The demise of McKinley ES (APS)

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Can someone summarize the “Save McKinley” argue as to why that’s better for the broader system, rather than just people in the McKinley walk zone? I know that numbers put out so far show some enrollment imbalance, but that can be fixed through boundary refinement that would be necessary under any scenario. Part of what made the Tuckahoe thing so alienating was that their argument was all about what was best for them, regardless of anyone else’s needs. I think Nottingham’s activism was ultimately self-serving, but at least they made arguments why what was best for them was also better for the broader system. What’s McKinley‘s argument for why anyone but McKinley people should care about this proposal to move ATS to McKinley?

I'm curious about this, as well. I really don't get it since so much of McKinley is actually in the Reed walk zone. Is it No More Option Schools in the N or just We Want to Keep Walking Regardless Of The Greater Consequences?

Let me try. That APS zone map that is supposedly driving this decision was misleading. If you look at where the population is today in Arlington (and where it is expected to grow), it is all south of Lee Highway. By clustering McKinley in Zone 1 and Taylor in Zone 2, APS masked the reality of where the population density currently sits and where the empty seats are really located. A better map would have been a heat map at the planning unit level so you can see where the number of kids are located OUTSIDE the walkable planning units. They also need to look at which planning units send a larger # of kids to private school.

When you go back and look at the planning unit level data that they released during the 2018 walk zone meetings, you can see where this is about to become a complete CF during the boundary drawing process. There are a lot of kids around Glebe, Ashlawn, and McKinley who aren't "walkable" because those roads are busier and therefore classified as off-limits to elementary kids without a crossing guard. And APS assumes in its analysis that there are no new crossing guards added to the system. But if you look at where kids actually live, you can see the need to leave more neighborhood seats in that area. Otherwise, you have to push kids upwards in a domino effect to fill the empty seats at Jamestown and Discovery. And that creates long skinny boundaries and probably at the end some walkers on the bus. The alternative is leaving Ashlawn, Reed, and Glebe overcrowded (and possibly also Tuckahoe in a few years, depending on what happens with those new townhomes and development around EFC) with empty seats at Discovery and Jamestown.

We need to leave breathing room in the areas of the County where we expect growth. That's the concern.

page 5 https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Getting-Started-Working-Session-Presentation_FINAL.pdf

Important note - the shades of green are based on total number of students and unrelated to actual size, so a large PU that is dark green has the same number as a tiny PU that is dark green.

OP. Thank you for pointing out this map! So to further explain what I was saying above... if you look at the map on Slide 5 of the above presentation, and you draw Lee Highway on this map, you can see that TODAY that the northern part of the County is already the least densely populated. It is also the area where no new development is planned AND that likely has the highest opt out rates for private because those are the families who can afford it. The +133 seats in Zone 1 are located here, not anywhere near McKinley. How do you fill those seats other than by drawing crazy boundaries?

I am sure that when Nattress proposed Nottingham last year, she was trying to split the baby. She wanted to put ATS a little more central and she also knew that it wasn't a crazy bus ride for those kids to move north to Discovery (and Discovery kids to Jamestown). I know that proposal sucked for Nottingham-- and no doubt, Nottingham is a very walkable location, so it would have led to higher overall busing costs. But moving ATS to McKinley now is still not solving that underlying problem.

The middle school boundary process left Williamsburg and Hamm under-enrolled, while leaving Swanson, Jefferson, and Gunston over-capacity. We're about to see something similar happen under this proposal. And that means, we'll be redrawing boundaries again in two years, just like we are about to do at the middle school level.

Nottingham isn’t just highly walkable, it can also take a crazy number of trailers (including the potential for multi-purpose tailed space). If you can about managing population growth in the future, giving up the flexibility Nottingham provides as a neighborhood school would be stupid.

I also don’t understand why the borders have to be crazy. Shift some of the current discovery bus riders to Jamestown, move the overlapping Nottingham/Discovery walk zone that’s currently at Nottingham to Discovery, Nottingham gets all of the overlapping Nottingham/Tuckahoe walk zone and picks up another unit or two near Tuckahoe where they already send a bus, and then Tuckahoe boundary can extend across Lee Highway to pick up former McKinley. Nothing crazy there.

