

Family-sized units, yes. But where is this affordable housing of which you speak? These are ownership units, not CAFs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.arlnow.com/2018/02/26/county-board-approves-contested-ballston-development/
Oh look, more affordable housing and family units clustered right in Ballston. All to enrich developers. What school will reap the benefits of this decision? Glebe? Hey, as long as it's walkable who cares about overcrowding. Good thing the superintendent is increasing class sizes.

Isn't there a ton of empty office space in Ballston. Why is this county so against vertical schools. I realize it isn't the best, but it seems like there are a few place in this county where we could place a vertical school (Ballston and Crystal City). I mean somehow the children of NYC survive. You could create playground on the roof or/and innovated indoor play spaces with lots of access to natural light.

Anyway, I am sure this idea has been mentioned before, I am just not sure why the county seems so resistant to it. I mean elementary schools don't even need all the field spaces HS have so it seems like it would work better with ES. And you can put a green space on an ES roof or make an atrium with green space? It just seems like everyone is married to this idea traditional ES designs when we could think outside the box and get some more space for new schools

Building a custom elementary school with field space on the roof would cost crazy amounts of money. Few of the office buildings are configured for schools, and most are too big for one school. So want your 3rd grade sharing an elevator with rando office workers?

Building vertical is VERY expensive and existing office building don’t work as schools.

I am not saying it isn't expensive, it just seems that if there is no space for no elementary schools I am not sure what else to do. It seems like a solution for when we have run out of space. Are we not at that point now? If we aren't at that point and there is vacant space in Arlington where we can build more schools please let me know.

There is tons of space. They're called community centers and they are completely unnecessary.

They seem well used when I visit them, but sure.

In the mid 1950s Arlington had 38 elementary schools. Can you believe it? Not saying opening old ones is the solution ( they're prob torn down or turned into senior centers) but it would be interesting to see an old map of them. I would have no prob sending my kid to a high rise school. I mean, the schools I went to shared the same architecture as prisons, so who cares if its a safe pleasant environment for learning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.arlnow.com/2018/02/26/county-board-approves-contested-ballston-development/
Oh look, more affordable housing and family units clustered right in Ballston. All to enrich developers. What school will reap the benefits of this decision? Glebe? Hey, as long as it's walkable who cares about overcrowding. Good thing the superintendent is increasing class sizes.

Isn't there a ton of empty office space in Ballston. Why is this county so against vertical schools. I realize it isn't the best, but it seems like there are a few place in this county where we could place a vertical school (Ballston and Crystal City). I mean somehow the children of NYC survive. You could create playground on the roof or/and innovated indoor play spaces with lots of access to natural light.

Anyway, I am sure this idea has been mentioned before, I am just not sure why the county seems so resistant to it. I mean elementary schools don't even need all the field spaces HS have so it seems like it would work better with ES. And you can put a green space on an ES roof or make an atrium with green space? It just seems like everyone is married to this idea traditional ES designs when we could think outside the box and get some more space for new schools

Building a custom elementary school with field space on the roof would cost crazy amounts of money. Few of the office buildings are configured for schools, and most are too big for one school. So want your 3rd grade sharing an elevator with rando office workers?

Building vertical is VERY expensive and existing office building don’t work as schools.

I am not saying it isn't expensive, it just seems that if there is no space for no elementary schools I am not sure what else to do. It seems like a solution for when we have run out of space. Are we not at that point now? If we aren't at that point and there is vacant space in Arlington where we can build more schools please let me know.

There is tons of space. They're called community centers and they are completely unnecessary.

They seem well used when I visit them, but sure.

In the mid 1950s Arlington had 38 elementary schools. Can you believe it? Not saying opening old ones is the solution ( they're prob torn down or turned into senior centers) but it would be interesting to see an old map of them. I would have no prob sending my kid to a high rise school. I mean, the schools I went to shared the same architecture as prisons, so who cares as long as it is if its a safe pleasant environment for learning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.arlnow.com/2018/02/26/county-board-approves-contested-ballston-development/
Oh look, more affordable housing and family units clustered right in Ballston. All to enrich developers. What school will reap the benefits of this decision? Glebe? Hey, as long as it's walkable who cares about overcrowding. Good thing the superintendent is increasing class sizes.

