APS - Elementary school -who is opting for virtual in 2021/22

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And if you watch SB meetings, last Fall, Lisa Stengle hinted strongly that an option program may be moved "North of Lee Highway." So my prediction is that Tuckahoe or Nottingham aren't long for the world either. North North Arlington schools will become overcrowded like the rest of the county.

There was no hinting. The proposal specifically identified Discovery, Jamestown, Nottingham, Taylor and Tuckahoe as schools to be considered as potential option sites in the future to provide capacity on the western end of Columbia Pile, and also specifically identified Campbell and Claremont as option schools to evaluate moving north.

And it totally makes sense that discovery Nottingham or Tuckahoe would be used as an option school, since they have overlapping walk boundaries and are all under populated. One of the big push backs is that more kids would have to be bussed up there.

My prediction is that poor Campbell will move to N. Arlington. Discovery may make the most sense for an expeditionary school to move to because it has woods and focuses on green space already, but it will probably be Tuckahoe. Claremont will probably move to Carlin Springs to ease up space for Abington, and the poor Carlin Springs kids will move to Campbell, the one school that isn't walkable for most of its population.

When the original school moves proposal was put out, it included Campbell and Carlin Springs in addition to Key, ATS and McKinley. Kadera saw all of this, and that's where her arguments came from. She wasn't trying to throw other schools under the bus.

All of the outdoor space around Discovery is covered in artificial material or playground mulch. There’s about a 20’ strip of trees behind the soccer fields before you’re in neighbors’ backyards, but that’s it.

[Anonymous]

Re Kadera and the Reed site- so we're directly affected by the new boundary for Reed and followed it all closely. I understand why Kadera made the arguments she did against the school moves, and I understand the issues McK has had with APS- the overcrowding, the long renovation, etc. I didn't love the manner in which she, on behalf of the McK PTA, suggested that specific other schools be made into option sites, but I understand why it was done.

But so I looked at her website/blog thing and read this:

"3. Busing to the new school at the Reed site: APS is asking for $390,000 to hire more bus drivers and attendants when a new elementary school opens at the Reed site next fall. This is a real head-scratcher: last year during the school moves process, APS argued that McKinley's student population should move to Reed because it was "so walkable" and that making this move would actually reduce transportation costs. So what happened?"

So as I understood it, McKinley specifically argued for sending as many of their students to Reed as possible, to the exclusion of walkable kids from other schools. The boundary map proposed by the McK PTA suggested that even those kids who live in houses like 20 yards from the school door not attend (though APS rejected that in the end). I don't know, my understanding was that APS viewed Reed as a walkable school based on the # of kids who COULD walk there. But APS acceded to McK's demands, and now will continue to bus kids who could walk to Reed to Tuckahoe, and bus kids who used to walk to McK from Madison Manor to Reed. Isn't that why the busing costs are higher then anticipated?

I don't know, this is probably super nitpicky and set me straight if I'm not understanding what happened. But it just seemed very disingenuous coming from someone who was so involved in this process.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Re Kadera and the Reed site- so we're directly affected by the new boundary for Reed and followed it all closely. I understand why Kadera made the arguments she did against the school moves, and I understand the issues McK has had with APS- the overcrowding, the long renovation, etc. I didn't love the manner in which she, on behalf of the McK PTA, suggested that specific other schools be made into option sites, but I understand why it was done.

But so I looked at her website/blog thing and read this:

"3. Busing to the new school at the Reed site: APS is asking for $390,000 to hire more bus drivers and attendants when a new elementary school opens at the Reed site next fall. This is a real head-scratcher: last year during the school moves process, APS argued that McKinley's student population should move to Reed because it was "so walkable" and that making this move would actually reduce transportation costs. So what happened?"

So as I understood it, McKinley specifically argued for sending as many of their students to Reed as possible, to the exclusion of walkable kids from other schools. The boundary map proposed by the McK PTA suggested that even those kids who live in houses like 20 yards from the school door not attend (though APS rejected that in the end). I don't know, my understanding was that APS viewed Reed as a walkable school based on the # of kids who COULD walk there. But APS acceded to McK's demands, and now will continue to bus kids who could walk to Reed to Tuckahoe, and bus kids who used to walk to McK from Madison Manor to Reed. Isn't that why the busing costs are higher then anticipated?

I don't know, this is probably super nitpicky and set me straight if I'm not understanding what happened. But it just seemed very disingenuous coming from someone who was so involved in this process.