+1. Nottingham parents asked for this very thing years ago, but APS wouldn't do it, and that led to problems. Hopefully they will do the right thing this time.

Nottingham can also take an addition to handle future growth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can someone summarize the “Save McKinley” argue as to why that’s better for the broader system, rather than just people in the McKinley walk zone? I know that numbers put out so far show some enrollment imbalance, but that can be fixed through boundary refinement that would be necessary under any scenario. Part of what made the Tuckahoe thing so alienating was that their argument was all about what was best for them, regardless of anyone else’s needs. I think Nottingham’s activism was ultimately self-serving, but at least they made arguments why what was best for them was also better for the broader system. What’s McKinley‘s argument for why anyone but McKinley people should care about this proposal to move ATS to McKinley?

I'm curious about this, as well. I really don't get it since so much of McKinley is actually in the Reed walk zone. Is it No More Option Schools in the N or just We Want to Keep Walking Regardless Of The Greater Consequences?

Let me try. That APS zone map that is supposedly driving this decision was misleading. If you look at where the population is today in Arlington (and where it is expected to grow), it is all south of Lee Highway. By clustering McKinley in Zone 1 and Taylor in Zone 2, APS masked the reality of where the population density currently sits and where the empty seats are really located. A better map would have been a heat map at the planning unit level so you can see where the number of kids are located OUTSIDE the walkable planning units. They also need to look at which planning units send a larger # of kids to private school.

When you go back and look at the planning unit level data that they released during the 2018 walk zone meetings, you can see where this is about to become a complete CF during the boundary drawing process. There are a lot of kids around Glebe, Ashlawn, and McKinley who aren't "walkable" because those roads are busier and therefore classified as off-limits to elementary kids without a crossing guard. And APS assumes in its analysis that there are no new crossing guards added to the system. But if you look at where kids actually live, you can see the need to leave more neighborhood seats in that area. Otherwise, you have to push kids upwards in a domino effect to fill the empty seats at Jamestown and Discovery. And that creates long skinny boundaries and probably at the end some walkers on the bus. The alternative is leaving Ashlawn, Reed, and Glebe overcrowded (and possibly also Tuckahoe in a few years, depending on what happens with those new townhomes and development around EFC) with empty seats at Discovery and Jamestown.

We need to leave breathing room in the areas of the County where we expect growth. That's the concern.

page 5 https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Getting-Started-Working-Session-Presentation_FINAL.pdf

Important note - the shades of green are based on total number of students and unrelated to actual size, so a large PU that is dark green has the same number as a tiny PU that is dark green.

OP. Thank you for pointing out this map! So to further explain what I was saying above... if you look at the map on Slide 5 of the above presentation, and you draw Lee Highway on this map, you can see that TODAY that the northern part of the County is already the least densely populated. It is also the area where no new development is planned AND that likely has the highest opt out rates for private because those are the families who can afford it. The +133 seats in Zone 1 are located here, not anywhere near McKinley. How do you fill those seats other than by drawing crazy boundaries?

I am sure that when Nattress proposed Nottingham last year, she was trying to split the baby. She wanted to put ATS a little more central and she also knew that it wasn't a crazy bus ride for those kids to move north to Discovery (and Discovery kids to Jamestown). I know that proposal sucked for Nottingham-- and no doubt, Nottingham is a very walkable location, so it would have led to higher overall busing costs. But moving ATS to McKinley now is still not solving that underlying problem.

The middle school boundary process left Williamsburg and Hamm under-enrolled, while leaving Swanson, Jefferson, and Gunston over-capacity. We're about to see something similar happen under this proposal. And that means, we'll be redrawing boundaries again in two years, just like we are about to do at the middle school level.

Nottingham isn’t just highly walkable, it can also take a crazy number of trailers (including the potential for multi-purpose tailed space). If you can about managing population growth in the future, giving up the flexibility Nottingham provides as a neighborhood school would be stupid.