Isn't there a ton of empty office space in Ballston. Why is this county so against vertical schools. I realize it isn't the best, but it seems like there are a few place in this county where we could place a vertical school (Ballston and Crystal City). I mean somehow the children of NYC survive. You could create playground on the roof or/and innovated indoor play spaces with lots of access to natural light.

Anyway, I am sure this idea has been mentioned before, I am just not sure why the county seems so resistant to it. I mean elementary schools don't even need all the field spaces HS have so it seems like it would work better with ES. And you can put a green space on an ES roof or make an atrium with green space? It just seems like everyone is married to this idea traditional ES designs when we could think outside the box and get some more space for new schools

Building a custom elementary school with field space on the roof would cost crazy amounts of money. Few of the office buildings are configured for schools, and most are too big for one school. So want your 3rd grade sharing an elevator with rando office workers?

Building vertical is VERY expensive and existing office building don’t work as schools.

I am not saying it isn't expensive, it just seems that if there is no space for no elementary schools I am not sure what else to do. It seems like a solution for when we have run out of space. Are we not at that point now? If we aren't at that point and there is vacant space in Arlington where we can build more schools please let me know.

There is tons of space. They're called community centers and they are completely unnecessary.

They seem well used when I visit them, but sure.

In the mid 1950s Arlington had 38 elementary schools. Can you believe it? Not saying opening old ones is the solution ( they're prob torn down or turned into senior centers) but it would be interesting to see an old map of them. I would have no prob sending my kid to a high rise school. I mean, the schools I went to shared the same architecture as prisons, so who cares if its a safe pleasant environment for learning.

really 38? That is interesting. I would love to see that map. I mean my kid currently goes to a school that is mostly underground. At least a high rise would give the kids windows! I actually don't understand why more of the current schools aren't built up. I mean guess part of it is that they don't want a lot of kids at each school but I thought I heard that Patrick Henry was built with the idea that they could add on to the top of the school when the time came.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.arlnow.com/2018/02/26/county-board-approves-contested-ballston-development/
Oh look, more affordable housing and family units clustered right in Ballston. All to enrich developers. What school will reap the benefits of this decision? Glebe? Hey, as long as it's walkable who cares about overcrowding. Good thing the superintendent is increasing class sizes.

Isn't there a ton of empty office space in Ballston. Why is this county so against vertical schools. I realize it isn't the best, but it seems like there are a few place in this county where we could place a vertical school (Ballston and Crystal City). I mean somehow the children of NYC survive. You could create playground on the roof or/and innovated indoor play spaces with lots of access to natural light.

Anyway, I am sure this idea has been mentioned before, I am just not sure why the county seems so resistant to it. I mean elementary schools don't even need all the field spaces HS have so it seems like it would work better with ES. And you can put a green space on an ES roof or make an atrium with green space? It just seems like everyone is married to this idea traditional ES designs when we could think outside the box and get some more space for new schools

Building a custom elementary school with field space on the roof would cost crazy amounts of money. Few of the office buildings are configured for schools, and most are too big for one school. So want your 3rd grade sharing an elevator with rando office workers?

Building vertical is VERY expensive and existing office building don’t work as schools.

I am not saying it isn't expensive, it just seems that if there is no space for no elementary schools I am not sure what else to do. It seems like a solution for when we have run out of space. Are we not at that point now? If we aren't at that point and there is vacant space in Arlington where we can build more schools please let me know.

There is tons of space. They're called community centers and they are completely unnecessary.

They seem well used when I visit them, but sure.

Yeah impossible to find parking at Madison Center....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.arlnow.com/2018/02/26/county-board-approves-contested-ballston-development/
Oh look, more affordable housing and family units clustered right in Ballston. All to enrich developers. What school will reap the benefits of this decision? Glebe? Hey, as long as it's walkable who cares about overcrowding. Good thing the superintendent is increasing class sizes.