I don’t think this is nitpicky at all. I haven’t verified every detail of this personally, but if this is how it all went down, I think this is pretty dishonest of her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Re Kadera and the Reed site- so we're directly affected by the new boundary for Reed and followed it all closely. I understand why Kadera made the arguments she did against the school moves, and I understand the issues McK has had with APS- the overcrowding, the long renovation, etc. I didn't love the manner in which she, on behalf of the McK PTA, suggested that specific other schools be made into option sites, but I understand why it was done.

But so I looked at her website/blog thing and read this:

"3. Busing to the new school at the Reed site: APS is asking for $390,000 to hire more bus drivers and attendants when a new elementary school opens at the Reed site next fall. This is a real head-scratcher: last year during the school moves process, APS argued that McKinley's student population should move to Reed because it was "so walkable" and that making this move would actually reduce transportation costs. So what happened?"

So as I understood it, McKinley specifically argued for sending as many of their students to Reed as possible, to the exclusion of walkable kids from other schools. The boundary map proposed by the McK PTA suggested that even those kids who live in houses like 20 yards from the school door not attend (though APS rejected that in the end). I don't know, my understanding was that APS viewed Reed as a walkable school based on the # of kids who COULD walk there. But APS acceded to McK's demands, and now will continue to bus kids who could walk to Reed to Tuckahoe, and bus kids who used to walk to McK from Madison Manor to Reed. Isn't that why the busing costs are higher then anticipated?

I don't know, this is probably super nitpicky and set me straight if I'm not understanding what happened. But it just seemed very disingenuous coming from someone who was so involved in this process.

I don’t think this is nitpicky at all. I haven’t verified every detail of this personally, but if this is how it all went down, I think this is pretty dishonest of her.

At least some of what you say above doesn't make sense. The Madison Manor kids who weren't going to be able to walk to McKinley anymore once that building was made into a choice school were always going to have to be bussed somewhere because by and large they weren't going to be going to be able to walk to the old McKinley building for school anymore. And they sure weren't going to walk to Ashlawn or WHEREVER else APS decided to assign them -- too far whether Reed or some other school.

Whatever old mckinley footprint kadera asked to preserve, it sure wasn't $400K worth of buses of a footprint, so I assume Kadera's point is that, hey, the reason you guys chose McKinley as a school to convert to a choice school in the first place is because the Westover bucket of walkable kids is larger than the Madison Manor bucket of walkable kids. But if were really true, why is it costing $400K more than it used to at McKinley to get buses to load up Reed? I see the point about Tuckahoe, but again that's not $400K worth of buses so what happened?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Re Kadera and the Reed site- so we're directly affected by the new boundary for Reed and followed it all closely. I understand why Kadera made the arguments she did against the school moves, and I understand the issues McK has had with APS- the overcrowding, the long renovation, etc. I didn't love the manner in which she, on behalf of the McK PTA, suggested that specific other schools be made into option sites, but I understand why it was done.

But so I looked at her website/blog thing and read this:

"3. Busing to the new school at the Reed site: APS is asking for $390,000 to hire more bus drivers and attendants when a new elementary school opens at the Reed site next fall. This is a real head-scratcher: last year during the school moves process, APS argued that McKinley's student population should move to Reed because it was "so walkable" and that making this move would actually reduce transportation costs. So what happened?"

So as I understood it, McKinley specifically argued for sending as many of their students to Reed as possible, to the exclusion of walkable kids from other schools. The boundary map proposed by the McK PTA suggested that even those kids who live in houses like 20 yards from the school door not attend (though APS rejected that in the end). I don't know, my understanding was that APS viewed Reed as a walkable school based on the # of kids who COULD walk there. But APS acceded to McK's demands, and now will continue to bus kids who could walk to Reed to Tuckahoe, and bus kids who used to walk to McK from Madison Manor to Reed. Isn't that why the busing costs are higher then anticipated?

I don't know, this is probably super nitpicky and set me straight if I'm not understanding what happened. But it just seemed very disingenuous coming from someone who was so involved in this process.

I don’t think this is nitpicky at all. I haven’t verified every detail of this personally, but if this is how it all went down, I think this is pretty dishonest of her.

At least some of what you say above doesn't make sense. The Madison Manor kids who weren't going to be able to walk to McKinley anymore once that building was made into a choice school were always going to have to be bussed somewhere because by and large they weren't going to be going to be able to walk to the old McKinley building for school anymore. And they sure weren't going to walk to Ashlawn or WHEREVER else APS decided to assign them -- too far whether Reed or some other school.