I also don’t understand why the borders have to be crazy. Shift some of the current discovery bus riders to Jamestown, move the overlapping Nottingham/Discovery walk zone that’s currently at Nottingham to Discovery, Nottingham gets all of the overlapping Nottingham/Tuckahoe walk zone and picks up another unit or two near Tuckahoe where they already send a bus, and then Tuckahoe boundary can extend across Lee Highway to pick up former McKinley. Nothing crazy there.

So I have no dog in the McKinley/Nottingham fight, but wasn’t the idea that the schools with trailer flex should be option and the schools with more permanent seats should be neighborhood? Like, it’s a choice to go to an option school, so you should deal with trailers? Or are we now saying the option schools should not have trailers and the neighborhood schools will?

Well there are different opinions on this. Some schools can't take trailers without giving up their field or their blacktop - Tuckahoe and McKinley. Others can't take trailers at all - Discovery. So what happens if these are neighborhood schools? What do you do with the growth?

In contrast, other schools, like Nottingham can handle trailers and can take an addition. I don't have a dog in this fight but since we know we have more elem growth coming, it makes sense to me to use that building as a neighborhood school. You know, look ahead a little

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Look, I am not saying to go after Nottingham-- that was not the intent of my post. I am just saying that the excess capacity is north of Lee Highway, and you can't fill that without crazy boundaries. If you don't want to believe me, that's fine, but if you look at the planning units and the data it isn't as easy as you think when you eyeball it. Per your example, the two planning units in the overlapping Nottingham/Discovery walk zone that are currently going to Nottingham are 17020 and 17030. It sounds like you live up there, so I don't have to tell you that 17020 is literally directly across the street from Nottingham. You think those parents are going to be okay when it comes time to draw boundaries and they are told that they can't go to the school that they literally stare at from their front porch?

But even if you go with the tough love approach and move them, you still have a math problem because McKinley holds 684 kids and Tuckahoe and Nottingham are a lot smaller buildings (545 and 519). By the time you shift everyone northward (and Tuckahoe families westward to Reed), you will end up filling Tuckahoe with a majority of current McKinley and Ashlawn kids-- and those students are going to drive right past the McKinley building to get to Tuckahoe. That doesn't make sense.

Drawing boundaries for this proposal is going to be a CF and a lot more kids are going to end up getting moved in the end. Everyone needs to realize that. Again, just look at the middle school boundary process if you don't believe me. We are reopening all those boundaries AGAIN immediately after we draw these boundaries because they have to get more kids into Hamm and Williamsburg.

So then what are you advocating for? You can't just say "Not McKinley" without putting forth a more reasonable alternative. Your alternative proposal may be to move an option school north of Lee Highway, but then own it rather than doing this song and dance so there can be an actual discussion. Make the case for why your proposal is better when you look at all of the considerations, not just the narrow subset that favors your preferred outcome.

Also, in addition to 17020 and 17030, 17031 and 17034 are currently zoned to Nottingham but are within the 1-mile walking boundary for Discovery and could also be designated as walk zone. They were considered last time, and while they weren't put on the short list at that point, those short lists were deliberately kept shorter than necessary to make it easier to justifying moving planning units between schools even if they were technically within the one-mile walk zone (if you're going to be bused to Discovery, it's just as easy to bus you to another nearby school). As for 17020, while a handful of houses are across the street from Nottingham, most are not. Some are actually closer to Discovery than to Nottingham.

As for the whole "people will ride past McKinley to their neighborhood school," so what? Some kids ride past Campbell to get to Carlin Springs and past Claremont to Abingdon, does that also offend you? If we have option schools, some kids will ride past those option schools on their way to neighborhood schools, so the only way to address this concern is to disband all option programs. Is that what you're advocating?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you look at the capacity percentages after the move, you will see this is going to one huge CF. By disbanding McKinley entirely, they have Reed at 96%, Glebe between 92-104 and Ashlawn between 91-108%. Meanwhile, they leave Tuckahoe at 83/77%, ASFS possibly at 76% and the Jamestown/Disc/Nott tried in the 80's. They clearly are moving ATS to the wrong school. It needs to go into a smaller capacity school to not totally mess up the balance all over again. Either that or they need to move a heck of a lot more McK into Tuckahoe and Glebe into ASFS.