Isn't there a ton of empty office space in Ballston. Why is this county so against vertical schools. I realize it isn't the best, but it seems like there are a few place in this county where we could place a vertical school (Ballston and Crystal City). I mean somehow the children of NYC survive. You could create playground on the roof or/and innovated indoor play spaces with lots of access to natural light.

Anyway, I am sure this idea has been mentioned before, I am just not sure why the county seems so resistant to it. I mean elementary schools don't even need all the field spaces HS have so it seems like it would work better with ES. And you can put a green space on an ES roof or make an atrium with green space? It just seems like everyone is married to this idea traditional ES designs when we could think outside the box and get some more space for new schools

Building a custom elementary school with field space on the roof would cost crazy amounts of money. Few of the office buildings are configured for schools, and most are too big for one school. So want your 3rd grade sharing an elevator with rando office workers?

Building vertical is VERY expensive and existing office building don’t work as schools.

I am not saying it isn't expensive, it just seems that if there is no space for no elementary schools I am not sure what else to do. It seems like a solution for when we have run out of space. Are we not at that point now? If we aren't at that point and there is vacant space in Arlington where we can build more schools please let me know.

There is tons of space. They're called community centers and they are completely unnecessary.

They seem well used when I visit them, but sure.

In the mid 1950s Arlington had 38 elementary schools. Can you believe it? Not saying opening old ones is the solution ( they're prob torn down or turned into senior centers) but it would be interesting to see an old map of them. I would have no prob sending my kid to a high rise school. I mean, the schools I went to shared the same architecture as prisons, so who cares if its a safe pleasant environment for learning.

really 38? That is interesting. I would love to see that map. I mean my kid currently goes to a school that is mostly underground. At least a high rise would give the kids windows! I actually don't understand why more of the current schools aren't built up. I mean guess part of it is that they don't want a lot of kids at each school but I thought I heard that Patrick Henry was built with the idea that they could add on to the top of the school when the time came.

I believe that's Reed - although now they aren't doing that simple pop-up expansion. Don't really understand why.

However, the career center expansion/replacement is likely to be a high-rise style building. Look at the career center working group page for a bunch of examples of urban/high-rise high schools.

[Anonymous]

Generally they have to do additions/expansions while a school is being used. In that case they can't build on top (that's what I've been told before). That is not the case with Reed though...

[Anonymous]

The thing about those old school sites, is that a lot of them were tiny tiny schools, with significantly larger class sizes and less administration. Look, for example, at the Lee Community Center. That used to be a school. From looking at the building, I'm guessing it had 7 classrooms of kids- one at each grade (6th grade was elementary.) There were no special education coordinators, speech pathologists, school psychologists, etc. I don't know what there were for specials either.
So while I think some of the community centers could be turned back into schools I don't think it is as easy as saying, just kick out the seniors and reclaim them as schools.

[Anonymous]

I am not saying it isn't expensive, it just seems that if there is no space for no elementary schools I am not sure what else to do. It seems like a solution for when we have run out of space. Are we not at that point now? If we aren't at that point and there is vacant space in Arlington where we can build more schools please let me know.

There is tons of space. They're called community centers and they are completely unnecessary.

They seem well used when I visit them, but sure.


Yeah impossible to find parking at Madison Center....

Come on. Talk about the ass-end of the county.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.arlnow.com/2018/02/26/county-board-approves-contested-ballston-development/
Oh look, more affordable housing and family units clustered right in Ballston. All to enrich developers. What school will reap the benefits of this decision? Glebe? Hey, as long as it's walkable who cares about overcrowding. Good thing the superintendent is increasing class sizes.

Family-sized units, yes. But where is this affordable housing of which you speak? These are ownership units, not CAFs.