Whatever old mckinley footprint kadera asked to preserve, it sure wasn't $400K worth of buses of a footprint, so I assume Kadera's point is that, hey, the reason you guys chose McKinley as a school to convert to a choice school in the first place is because the Westover bucket of walkable kids is larger than the Madison Manor bucket of walkable kids. But if were really true, why is it costing $400K more than it used to at McKinley to get buses to load up Reed? I see the point about Tuckahoe, but again that's not $400K worth of buses so what happened?

To give some perspective on it, $400k is roughly the equivalent of four buses.

That aside, I think you’re misinterpreting pp’s post. The issue, as I understand it, is that Kadera argued on behalf of the McKinley community to send more of the McKinley community (such as the Madison Manor pocket you mentioned) to Reed, even though they would need to be bused to Reed and it would mean zoning away planning units that could walk to Reed (but would have to be bused elsewhere) to accommodate them. It would be pretty disingenuous to argue for a boundary that you know will increase busing needs and then criticize APS for budgeting for more transportations funds to accommodate the solution you asked for.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Re Kadera and the Reed site- so we're directly affected by the new boundary for Reed and followed it all closely. I understand why Kadera made the arguments she did against the school moves, and I understand the issues McK has had with APS- the overcrowding, the long renovation, etc. I didn't love the manner in which she, on behalf of the McK PTA, suggested that specific other schools be made into option sites, but I understand why it was done.

But so I looked at her website/blog thing and read this:

"3. Busing to the new school at the Reed site: APS is asking for $390,000 to hire more bus drivers and attendants when a new elementary school opens at the Reed site next fall. This is a real head-scratcher: last year during the school moves process, APS argued that McKinley's student population should move to Reed because it was "so walkable" and that making this move would actually reduce transportation costs. So what happened?"

So as I understood it, McKinley specifically argued for sending as many of their students to Reed as possible, to the exclusion of walkable kids from other schools. The boundary map proposed by the McK PTA suggested that even those kids who live in houses like 20 yards from the school door not attend (though APS rejected that in the end). I don't know, my understanding was that APS viewed Reed as a walkable school based on the # of kids who COULD walk there. But APS acceded to McK's demands, and now will continue to bus kids who could walk to Reed to Tuckahoe, and bus kids who used to walk to McK from Madison Manor to Reed. Isn't that why the busing costs are higher then anticipated?

I don't know, this is probably super nitpicky and set me straight if I'm not understanding what happened. But it just seemed very disingenuous coming from someone who was so involved in this process.

I don’t think this is nitpicky at all. I haven’t verified every detail of this personally, but if this is how it all went down, I think this is pretty dishonest of her.

At least some of what you say above doesn't make sense. The Madison Manor kids who weren't going to be able to walk to McKinley anymore once that building was made into a choice school were always going to have to be bussed somewhere because by and large they weren't going to be going to be able to walk to the old McKinley building for school anymore. And they sure weren't going to walk to Ashlawn or WHEREVER else APS decided to assign them -- too far whether Reed or some other school.

Whatever old mckinley footprint kadera asked to preserve, it sure wasn't $400K worth of buses of a footprint, so I assume Kadera's point is that, hey, the reason you guys chose McKinley as a school to convert to a choice school in the first place is because the Westover bucket of walkable kids is larger than the Madison Manor bucket of walkable kids. But if were really true, why is it costing $400K more than it used to at McKinley to get buses to load up Reed? I see the point about Tuckahoe, but again that's not $400K worth of buses so what happened?

I think they answered it at one of the meetings. Any way you slice it, we have one more school than before and therefore new bus routes that did not exist before. Buses routes are never 100% efficient. So it’s not like you can take the prexisting number of buses and spread them over the schools + 1 when a new one opens.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Re Kadera and the Reed site- so we're directly affected by the new boundary for Reed and followed it all closely. I understand why Kadera made the arguments she did against the school moves, and I understand the issues McK has had with APS- the overcrowding, the long renovation, etc. I didn't love the manner in which she, on behalf of the McK PTA, suggested that specific other schools be made into option sites, but I understand why it was done.

But so I looked at her website/blog thing and read this:

"3. Busing to the new school at the Reed site: APS is asking for $390,000 to hire more bus drivers and attendants when a new elementary school opens at the Reed site next fall. This is a real head-scratcher: last year during the school moves process, APS argued that McKinley's student population should move to Reed because it was "so walkable" and that making this move would actually reduce transportation costs. So what happened?"

