APS elementary planning initiative called off

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just watched the segment from the meeting in question. It didn't so much seem like they were trying to make all of the decisions this fall so much as get a map of where things are headed to help with the decision this fall. I think it will be good to see a full map of what the boundaries will look like in 2021 with all the schools online and no option program location changes. That should be fairly revealing as to whether we need to revisit the location review or not.

I don't think too many people question that a location review is needed (or at the very least would be beneficial), the problem is that people have different views on what the goals and priorities of the review should be, so how much of an appetite does the SB have to wade through those battles.

Location review is a non-starter. When you start moving programs and essentially closing schools (such as Nottingham was on the docket), then you get a hug political turnout with public outrage, and most other schools are sympathetic to not closing schools so its a widespread issue.

It only makes sense to make option programs at schools that are severely under enrolled (as a co-neighborhood program and slowly roll out the neighbor population) or new schools (such as Reed, but SB already promised that to the neighborhood so who knows if that is feasible).

So the staff should just cut the idea of location changes now, and just make a plan for 2021 for ASFS/McKinely so schools can plan accordingly.

Does anyone know if Taylor/Jamestown transfer to ASFS will get to stay until 2021?

Location review isn't a non-starter, the SB just has to have the fortitude to make it happen.

Dual neighborhood/option schools won't happen, the SB make the specific determination to unwind that at Drew because it wasn't working well. Further, there are no option programs that are undercapacity, so the only way to make new dual programs would be to drastically slash the enrollment of those programs, and there are no neighborhood schools that are severely under-enrolled, the lowest capacities are around 93-94%, which is just below the level where the may start needing trailers depending on student population distribution.

I believe APS got rid of the team school system in last year's revision of the Option and Transfers policy. Siblings of children who were grandfathered after the change have been allowed to continue to transfer, but otherwise going forward Jamestown and Taylor will be treated the same as any other neighborhood school when it comes to transfers to ASFS. Given how overcrowded ASFS is, I don't think we'll be seeing that school open for neighborhood transfers any time soon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just watched the segment from the meeting in question. It didn't so much seem like they were trying to make all of the decisions this fall so much as get a map of where things are headed to help with the decision this fall. I think it will be good to see a full map of what the boundaries will look like in 2021 with all the schools online and no option program location changes. That should be fairly revealing as to whether we need to revisit the location review or not.

I don't think too many people question that a location review is needed (or at the very least would be beneficial), the problem is that people have different views on what the goals and priorities of the review should be, so how much of an appetite does the SB have to wade through those battles.

Location review is a non-starter. When you start moving programs and essentially closing schools (such as Nottingham was on the docket), then you get a hug political turnout with public outrage, and most other schools are sympathetic to not closing schools so its a widespread issue.

It only makes sense to make option programs at schools that are severely under enrolled (as a co-neighborhood program and slowly roll out the neighbor population) or new schools (such as Reed, but SB already promised that to the neighborhood so who knows if that is feasible).

So the staff should just cut the idea of location changes now, and just make a plan for 2021 for ASFS/McKinely so schools can plan accordingly.

Does anyone know if Taylor/Jamestown transfer to ASFS will get to stay until 2021?

I don't know, they were threatening all along that it will be hard to fill all the schools on the western edge with contiguous boundaries and walkzones intact. If there was a map that showed people their planning units were going to move to a new school anyway, it might be easier to push through a location change.

As for your transfer question, no one knows, but that schools is incredibly crowded and there aren't many options for relief.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just watched the segment from the meeting in question. It didn't so much seem like they were trying to make all of the decisions this fall so much as get a map of where things are headed to help with the decision this fall. I think it will be good to see a full map of what the boundaries will look like in 2021 with all the schools online and no option program location changes. That should be fairly revealing as to whether we need to revisit the location review or not.

I don't think too many people question that a location review is needed (or at the very least would be beneficial), the problem is that people have different views on what the goals and priorities of the review should be, so how much of an appetite does the SB have to wade through those battles.

Location review is a non-starter. When you start moving programs and essentially closing schools (such as Nottingham was on the docket), then you get a hug political turnout with public outrage, and most other schools are sympathetic to not closing schools so its a widespread issue.