This:
Either that or they need to move a heck of a lot more McK into Tuckahoe and Glebe into ASFS.

I think we are going to see very few current McK families at Reed. It's going to be crazy. Do away with options and draw logical lines! and let kids cross busy roads with crossing guards. Dman people, this is not hard.

I really hope staff sends the planning units in the area where it makes the most sense rather than prioritizing sending more McKinley units to Reed (e.g. if Glebe/Tuckahoe/Ashlawn are closer or if McKinley units are bussed to Reed while kids walkable to Reed are bussed to Tuckahoe to fill it). Just RIP the bandaid off!

+1

As one of the families that would be impacted by this -- HELL no. We were a Nottingham family that got switched to McK just in time for construction/overcrowding. Now that they're building a new school within walking distance (.5 mile) of our house you'd want us to be bused back to Nottingham? No. I understand we have to go by more than fairness but that would be ridiculous. Also, if you're prioritizing walkability and keeping families together, then this is the opposite of that. Also the current "who goes where" chart doesn't say anything about this -- which would then be bait and switch. I know that's often what happens in Arlington but still.

Huh? If you're walkable to Reed why would anyone advocate for you to be bussed to Nottingham? That would fall under "sending planning units to where it makes sense".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not a "Save McKinley" proponent but why can't ATS stay right where it is? It's not in the IPP so why are we trying to move it to a bigger building, and why is it a "pro" under both proposals that 100 more kids could go there? I'm a South Arlington resident and I think ATS is bad for South Arlington.

And, ATS is a not a walkable school so keep it as an option but without moving Immersion or Campbell there. What's wrong with Immersion to Carlin Springs, full stop? Yes, there will be a somewhat wide swath of West Pike with no neighborhood school, but Campbell is functionally a neighborhood school for Glencarlyn anyway. Split up the non-Glencarlyn PUs between Abingdon and Ashlawn and do tons of outreach to that community to get them to apply to CS as Immersion. McK, Reed, and ASFS can take Ashlawn's long boundary and some of Glebe.

That part of South Arlington is already facing a seating shortage, and you want to take away hundreds more seats while NW elementary schools sit with empty classrooms because they're so under capacity? We're Discovery so that would be great for us, but even I can't pretend this isn't a terrible idea.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can someone summarize the “Save McKinley” argue as to why that’s better for the broader system, rather than just people in the McKinley walk zone? I know that numbers put out so far show some enrollment imbalance, but that can be fixed through boundary refinement that would be necessary under any scenario. Part of what made the Tuckahoe thing so alienating was that their argument was all about what was best for them, regardless of anyone else’s needs. I think Nottingham’s activism was ultimately self-serving, but at least they made arguments why what was best for them was also better for the broader system. What’s McKinley‘s argument for why anyone but McKinley people should care about this proposal to move ATS to McKinley?

I'm curious about this, as well. I really don't get it since so much of McKinley is actually in the Reed walk zone. Is it No More Option Schools in the N or just We Want to Keep Walking Regardless Of The Greater Consequences?

Let me try. That APS zone map that is supposedly driving this decision was misleading. If you look at where the population is today in Arlington (and where it is expected to grow), it is all south of Lee Highway. By clustering McKinley in Zone 1 and Taylor in Zone 2, APS masked the reality of where the population density currently sits and where the empty seats are really located. A better map would have been a heat map at the planning unit level so you can see where the number of kids are located OUTSIDE the walkable planning units. They also need to look at which planning units send a larger # of kids to private school.

When you go back and look at the planning unit level data that they released during the 2018 walk zone meetings, you can see where this is about to become a complete CF during the boundary drawing process. There are a lot of kids around Glebe, Ashlawn, and McKinley who aren't "walkable" because those roads are busier and therefore classified as off-limits to elementary kids without a crossing guard. And APS assumes in its analysis that there are no new crossing guards added to the system. But if you look at where kids actually live, you can see the need to leave more neighborhood seats in that area. Otherwise, you have to push kids upwards in a domino effect to fill the empty seats at Jamestown and Discovery. And that creates long skinny boundaries and probably at the end some walkers on the bus. The alternative is leaving Ashlawn, Reed, and Glebe overcrowded (and possibly also Tuckahoe in a few years, depending on what happens with those new townhomes and development around EFC) with empty seats at Discovery and Jamestown.