So as I understood it, McKinley specifically argued for sending as many of their students to Reed as possible, to the exclusion of walkable kids from other schools. The boundary map proposed by the McK PTA suggested that even those kids who live in houses like 20 yards from the school door not attend (though APS rejected that in the end). I don't know, my understanding was that APS viewed Reed as a walkable school based on the # of kids who COULD walk there. But APS acceded to McK's demands, and now will continue to bus kids who could walk to Reed to Tuckahoe, and bus kids who used to walk to McK from Madison Manor to Reed. Isn't that why the busing costs are higher then anticipated?

I don't know, this is probably super nitpicky and set me straight if I'm not understanding what happened. But it just seemed very disingenuous coming from someone who was so involved in this process.

I don’t think this is nitpicky at all. I haven’t verified every detail of this personally, but if this is how it all went down, I think this is pretty dishonest of her.

At least some of what you say above doesn't make sense. The Madison Manor kids who weren't going to be able to walk to McKinley anymore once that building was made into a choice school were always going to have to be bussed somewhere because by and large they weren't going to be going to be able to walk to the old McKinley building for school anymore. And they sure weren't going to walk to Ashlawn or WHEREVER else APS decided to assign them -- too far whether Reed or some other school.

Whatever old mckinley footprint kadera asked to preserve, it sure wasn't $400K worth of buses of a footprint, so I assume Kadera's point is that, hey, the reason you guys chose McKinley as a school to convert to a choice school in the first place is because the Westover bucket of walkable kids is larger than the Madison Manor bucket of walkable kids. But if were really true, why is it costing $400K more than it used to at McKinley to get buses to load up Reed? I see the point about Tuckahoe, but again that's not $400K worth of buses so what happened?

To give some perspective on it, $400k is roughly the equivalent of four buses.

That aside, I think you’re misinterpreting pp’s post. The issue, as I understand it, is that Kadera argued on behalf of the McKinley community to send more of the McKinley community (such as the Madison Manor pocket you mentioned) to Reed, even though they would need to be bused to Reed and it would mean zoning away planning units that could walk to Reed (but would have to be bused elsewhere) to accommodate them. It would be pretty disingenuous to argue for a boundary that you know will increase busing needs and then criticize APS for budgeting for more transportations funds to accommodate the solution you asked for.

Thanks, I'm the initial poster. That is what I meant.

What I read implied that APS had misrepresented or miscalculated Reed's walkability because they are now spending $$$ to bus kids there. My immediate thought was, well of course the estimated transportation costs went up after they finalized the boundaries, because they probably assumed that all the kids who could walk to Reed would go there. And that someone intimately involved in the process would know that.

I believe you that it's not a $400k difference, but if the point she was trying to make was that the only issue is that it should be $100k-$200k (1-2 buses) vs. $400k, that was not clear to me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And if you watch SB meetings, last Fall, Lisa Stengle hinted strongly that an option program may be moved "North of Lee Highway." So my prediction is that Tuckahoe or Nottingham aren't long for the world either. North North Arlington schools will become overcrowded like the rest of the county.

There was no hinting. The proposal specifically identified Discovery, Jamestown, Nottingham, Taylor and Tuckahoe as schools to be considered as potential option sites in the future to provide capacity on the western end of Columbia Pile, and also specifically identified Campbell and Claremont as option schools to evaluate moving north.

And it totally makes sense that discovery Nottingham or Tuckahoe would be used as an option school, since they have overlapping walk boundaries and are all under populated. One of the big push backs is that more kids would have to be bussed up there.

My prediction is that poor Campbell will move to N. Arlington. Discovery may make the most sense for an expeditionary school to move to because it has woods and focuses on green space already, but it will probably be Tuckahoe. Claremont will probably move to Carlin Springs to ease up space for Abington, and the poor Carlin Springs kids will move to Campbell, the one school that isn't walkable for most of its population.

When the original school moves proposal was put out, it included Campbell and Carlin Springs in addition to Key, ATS and McKinley. Kadera saw all of this, and that's where her arguments came from. She wasn't trying to throw other schools under the bus.

All of the outdoor space around Discovery is covered in artificial material or playground mulch. There’s about a 20’ strip of trees behind the soccer fields before you’re in neighbors’ backyards, but that’s it.