It only makes sense to make option programs at schools that are severely under enrolled (as a co-neighborhood program and slowly roll out the neighbor population) or new schools (such as Reed, but SB already promised that to the neighborhood so who knows if that is feasible).

So the staff should just cut the idea of location changes now, and just make a plan for 2021 for ASFS/McKinely so schools can plan accordingly.

Does anyone know if Taylor/Jamestown transfer to ASFS will get to stay until 2021?

Location review isn't a non-starter, the SB just has to have the fortitude to make it happen.

Dual neighborhood/option schools won't happen, the SB make the specific determination to unwind that at Drew because it wasn't working well. Further, there are no option programs that are undercapacity, so the only way to make new dual programs would be to drastically slash the enrollment of those programs, and there are no neighborhood schools that are severely under-enrolled, the lowest capacities are around 93-94%, which is just below the level where the may start needing trailers depending on student population distribution.

I believe APS got rid of the team school system in last year's revision of the Option and Transfers policy. Siblings of children who were grandfathered after the change have been allowed to continue to transfer, but otherwise going forward Jamestown and Taylor will be treated the same as any other neighborhood school when it comes to transfers to ASFS. Given how overcrowded ASFS is, I don't think we'll be seeing that school open for neighborhood transfers any time soon.

The questions was if they remove some planning units from ASFS to accommodate the Cherrydale neighborhood, such as moving Rosslyn to Long Branch, would the existing transfers from Taylor and Jamestown be allowed to stay, while in-zone families from Rosslyn have to transfer out, for example? Or does a new boundary process kind of reset the transfer slate and everyone has to go back home school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just watched the segment from the meeting in question. It didn't so much seem like they were trying to make all of the decisions this fall so much as get a map of where things are headed to help with the decision this fall. I think it will be good to see a full map of what the boundaries will look like in 2021 with all the schools online and no option program location changes. That should be fairly revealing as to whether we need to revisit the location review or not.

I don't think too many people question that a location review is needed (or at the very least would be beneficial), the problem is that people have different views on what the goals and priorities of the review should be, so how much of an appetite does the SB have to wade through those battles.

Location review is a non-starter. When you start moving programs and essentially closing schools (such as Nottingham was on the docket), then you get a hug political turnout with public outrage, and most other schools are sympathetic to not closing schools so its a widespread issue.

It only makes sense to make option programs at schools that are severely under enrolled (as a co-neighborhood program and slowly roll out the neighbor population) or new schools (such as Reed, but SB already promised that to the neighborhood so who knows if that is feasible).

So the staff should just cut the idea of location changes now, and just make a plan for 2021 for ASFS/McKinely so schools can plan accordingly.

Does anyone know if Taylor/Jamestown transfer to ASFS will get to stay until 2021?

Location review isn't a non-starter, the SB just has to have the fortitude to make it happen.

Dual neighborhood/option schools won't happen, the SB make the specific determination to unwind that at Drew because it wasn't working well. Further, there are no option programs that are undercapacity, so the only way to make new dual programs would be to drastically slash the enrollment of those programs, and there are no neighborhood schools that are severely under-enrolled, the lowest capacities are around 93-94%, which is just below the level where the may start needing trailers depending on student population distribution.

I believe APS got rid of the team school system in last year's revision of the Option and Transfers policy. Siblings of children who were grandfathered after the change have been allowed to continue to transfer, but otherwise going forward Jamestown and Taylor will be treated the same as any other neighborhood school when it comes to transfers to ASFS. Given how overcrowded ASFS is, I don't think we'll be seeing that school open for neighborhood transfers any time soon.

The questions was if they remove some planning units from ASFS to accommodate the Cherrydale neighborhood, such as moving Rosslyn to Long Branch, would the existing transfers from Taylor and Jamestown be allowed to stay, while in-zone families from Rosslyn have to transfer out, for example? Or does a new boundary process kind of reset the transfer slate and everyone has to go back home school?