We need to leave breathing room in the areas of the County where we expect growth. That's the concern.

page 5 https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Getting-Started-Working-Session-Presentation_FINAL.pdf

Important note - the shades of green are based on total number of students and unrelated to actual size, so a large PU that is dark green has the same number as a tiny PU that is dark green.

OP. Thank you for pointing out this map! So to further explain what I was saying above... if you look at the map on Slide 5 of the above presentation, and you draw Lee Highway on this map, you can see that TODAY that the northern part of the County is already the least densely populated. It is also the area where no new development is planned AND that likely has the highest opt out rates for private because those are the families who can afford it. The +133 seats in Zone 1 are located here, not anywhere near McKinley. How do you fill those seats other than by drawing crazy boundaries?

I am sure that when Nattress proposed Nottingham last year, she was trying to split the baby. She wanted to put ATS a little more central and she also knew that it wasn't a crazy bus ride for those kids to move north to Discovery (and Discovery kids to Jamestown). I know that proposal sucked for Nottingham-- and no doubt, Nottingham is a very walkable location, so it would have led to higher overall busing costs. But moving ATS to McKinley now is still not solving that underlying problem.

The middle school boundary process left Williamsburg and Hamm under-enrolled, while leaving Swanson, Jefferson, and Gunston over-capacity. We're about to see something similar happen under this proposal. And that means, we'll be redrawing boundaries again in two years, just like we are about to do at the middle school level.

Nottingham isn’t just highly walkable, it can also take a crazy number of trailers (including the potential for multi-purpose tailed space). If you can about managing population growth in the future, giving up the flexibility Nottingham provides as a neighborhood school would be stupid.

I also don’t understand why the borders have to be crazy. Shift some of the current discovery bus riders to Jamestown, move the overlapping Nottingham/Discovery walk zone that’s currently at Nottingham to Discovery, Nottingham gets all of the overlapping Nottingham/Tuckahoe walk zone and picks up another unit or two near Tuckahoe where they already send a bus, and then Tuckahoe boundary can extend across Lee Highway to pick up former McKinley. Nothing crazy there.

+1. Nottingham parents asked for this very thing years ago, but APS wouldn't do it, and that led to problems. Hopefully they will do the right thing this time.

Nottingham can also take an addition to handle future growth.

Because those former McK were Nottingham at one time, and it's crazy to keep shifting kids/neighborhoods back and forth between schools. Some of those planning units actually asked to stay at Nottingham at the time but the school fought it. Also, it's easy to say "just shift a few kids here and there" but if it's your kid do you want to be one of 20 families moved from one school to the next? I doubt it, especially when in some of these cases --like moving kids south of Lee Highway north to Elem schools--they won't go to middle school with their school. Easy to say, oh suck it up. But if it was your kid you'd fight too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you look at the capacity percentages after the move, you will see this is going to one huge CF. By disbanding McKinley entirely, they have Reed at 96%, Glebe between 92-104 and Ashlawn between 91-108%. Meanwhile, they leave Tuckahoe at 83/77%, ASFS possibly at 76% and the Jamestown/Disc/Nott tried in the 80's. They clearly are moving ATS to the wrong school. It needs to go into a smaller capacity school to not totally mess up the balance all over again. Either that or they need to move a heck of a lot more McK into Tuckahoe and Glebe into ASFS.

This:
Either that or they need to move a heck of a lot more McK into Tuckahoe and Glebe into ASFS.

I think we are going to see very few current McK families at Reed. It's going to be crazy. Do away with options and draw logical lines! and let kids cross busy roads with crossing guards. Dman people, this is not hard.

I really hope staff sends the planning units in the area where it makes the most sense rather than prioritizing sending more McKinley units to Reed (e.g. if Glebe/Tuckahoe/Ashlawn are closer or if McKinley units are bussed to Reed while kids walkable to Reed are bussed to Tuckahoe to fill it). Just RIP the bandaid off!