My point is that while no N Arlington school has a Long Branch Nature Center next door, Discovery at least has the solar panels, a rain garden and some trees. It's better suited to an expeditionary program than Tuckahoe or Nottingham. But I think due to its proximity to the Metro, Tuckahoe may be the more likely choice for an option program. It's unfortunate that the Pandora's box has been opened with the first school moves, but parents should start strategizing now how to fight back when your turn eventually comes. I hope you have someone like Mary fighting for you.

Signed, an ATS parent

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And if you watch SB meetings, last Fall, Lisa Stengle hinted strongly that an option program may be moved "North of Lee Highway." So my prediction is that Tuckahoe or Nottingham aren't long for the world either. North North Arlington schools will become overcrowded like the rest of the county.

There was no hinting. The proposal specifically identified Discovery, Jamestown, Nottingham, Taylor and Tuckahoe as schools to be considered as potential option sites in the future to provide capacity on the western end of Columbia Pile, and also specifically identified Campbell and Claremont as option schools to evaluate moving north.

And it totally makes sense that discovery Nottingham or Tuckahoe would be used as an option school, since they have overlapping walk boundaries and are all under populated. One of the big push backs is that more kids would have to be bussed up there.

My prediction is that poor Campbell will move to N. Arlington. Discovery may make the most sense for an expeditionary school to move to because it has woods and focuses on green space already, but it will probably be Tuckahoe. Claremont will probably move to Carlin Springs to ease up space for Abington, and the poor Carlin Springs kids will move to Campbell, the one school that isn't walkable for most of its population.

When the original school moves proposal was put out, it included Campbell and Carlin Springs in addition to Key, ATS and McKinley. Kadera saw all of this, and that's where her arguments came from. She wasn't trying to throw other schools under the bus.

All of the outdoor space around Discovery is covered in artificial material or playground mulch. There’s about a 20’ strip of trees behind the soccer fields before you’re in neighbors’ backyards, but that’s it.

My point is that while no N Arlington school has a Long Branch Nature Center next door, Discovery at least has the solar panels, a rain garden and some trees. It's better suited to an expeditionary program than Tuckahoe or Nottingham. But I think due to its proximity to the Metro, Tuckahoe may be the more likely choice for an option program. It's unfortunate that the Pandora's box has been opened with the first school moves, but parents should start strategizing now how to fight back when your turn eventually comes. I hope you have someone like Mary fighting for you.

Signed, an ATS parent

As a parent who lives in the middle of all three schools and spends a lot of time on the grounds of each of them, Tuckahoe is a much more natural fit than Discovery for the expeditionary program. It has vastly more natural green space, woods with proper trails through them, and a garden.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And if you watch SB meetings, last Fall, Lisa Stengle hinted strongly that an option program may be moved "North of Lee Highway." So my prediction is that Tuckahoe or Nottingham aren't long for the world either. North North Arlington schools will become overcrowded like the rest of the county.

There was no hinting. The proposal specifically identified Discovery, Jamestown, Nottingham, Taylor and Tuckahoe as schools to be considered as potential option sites in the future to provide capacity on the western end of Columbia Pile, and also specifically identified Campbell and Claremont as option schools to evaluate moving north.

And it totally makes sense that discovery Nottingham or Tuckahoe would be used as an option school, since they have overlapping walk boundaries and are all under populated. One of the big push backs is that more kids would have to be bussed up there.

My prediction is that poor Campbell will move to N. Arlington. Discovery may make the most sense for an expeditionary school to move to because it has woods and focuses on green space already, but it will probably be Tuckahoe. Claremont will probably move to Carlin Springs to ease up space for Abington, and the poor Carlin Springs kids will move to Campbell, the one school that isn't walkable for most of its population.

When the original school moves proposal was put out, it included Campbell and Carlin Springs in addition to Key, ATS and McKinley. Kadera saw all of this, and that's where her arguments came from. She wasn't trying to throw other schools under the bus.

All of the outdoor space around Discovery is covered in artificial material or playground mulch. There’s about a 20’ strip of trees behind the soccer fields before you’re in neighbors’ backyards, but that’s it.

My point is that while no N Arlington school has a Long Branch Nature Center next door, Discovery at least has the solar panels, a rain garden and some trees. It's better suited to an expeditionary program than Tuckahoe or Nottingham. But I think due to its proximity to the Metro, Tuckahoe may be the more likely choice for an option program. It's unfortunate that the Pandora's box has been opened with the first school moves, but parents should start strategizing now how to fight back when your turn eventually comes. I hope you have someone like Mary fighting for you.