My recollection is that historically kids who transferred in via neighborhood and other permitted transfers have been grandfathered into the schools and allowed to stay. Realistically, by 2021-22 we're going to be talking about a total of at most maybe 20 students still there via team/sibling transfers with a decreasing number at each grade level (so the majority will move on to middle school within a year or two), which means the impact of letting them stay is so trivial that there's not really a good reason to make them leave.

[Anonymous]

For 2018-2019, the chair of the SB is Goldstein and the vice-chair is Tskento.

I wonder how this will affect these processes, if at all.

[Anonymous]

*Talento.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For 2018-2019, the chair of the SB is Goldstein and the vice-chair is Tskento.

I wonder how this will affect these processes, if at all.

I don't know that it would cause any substantive changes, but it will kind of gut Goldstein's "spitballing" strategy. "X is giving me heartburn, I'm not really sure where I'm going with this but it seems like [insert passive reference to very controversial suggestion]. I don't know, I'm just kind of spitballing here, maybe come back to me later," where he then sits back and lets them continue to go around the table giving thoughts, waiting to see if anyone else will pick up said controversial suggestion and run with it because otherwise he's going to drop it rather than advocate for it himself. The chair typically offers their thoughts last, so he'll either need to say stuff directly or not say it at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just watched the segment from the meeting in question. It didn't so much seem like they were trying to make all of the decisions this fall so much as get a map of where things are headed to help with the decision this fall. I think it will be good to see a full map of what the boundaries will look like in 2021 with all the schools online and no option program location changes. That should be fairly revealing as to whether we need to revisit the location review or not.

I don't think too many people question that a location review is needed (or at the very least would be beneficial), the problem is that people have different views on what the goals and priorities of the review should be, so how much of an appetite does the SB have to wade through those battles.

Location review is a non-starter. When you start moving programs and essentially closing schools (such as Nottingham was on the docket), then you get a hug political turnout with public outrage, and most other schools are sympathetic to not closing schools so its a widespread issue.

It only makes sense to make option programs at schools that are severely under enrolled (as a co-neighborhood program and slowly roll out the neighbor population) or new schools (such as Reed, but SB already promised that to the neighborhood so who knows if that is feasible).

So the staff should just cut the idea of location changes now, and just make a plan for 2021 for ASFS/McKinely so schools can plan accordingly.

Does anyone know if Taylor/Jamestown transfer to ASFS will get to stay until 2021?

Location review isn't a non-starter, the SB just has to have the fortitude to make it happen.

Dual neighborhood/option schools won't happen, the SB make the specific determination to unwind that at Drew because it wasn't working well. Further, there are no option programs that are undercapacity, so the only way to make new dual programs would be to drastically slash the enrollment of those programs, and there are no neighborhood schools that are severely under-enrolled, the lowest capacities are around 93-94%, which is just below the level where the may start needing trailers depending on student population distribution.

I believe APS got rid of the team school system in last year's revision of the Option and Transfers policy. Siblings of children who were grandfathered after the change have been allowed to continue to transfer, but otherwise going forward Jamestown and Taylor will be treated the same as any other neighborhood school when it comes to transfers to ASFS. Given how overcrowded ASFS is, I don't think we'll be seeing that school open for neighborhood transfers any time soon.

The questions was if they remove some planning units from ASFS to accommodate the Cherrydale neighborhood, such as moving Rosslyn to Long Branch, would the existing transfers from Taylor and Jamestown be allowed to stay, while in-zone families from Rosslyn have to transfer out, for example? Or does a new boundary process kind of reset the transfer slate and everyone has to go back home school?

My recollection is that historically kids who transferred in via neighborhood and other permitted transfers have been grandfathered into the schools and allowed to stay. Realistically, by 2021-22 we're going to be talking about a total of at most maybe 20 students still there via team/sibling transfers with a decreasing number at each grade level (so the majority will move on to middle school within a year or two), which means the impact of letting them stay is so trivial that there's not really a good reason to make them leave.

There are currently 80 transfer students that are still at ASFS for the 2019 school year, assuming even just 30 have younger siblings, you are talking about an almost entire grades worth of students. If they stay but the in-bound students are transferred out, like Rosslyn to Long Branch, that will cause an uproar. They really need to use Buck property as swing space to get thru this demographic bulge and just table boundaries until 2021 when reed opens.