+1

As one of the families that would be impacted by this -- HELL no. We were a Nottingham family that got switched to McK just in time for construction/overcrowding. Now that they're building a new school within walking distance (.5 mile) of our house you'd want us to be bused back to Nottingham? No. I understand we have to go by more than fairness but that would be ridiculous. Also, if you're prioritizing walkability and keeping families together, then this is the opposite of that. Also the current "who goes where" chart doesn't say anything about this -- which would then be bait and switch. I know that's often what happens in Arlington but still.

Which planning units that attended Nottingham (as opposed to spending a year expecting to move to Nottingham) were moved to McKinley? I don't remember that process well enough to recall all of the moves, but I don't remember anyone who actually attended Nottingham moving to McKinley.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I simply do not understand why all of you folks with excellent and shiny new north arlington schools are up and at arms over this. So you have to go a little further to get to your excellent school. So what. The school board will make sure your kids are no longer in crowded schools. Have you not learned that the school board takes care of north arlington? I mean, they assigned Reed as a neighborhood school knowing they would then have an excess of seats in the area. Enjoy what your money bought.

Completely agree.

I find it revolting.

+million

Sorry, but you all need to step back and take a look at what you are saying. You are arguing over nothing. Nothing. Your schools are all close together and you all have excellent schools. This is petty.

[Anonymous]

Are some PUs moving schools 3 times during elementary school years? How can they go from Nottingham->McK->Reed within 6 years? Will the SB let that happen?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Look, I am not saying to go after Nottingham-- that was not the intent of my post. I am just saying that the excess capacity is north of Lee Highway, and you can't fill that without crazy boundaries. If you don't want to believe me, that's fine, but if you look at the planning units and the data it isn't as easy as you think when you eyeball it. Per your example, the two planning units in the overlapping Nottingham/Discovery walk zone that are currently going to Nottingham are 17020 and 17030. It sounds like you live up there, so I don't have to tell you that 17020 is literally directly across the street from Nottingham. You think those parents are going to be okay when it comes time to draw boundaries and they are told that they can't go to the school that they literally stare at from their front porch?

But even if you go with the tough love approach and move them, you still have a math problem because McKinley holds 684 kids and Tuckahoe and Nottingham are a lot smaller buildings (545 and 519). By the time you shift everyone northward (and Tuckahoe families westward to Reed), you will end up filling Tuckahoe with a majority of current McKinley and Ashlawn kids-- and those students are going to drive right past the McKinley building to get to Tuckahoe. That doesn't make sense.

Drawing boundaries for this proposal is going to be a CF and a lot more kids are going to end up getting moved in the end. Everyone needs to realize that. Again, just look at the middle school boundary process if you don't believe me. We are reopening all those boundaries AGAIN immediately after we draw these boundaries because they have to get more kids into Hamm and Williamsburg.

So then what are you advocating for? You can't just say "Not McKinley" without putting forth a more reasonable alternative. Your alternative proposal may be to move an option school north of Lee Highway, but then own it rather than doing this song and dance so there can be an actual discussion. Make the case for why your proposal is better when you look at all of the considerations, not just the narrow subset that favors your preferred outcome.

Also, in addition to 17020 and 17030, 17031 and 17034 are currently zoned to Nottingham but are within the 1-mile walking boundary for Discovery and could also be designated as walk zone. They were considered last time, and while they weren't put on the short list at that point, those short lists were deliberately kept shorter than necessary to make it easier to justifying moving planning units between schools even if they were technically within the one-mile walk zone (if you're going to be bused to Discovery, it's just as easy to bus you to another nearby school). As for 17020, while a handful of houses are across the street from Nottingham, most are not. Some are actually closer to Discovery than to Nottingham.

As for the whole "people will ride past McKinley to their neighborhood school," so what? Some kids ride past Campbell to get to Carlin Springs and past Claremont to Abingdon, does that also offend you? If we have option schools, some kids will ride past those option schools on their way to neighborhood schools, so the only way to address this concern is to disband all option programs. Is that what you're advocating?