Signed, an ATS parent

As a parent who lives in the middle of all three schools and spends a lot of time on the grounds of each of them, Tuckahoe is a much more natural fit than Discovery for the expeditionary program. It has vastly more natural green space, woods with proper trails through them, and a garden.

Agree, there’s literally a park right behind Tuckahoe. As PP mention, discovery is surrounded by turf fields and has a very small outdoor learning area in the woods which is basically in someone’s backyard. Yes it has solar panels and such, but that doesn’t make it an outdoor learning environment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And if you watch SB meetings, last Fall, Lisa Stengle hinted strongly that an option program may be moved "North of Lee Highway." So my prediction is that Tuckahoe or Nottingham aren't long for the world either. North North Arlington schools will become overcrowded like the rest of the county.

There was no hinting. The proposal specifically identified Discovery, Jamestown, Nottingham, Taylor and Tuckahoe as schools to be considered as potential option sites in the future to provide capacity on the western end of Columbia Pile, and also specifically identified Campbell and Claremont as option schools to evaluate moving north.

And it totally makes sense that discovery Nottingham or Tuckahoe would be used as an option school, since they have overlapping walk boundaries and are all under populated. One of the big push backs is that more kids would have to be bussed up there.

My prediction is that poor Campbell will move to N. Arlington. Discovery may make the most sense for an expeditionary school to move to because it has woods and focuses on green space already, but it will probably be Tuckahoe. Claremont will probably move to Carlin Springs to ease up space for Abington, and the poor Carlin Springs kids will move to Campbell, the one school that isn't walkable for most of its population.

When the original school moves proposal was put out, it included Campbell and Carlin Springs in addition to Key, ATS and McKinley. Kadera saw all of this, and that's where her arguments came from. She wasn't trying to throw other schools under the bus.

All of the outdoor space around Discovery is covered in artificial material or playground mulch. There’s about a 20’ strip of trees behind the soccer fields before you’re in neighbors’ backyards, but that’s it.

My point is that while no N Arlington school has a Long Branch Nature Center next door, Discovery at least has the solar panels, a rain garden and some trees. It's better suited to an expeditionary program than Tuckahoe or Nottingham. But I think due to its proximity to the Metro, Tuckahoe may be the more likely choice for an option program. It's unfortunate that the Pandora's box has been opened with the first school moves, but parents should start strategizing now how to fight back when your turn eventually comes. I hope you have someone like Mary fighting for you.

Signed, an ATS parent

LOL, I can only assume you have never been to Tuckahoe.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:She was kind of right, though. There aren't enough kids up in that Northern quadrant to fill the seats, leaving the schools up there underenrolled, while Glebe and McKinley and Ashlawn continue to be overenrolled. I thought the point was that if you take away one of the neighborhood schools near McKinley, the new school at Reed wasn't ultimately going to solve the McKinley/Glebe/Ashlawn overcapacity problem because you would just be moving a full cup from one site to another, while Jamestown etc. remained underenrolled as per usual because not enough kids were getting bused up there (and never have been).

Like, she's not wrong about that. And I understand people didn't want two neighborhood schools there near McKinley because they want capacity relief too. In the end, though, Reed is going to be a smaller school than McKinley was, with no room for trailers like McKinley had (!), so the overage is going to have to go somewhere and you can bet it's not going to be Nottingham and Jamestown.

Not to go through all this again. But she had a point and it wasn't "hey let's bring back de facto segregation" but more like "please don't oversubscribe my school again after severely, severely overscribing them repeatedly for the past 10 years."

That ignores the fact that you can push planning units north - some of Discovery is moved to Jamestown, some of Glebe and Cardinal can go to Nottingham and Discovery, etc. McKinley sent tons of emails asking to be moved en masse instead of rezoning for this fall, so they kind of brought the overcrowding in 2021 on themselves.

I mean, yeah the Board sure can in theory, but Jamestown has been undersubscribed for a decade or more so wrf actually? Every time the Board played musical chairs with the extra kids and tried to redistribute enrollment, some of the northern schools were mysteriously left out of the game or let off the hook at the last minute, so am I ignoring that fact or just acknowledging reality?

If you look at the geography and the location of other schools, there is basically no way to fill Jamestown as a neighborhood school without some truly bizarre snaking boundaries. From a capacity management standpoint, it is easily the best candidate for an option program for this reason. The counterargument is that since it is tucked so far away into the suburbs at the furthest corner of the county, away from major roads and public transit routes, it would make it all but impossible for many low-income families to attend.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Re Kadera and the Reed site- so we're directly affected by the new boundary for Reed and followed it all closely. I understand why Kadera made the arguments she did against the school moves, and I understand the issues McK has had with APS- the overcrowding, the long renovation, etc. I didn't love the manner in which she, on behalf of the McK PTA, suggested that specific other schools be made into option sites, but I understand why it was done.