[Anonymous]

There are currently 80 transfer students that are still at ASFS for the 2019 school year, assuming even just 30 have younger siblings, you are talking about an almost entire grades worth of students. If they stay but the in-bound students are transferred out, like Rosslyn to Long Branch, that will cause an uproar. They really need to use Buck property as swing space to get thru this demographic bulge and just table boundaries until 2021 when reed opens.


Why on earth would they be given the Buck site?!? they already have a ton of students - give them the buck property so they can add more? that doesn't make any sense. I don't know any parents who want their kids at 1,000+ seat elementary schools - these folks are smarter than this too - what a terrible idea. I'm sure folks would rather go to a different school that is not as overcrowded and probably just as close to their house than be busting out at the seams at ASF and some make shift set up at the Buck site.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are currently 80 transfer students that are still at ASFS for the 2019 school year, assuming even just 30 have younger siblings, you are talking about an almost entire grades worth of students. If they stay but the in-bound students are transferred out, like Rosslyn to Long Branch, that will cause an uproar. They really need to use Buck property as swing space to get thru this demographic bulge and just table boundaries until 2021 when reed opens.


Why on earth would they be given the Buck site?!? they already have a ton of students - give them the buck property so they can add more? that doesn't make any sense. I don't know any parents who want their kids at 1,000+ seat elementary schools - these folks are smarter than this too - what a terrible idea. I'm sure folks would rather go to a different school that is not as overcrowded and probably just as close to their house than be busting out at the seams at ASF and some make shift set up at the Buck site.

Which school would be less crowded and just as close for the people who live in Clarendon, Courthouse, and Rosslyn?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are currently 80 transfer students that are still at ASFS for the 2019 school year, assuming even just 30 have younger siblings, you are talking about an almost entire grades worth of students. If they stay but the in-bound students are transferred out, like Rosslyn to Long Branch, that will cause an uproar. They really need to use Buck property as swing space to get thru this demographic bulge and just table boundaries until 2021 when reed opens.


Why on earth would they be given the Buck site?!? they already have a ton of students - give them the buck property so they can add more? that doesn't make any sense. I don't know any parents who want their kids at 1,000+ seat elementary schools - these folks are smarter than this too - what a terrible idea. I'm sure folks would rather go to a different school that is not as overcrowded and probably just as close to their house than be busting out at the seams at ASF and some make shift set up at the Buck site.

Which school would be less crowded and just as close for the people who live in Clarendon, Courthouse, and Rosslyn?

Seriously. If they have to schlep up Military Rd to Taylor or drive down Rt 50 at rush hour, their kids will be on a bus for almost an hour, and doing drop off or pickup will become an hour round trip.

[Anonymous]

WRT asfs, everyone should keep in mind these three things:
1. Most of the asfs zones neighborhoods don’t have another neighborhood school within two miles. In a 26.2 square foot county, that’s kind of ridiculous. Factor in how many of those families are one or no car families who currently don’t drive regularly, it’s all a big mess.
2. If they redraw boundaries in 2019, they will be pulling kids to and from Taylor, not long branch. All the kids in the walk zone are from Taylor, which is projected to be under capacity next year. No way are they moving 20% of an under enrolled school to an over capacity school and not moving a similar number back into the underenrolled school, especially after what happened at middle schools.
3. If they do a boundary change, no way do the current transfers get to stay. The walk zone around asfs is cancelled out by the transfers. If they actively zone people out, no way do the transfers get to stay— especially if you look at the classist bs that goes on at that school currently. Though those kids who are currently at taylor in the walk zone get a really crappy end of the stick. Honestly they should wait until 2021 to do anything about asfs. They have the ability to redo all the north Arlington boundaries at once then, and come up with a good comprehensive solution.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just watched the segment from the meeting in question. It didn't so much seem like they were trying to make all of the decisions this fall so much as get a map of where things are headed to help with the decision this fall. I think it will be good to see a full map of what the boundaries will look like in 2021 with all the schools online and no option program location changes. That should be fairly revealing as to whether we need to revisit the location review or not.