True, the Ballston project does not involve AH CAFs. However, the County did rezone the property to allow for higher density. Essentially we're replacing a church and a daycare (which produce no children) with 26 townhomes and 58 apartments all zoned to Glebe Elementary and W-L High School. The County Board will justify this by pointing to the fact that the student generation factor from multifamily units is low compared to SFHs and CAFs, and these buildings generate tax revenue that the County can spend on other things. However, there are so many of these multifamily projects going on around Arlington that in the aggregate they are contributing more kids to our schools that the County Board wants to admit. Also, with respect to AH, the developers are often the same people- they just build their AH under a different corporate entity. So trade-offs are happening all over the place, where developers will agree to build more AH (supposedly "at cost") in one area of the county in exchange for a density waiver that allows them to build more super expensive townhomes/apartment buildings in another area of the county. It all increases the total number of households in Arlington though and increases the seat deficit faster than we can build out of it. The County Board views this as the School Board's problem, which is really unfair because the School Board has no authority to buy more land for APS and it has no control over the budget allocation that it gets from the County Board.

[Anonymous]

It really is egregious that the County Board and the School Board are so disconnected from each other. The County Board views capacity as a School Board problem, and the School Board doesn't have the tools to properly address it (only the County Board does).

APS accounts for a large chunk of the county budget and bonding capacity (about half?), but it doesn't have a seat at the table with the County Board for long term capital planning. Why is that?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The thing about those old school sites, is that a lot of them were tiny tiny schools, with significantly larger class sizes and less administration. Look, for example, at the Lee Community Center. That used to be a school. From looking at the building, I'm guessing it had 7 classrooms of kids- one at each grade (6th grade was elementary.) There were no special education coordinators, speech pathologists, school psychologists, etc. I don't know what there were for specials either.
So while I think some of the community centers could be turned back into schools I don't think it is as easy as saying, just kick out the seniors and reclaim them as schools.

Well, they could definitely make them choice schools, and many of those lots would not be much smaller than the Wilson site, which at one point was planned for a 1300 student middle school.

Alternatively, making existing elementary schools multi level, but maintaining the large green space would not be terrible; not great, and there is no money for it anyway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have no clue what’s going to happen to ASFS. I see no viable boundary solution for it.

Yeah, this is generating a lot of uncertainty for the entire key and taylro zones.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.arlnow.com/2018/02/26/county-board-approves-contested-ballston-development/
Oh look, more affordable housing and family units clustered right in Ballston. All to enrich developers. What school will reap the benefits of this decision? Glebe? Hey, as long as it's walkable who cares about overcrowding. Good thing the superintendent is increasing class sizes.

Isn't there a ton of empty office space in Ballston. Why is this county so against vertical schools. I realize it isn't the best, but it seems like there are a few place in this county where we could place a vertical school (Ballston and Crystal City). I mean somehow the children of NYC survive. You could create playground on the roof or/and innovated indoor play spaces with lots of access to natural light.

Anyway, I am sure this idea has been mentioned before, I am just not sure why the county seems so resistant to it. I mean elementary schools don't even need all the field spaces HS have so it seems like it would work better with ES. And you can put a green space on an ES roof or make an atrium with green space? It just seems like everyone is married to this idea traditional ES designs when we could think outside the box and get some more space for new schools

Building a custom elementary school with field space on the roof would cost crazy amounts of money. Few of the office buildings are configured for schools, and most are too big for one school. So want your 3rd grade sharing an elevator with rando office workers?

Building vertical is VERY expensive and existing office building don’t work as schools.

I am not saying it isn't expensive, it just seems that if there is no space for no elementary schools I am not sure what else to do. It seems like a solution for when we have run out of space. Are we not at that point now? If we aren't at that point and there is vacant space in Arlington where we can build more schools please let me know.

There is tons of space. They're called community centers and they are completely unnecessary.

They seem well used when I visit them, but sure.

Haha, your sarcasm is hilarious. Only barcroft and arlington mill seems wells used; I go to several other community centers and they are a ghost town.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have no clue what’s going to happen to ASFS. I see no viable boundary solution for it.

Yeah, this is generating a lot of uncertainty for the entire key and taylro zones.

Switching ASFS and Key seems like the easiest path for the board right now because then they don't really have to rezone anyone. They switch the faculty some specialty stuff (yes, expensive PITA, but then it's done) and tell the students to just report to the same program, different location. Status quo means redistricting a lot of students, so it isn't really status quo and moving Key somewhere else entirely means finding another building and AND a lot of redistricting. Mess.