But so I looked at her website/blog thing and read this:

"3. Busing to the new school at the Reed site: APS is asking for $390,000 to hire more bus drivers and attendants when a new elementary school opens at the Reed site next fall. This is a real head-scratcher: last year during the school moves process, APS argued that McKinley's student population should move to Reed because it was "so walkable" and that making this move would actually reduce transportation costs. So what happened?"

So as I understood it, McKinley specifically argued for sending as many of their students to Reed as possible, to the exclusion of walkable kids from other schools. The boundary map proposed by the McK PTA suggested that even those kids who live in houses like 20 yards from the school door not attend (though APS rejected that in the end). I don't know, my understanding was that APS viewed Reed as a walkable school based on the # of kids who COULD walk there. But APS acceded to McK's demands, and now will continue to bus kids who could walk to Reed to Tuckahoe, and bus kids who used to walk to McK from Madison Manor to Reed. Isn't that why the busing costs are higher then anticipated?

I don't know, this is probably super nitpicky and set me straight if I'm not understanding what happened. But it just seemed very disingenuous coming from someone who was so involved in this process.

I don’t think this is nitpicky at all. I haven’t verified every detail of this personally, but if this is how it all went down, I think this is pretty dishonest of her.

At least some of what you say above doesn't make sense. The Madison Manor kids who weren't going to be able to walk to McKinley anymore once that building was made into a choice school were always going to have to be bussed somewhere because by and large they weren't going to be going to be able to walk to the old McKinley building for school anymore. And they sure weren't going to walk to Ashlawn or WHEREVER else APS decided to assign them -- too far whether Reed or some other school.

Whatever old mckinley footprint kadera asked to preserve, it sure wasn't $400K worth of buses of a footprint, so I assume Kadera's point is that, hey, the reason you guys chose McKinley as a school to convert to a choice school in the first place is because the Westover bucket of walkable kids is larger than the Madison Manor bucket of walkable kids. But if were really true, why is it costing $400K more than it used to at McKinley to get buses to load up Reed? I see the point about Tuckahoe, but again that's not $400K worth of buses so what happened?

To give some perspective on it, $400k is roughly the equivalent of four buses.

That aside, I think you’re misinterpreting pp’s post. The issue, as I understand it, is that Kadera argued on behalf of the McKinley community to send more of the McKinley community (such as the Madison Manor pocket you mentioned) to Reed, even though they would need to be bused to Reed and it would mean zoning away planning units that could walk to Reed (but would have to be bused elsewhere) to accommodate them. It would be pretty disingenuous to argue for a boundary that you know will increase busing needs and then criticize APS for budgeting for more transportations funds to accommodate the solution you asked for.

Thanks, I'm the initial poster. That is what I meant.

What I read implied that APS had misrepresented or miscalculated Reed's walkability because they are now spending $$$ to bus kids there. My immediate thought was, well of course the estimated transportation costs went up after they finalized the boundaries, because they probably assumed that all the kids who could walk to Reed would go there. And that someone intimately involved in the process would know that.

I believe you that it's not a $400k difference, but if the point she was trying to make was that the only issue is that it should be $100k-$200k (1-2 buses) vs. $400k, that was not clear to me.

I think Kadera might still be making a point that you guys aren't getting. I acknowledge that there's a small grey area where the costs are a little higher because maybe some of walkable Tuckahoe didn't move to Reed (is that right?), but that still doesn't really defeat the point, which is:

When picking a school to change to a choice school, McKinley was told that it was a good target to move to Reed because McKinley used a lot of buses, and fewer net buses would be needed for a neighborhood program at Reed because so many more kids at Westover would be walkable at Reed than were walkable at McKinley.

This didn't seem to be true, in the end. Those Tuckahoe kids don't make up $400K worth of buses. If the net cost of transporting the Madison Manor kids (who were walkable to McKinley!) is more than the net cost of busing the Westover kids to McKinley had been, then wasn't McKinley actually more "walkable" in the end than Reed was? Why would buses cost that much more than they had cost to McKinley if Reed was actually more walkable?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:And if you watch SB meetings, last Fall, Lisa Stengle hinted strongly that an option program may be moved "North of Lee Highway." So my prediction is that Tuckahoe or Nottingham aren't long for the world either. North North Arlington schools will become overcrowded like the rest of the county.