So to be clear, I am not in the Save McKinley camp. But I am in the camp that wants to see these boundaries drawn right the first time so we don't have to reopen them in two years when we realize Reed, Ashlawn, and Glebe are still bursting at the seams. Rip the band-aid off and do it right. There is no way to make sure you do that though unless you draw boundaries in conjunction with making decisions about where option schools move. This process is not going to lead to a good result if it is all done piecemeal and doesn't allow for growth in the schools where we know more kids are going. And yes, that may mean that another NW school ends up being the option school-- I don't really care, because my kids are out of elementary school by then anyway. But as a taxpayer, I am tired of paying money for new school construction like Discovery and Hamm that then sit under-enrolled while other schools are crammed in trailers. That's not good for the kids or the teachers. I am advocating for good planning and this process is not that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are some PUs moving schools 3 times during elementary school years? How can they go from Nottingham->McK->Reed within 6 years? Will the SB let that happen?

No one moved from Nottingham to McKinley.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not a "Save McKinley" proponent but why can't ATS stay right where it is? It's not in the IPP so why are we trying to move it to a bigger building, and why is it a "pro" under both proposals that 100 more kids could go there? I'm a South Arlington resident and I think ATS is bad for South Arlington.

And, ATS is a not a walkable school so keep it as an option but without moving Immersion or Campbell there. What's wrong with Immersion to Carlin Springs, full stop? Yes, there will be a somewhat wide swath of West Pike with no neighborhood school, but Campbell is functionally a neighborhood school for Glencarlyn anyway. Split up the non-Glencarlyn PUs between Abingdon and Ashlawn and do tons of outreach to that community to get them to apply to CS as Immersion. McK, Reed, and ASFS can take Ashlawn's long boundary and some of Glebe.

That part of South Arlington is already facing a seating shortage, and you want to take away hundreds more seats while NW elementary schools sit with empty classrooms because they're so under capacity? We're Discovery so that would be great for us, but even I can't pretend this isn't a terrible idea.

Plenty of room at Drew and Fleet. Move SF to Drew and some of CS's boundary to Ashlawn and see what happens.

In any event, neither proposal 1 or 2 address the seat shortage in that area anyway. The first doesn't affect it at all, and the second makes an option school into a neighborhood school in order to take on the population of a school with a substantially bigger enrollment (in a smaller, older, crappier building).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not a "Save McKinley" proponent but why can't ATS stay right where it is? It's not in the IPP so why are we trying to move it to a bigger building, and why is it a "pro" under both proposals that 100 more kids could go there? I'm a South Arlington resident and I think ATS is bad for South Arlington.

And, ATS is a not a walkable school so keep it as an option but without moving Immersion or Campbell there. What's wrong with Immersion to Carlin Springs, full stop? Yes, there will be a somewhat wide swath of West Pike with no neighborhood school, but Campbell is functionally a neighborhood school for Glencarlyn anyway. Split up the non-Glencarlyn PUs between Abingdon and Ashlawn and do tons of outreach to that community to get them to apply to CS as Immersion. McK, Reed, and ASFS can take Ashlawn's long boundary and some of Glebe.

That part of South Arlington is already facing a seating shortage, and you want to take away hundreds more seats while NW elementary schools sit with empty classrooms because they're so under capacity? We're Discovery so that would be great for us, but even I can't pretend this isn't a terrible idea.

Plenty of room at Drew and Fleet. Move SF to Drew and some of CS's boundary to Ashlawn and see what happens.

In any event, neither proposal 1 or 2 address the seat shortage in that area anyway. The first doesn't affect it at all, and the second makes an option school into a neighborhood school in order to take on the population of a school with a substantially bigger enrollment (in a smaller, older, crappier building).

So we're abandoning any pretense of sensible boundaries?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are some PUs moving schools 3 times during elementary school years? How can they go from Nottingham->McK->Reed within 6 years? Will the SB let that happen?

The last of the elementary moves from when Discovery opened happened in fall 2015. No one who was in elementary school then will still be in elementary school when the new boundaries go into effect in fall 2021. No students are moving twice due to boundary changes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are some PUs moving schools 3 times during elementary school years? How can they go from Nottingham->McK->Reed within 6 years? Will the SB let that happen?

No one moved from Nottingham to McKinley.

Yes they did. One planning unit south of Lee Highway.