I don't think too many people question that a location review is needed (or at the very least would be beneficial), the problem is that people have different views on what the goals and priorities of the review should be, so how much of an appetite does the SB have to wade through those battles.

Location review is a non-starter. When you start moving programs and essentially closing schools (such as Nottingham was on the docket), then you get a hug political turnout with public outrage, and most other schools are sympathetic to not closing schools so its a widespread issue.

It only makes sense to make option programs at schools that are severely under enrolled (as a co-neighborhood program and slowly roll out the neighbor population) or new schools (such as Reed, but SB already promised that to the neighborhood so who knows if that is feasible).

So the staff should just cut the idea of location changes now, and just make a plan for 2021 for ASFS/McKinely so schools can plan accordingly.

Does anyone know if Taylor/Jamestown transfer to ASFS will get to stay until 2021?

Location review isn't a non-starter, the SB just has to have the fortitude to make it happen.

Dual neighborhood/option schools won't happen, the SB make the specific determination to unwind that at Drew because it wasn't working well. Further, there are no option programs that are undercapacity, so the only way to make new dual programs would be to drastically slash the enrollment of those programs, and there are no neighborhood schools that are severely under-enrolled, the lowest capacities are around 93-94%, which is just below the level where the may start needing trailers depending on student population distribution.

I believe APS got rid of the team school system in last year's revision of the Option and Transfers policy. Siblings of children who were grandfathered after the change have been allowed to continue to transfer, but otherwise going forward Jamestown and Taylor will be treated the same as any other neighborhood school when it comes to transfers to ASFS. Given how overcrowded ASFS is, I don't think we'll be seeing that school open for neighborhood transfers any time soon.

The questions was if they remove some planning units from ASFS to accommodate the Cherrydale neighborhood, such as moving Rosslyn to Long Branch, would the existing transfers from Taylor and Jamestown be allowed to stay, while in-zone families from Rosslyn have to transfer out, for example? Or does a new boundary process kind of reset the transfer slate and everyone has to go back home school?

My recollection is that historically kids who transferred in via neighborhood and other permitted transfers have been grandfathered into the schools and allowed to stay. Realistically, by 2021-22 we're going to be talking about a total of at most maybe 20 students still there via team/sibling transfers with a decreasing number at each grade level (so the majority will move on to middle school within a year or two), which means the impact of letting them stay is so trivial that there's not really a good reason to make them leave.

There are currently 80 transfer students that are still at ASFS for the 2019 school year, assuming even just 30 have younger siblings, you are talking about an almost entire grades worth of students. If they stay but the in-bound students are transferred out, like Rosslyn to Long Branch, that will cause an uproar. They really need to use Buck property as swing space to get thru this demographic bulge and just table boundaries until 2021 when reed opens.

We are talking about 2021-22, when the full redraw is expected to go into effect. At that point, assuming no one moves out of the county, there are 10 current team transfer students who will be in fifth grade and four who will be in fourth grade. Since they distincontinued the team transfer option, each new grade level has had roughly half the number of kids as the year before (the year ahead of those ten has 18 transfers). If that pattern holds, we're talking about 2021-22 having 10 fifth graders, four fourth graders, 2-3 third graders, 1-2 second graders, and maybe 1-2 kids between K and first. That's 18-21 kids *total* at ASFS as team transfer legacies spread across six grade levels. For 2022-23, we're talking about 8-11 students across five grade levels, and the year after that 4-7 spread across four grade levels.

[Anonymous]

Since there are no more team transfers, technically there is no policy for what happens under these circumstances. Assuming grandfathered team transfers are treated as neighborhood transfers for policy purposes, here's the relevant policy on neighborhood transfers and boundary changes:

"Once a student is admitted to an option school/program or accepts a transfer to a neighborhood school that is accepting transfers, enrollment will be continuous through the grade levels of that
school/program, unless the school is involved in a boundary change. In such cases, the Board may make a different decision as part of the boundary change adoption."