There was no hinting. The proposal specifically identified Discovery, Jamestown, Nottingham, Taylor and Tuckahoe as schools to be considered as potential option sites in the future to provide capacity on the western end of Columbia Pile, and also specifically identified Campbell and Claremont as option schools to evaluate moving north.

And it totally makes sense that discovery Nottingham or Tuckahoe would be used as an option school, since they have overlapping walk boundaries and are all under populated. One of the big push backs is that more kids would have to be bussed up there.

My prediction is that poor Campbell will move to N. Arlington. Discovery may make the most sense for an expeditionary school to move to because it has woods and focuses on green space already, but it will probably be Tuckahoe. Claremont will probably move to Carlin Springs to ease up space for Abington, and the poor Carlin Springs kids will move to Campbell, the one school that isn't walkable for most of its population.

When the original school moves proposal was put out, it included Campbell and Carlin Springs in addition to Key, ATS and McKinley. Kadera saw all of this, and that's where her arguments came from. She wasn't trying to throw other schools under the bus.

All of the outdoor space around Discovery is covered in artificial material or playground mulch. There’s about a 20’ strip of trees behind the soccer fields before you’re in neighbors’ backyards, but that’s it.

My point is that while no N Arlington school has a Long Branch Nature Center next door, Discovery at least has the solar panels, a rain garden and some trees. It's better suited to an expeditionary program than Tuckahoe or Nottingham. But I think due to its proximity to the Metro, Tuckahoe may be the more likely choice for an option program. It's unfortunate that the Pandora's box has been opened with the first school moves, but parents should start strategizing now how to fight back when your turn eventually comes. I hope you have someone like Mary fighting for you.

Signed, an ATS parent

LOL, I can only assume you have never been to Tuckahoe.

Not OP, but you've meandered a bit. I think their point was that all N Arlington schools are up for grabs. It would suck to be your community and have to fight only to fail. Let's see what happens in the Fall.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:And if you watch SB meetings, last Fall, Lisa Stengle hinted strongly that an option program may be moved "North of Lee Highway." So my prediction is that Tuckahoe or Nottingham aren't long for the world either. North North Arlington schools will become overcrowded like the rest of the county.

There was no hinting. The proposal specifically identified Discovery, Jamestown, Nottingham, Taylor and Tuckahoe as schools to be considered as potential option sites in the future to provide capacity on the western end of Columbia Pile, and also specifically identified Campbell and Claremont as option schools to evaluate moving north.

And it totally makes sense that discovery Nottingham or Tuckahoe would be used as an option school, since they have overlapping walk boundaries and are all under populated. One of the big push backs is that more kids would have to be bussed up there.

My prediction is that poor Campbell will move to N. Arlington. Discovery may make the most sense for an expeditionary school to move to because it has woods and focuses on green space already, but it will probably be Tuckahoe. Claremont will probably move to Carlin Springs to ease up space for Abington, and the poor Carlin Springs kids will move to Campbell, the one school that isn't walkable for most of its population.

When the original school moves proposal was put out, it included Campbell and Carlin Springs in addition to Key, ATS and McKinley. Kadera saw all of this, and that's where her arguments came from. She wasn't trying to throw other schools under the bus.

All of the outdoor space around Discovery is covered in artificial material or playground mulch. There’s about a 20’ strip of trees behind the soccer fields before you’re in neighbors’ backyards, but that’s it.

My point is that while no N Arlington school has a Long Branch Nature Center next door, Discovery at least has the solar panels, a rain garden and some trees. It's better suited to an expeditionary program than Tuckahoe or Nottingham. But I think due to its proximity to the Metro, Tuckahoe may be the more likely choice for an option program. It's unfortunate that the Pandora's box has been opened with the first school moves, but parents should start strategizing now how to fight back when your turn eventually comes. I hope you have someone like Mary fighting for you.

Signed, an ATS parent

As a parent who lives in the middle of all three schools and spends a lot of time on the grounds of each of them, Tuckahoe is a much more natural fit than Discovery for the expeditionary program. It has vastly more natural green space, woods with proper trails through them, and a garden.

Agree, there’s literally a park right behind Tuckahoe. As PP mention, discovery is surrounded by turf fields and has a very small outdoor learning area in the woods which is basically in someone’s backyard. Yes it has solar panels and such, but that doesn’t make it an outdoor learning environment.

+1

Tuckahoe would be great location.