So when the boundary changes go into effect, the school board could send the transfer students back to their neighborhood schools, but is not required to do so. My bet is they don't send them back because it's administratively easier to keep them where they are and it doesn't meaningfully move the needle on school enrollment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just watched the segment from the meeting in question. It didn't so much seem like they were trying to make all of the decisions this fall so much as get a map of where things are headed to help with the decision this fall. I think it will be good to see a full map of what the boundaries will look like in 2021 with all the schools online and no option program location changes. That should be fairly revealing as to whether we need to revisit the location review or not.

I don't think too many people question that a location review is needed (or at the very least would be beneficial), the problem is that people have different views on what the goals and priorities of the review should be, so how much of an appetite does the SB have to wade through those battles.

Location review is a non-starter. When you start moving programs and essentially closing schools (such as Nottingham was on the docket), then you get a hug political turnout with public outrage, and most other schools are sympathetic to not closing schools so its a widespread issue.

It only makes sense to make option programs at schools that are severely under enrolled (as a co-neighborhood program and slowly roll out the neighbor population) or new schools (such as Reed, but SB already promised that to the neighborhood so who knows if that is feasible).

So the staff should just cut the idea of location changes now, and just make a plan for 2021 for ASFS/McKinely so schools can plan accordingly.

Does anyone know if Taylor/Jamestown transfer to ASFS will get to stay until 2021?

Location review isn't a non-starter, the SB just has to have the fortitude to make it happen.

Dual neighborhood/option schools won't happen, the SB make the specific determination to unwind that at Drew because it wasn't working well. Further, there are no option programs that are undercapacity, so the only way to make new dual programs would be to drastically slash the enrollment of those programs, and there are no neighborhood schools that are severely under-enrolled, the lowest capacities are around 93-94%, which is just below the level where the may start needing trailers depending on student population distribution.

I believe APS got rid of the team school system in last year's revision of the Option and Transfers policy. Siblings of children who were grandfathered after the change have been allowed to continue to transfer, but otherwise going forward Jamestown and Taylor will be treated the same as any other neighborhood school when it comes to transfers to ASFS. Given how overcrowded ASFS is, I don't think we'll be seeing that school open for neighborhood transfers any time soon.

The questions was if they remove some planning units from ASFS to accommodate the Cherrydale neighborhood, such as moving Rosslyn to Long Branch, would the existing transfers from Taylor and Jamestown be allowed to stay, while in-zone families from Rosslyn have to transfer out, for example? Or does a new boundary process kind of reset the transfer slate and everyone has to go back home school?

My recollection is that historically kids who transferred in via neighborhood and other permitted transfers have been grandfathered into the schools and allowed to stay. Realistically, by 2021-22 we're going to be talking about a total of at most maybe 20 students still there via team/sibling transfers with a decreasing number at each grade level (so the majority will move on to middle school within a year or two), which means the impact of letting them stay is so trivial that there's not really a good reason to make them leave.

There are currently 80 transfer students that are still at ASFS for the 2019 school year, assuming even just 30 have younger siblings, you are talking about an almost entire grades worth of students. If they stay but the in-bound students are transferred out, like Rosslyn to Long Branch, that will cause an uproar. They really need to use Buck property as swing space to get thru this demographic bulge and just table boundaries until 2021 when reed opens.

We are talking about 2021-22, when the full redraw is expected to go into effect. At that point, assuming no one moves out of the county, there are 10 current team transfer students who will be in fifth grade and four who will be in fourth grade. Since they distincontinued the team transfer option, each new grade level has had roughly half the number of kids as the year before (the year ahead of those ten has 18 transfers). If that pattern holds, we're talking about 2021-22 having 10 fifth graders, four fourth graders, 2-3 third graders, 1-2 second graders, and maybe 1-2 kids between K and first. That's 18-21 kids *total* at ASFS as team transfer legacies spread across six grade levels. For 2022-23, we're talking about 8-11 students across five grade levels, and the year after that 4-7 spread across four grade levels.

This is only true if there is no boundary change until 2021. If they do a 2019 change, there will be over a hundred transfers still at the school.