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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Option schools are some of the most integrated schools in the county, and do a lot to close the opportunity gap. People would still be upset about boundaries even without option schools.

Option schools are more integrated, in part, bc MC and UMC south Arlington parents won’t send their kids to their neighborhood ES.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Right now APS is saying 60% of the population would move to Reed. A majority but by no means all. The remaining could be split between as many as three different schools. In the end it may be best for the county but the school community is well aware that it isn’t moving lock, stock and barrel as a whole which is how the APS staff has viewed it. Splitting a school four ways is a big deal to those families.

It’s nearly 60% if McKinley and Reed are both neighborhood schools. They’re willing to throw in 15% more for a full move. The school move allows McKinley to stay McKinley. Under a what if boundary process many schools will change by 20-25% with the long narrow zones that are likely needed. McKinleys loudest most active parents are making no sense when you think about this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:if the county would just ditch the option schools, it would be so much easier to get this done. I just don't understand the move first approach.

Lisa Stengle made an interesting point at the SB meeting the other night about how option schools help manage capacity issues, just not in the way we usually think about them. She said that if there were no option schools and every school was neighborhood, they would have severe boundary issues and difficulty filling schools in certain parts of the county because of how schools are distributed geographically. One thing strategically-placed option schools allows them to do is open up space where schools are otherwise too close together to draw reasonable boundaries. Think Carlin Springs/Campbell/Barcroft/Claremont/Randolph or McKinley/Ashlawn/Reed/Barrett/Glebe/Tuckahoe, where it would be nearly impossible to draw boundaries for some schools without drawing from other schools' walk zones. Option schools do tend to draw disproportionately from surrounding schools so the impact on capacity in the area isn't as significant, and allows more reasonable boundaries to be drawn for the remaining neighborhood schools.

I'd always thought the argument that option schools help manage capacity was about pulling students from over-crowded schools to areas with excess capacity, and never bought into it because APS can't control where students come from (except for HB). This was a totally different way of looking at it that I hadn't thought of before, and it makes a lot of sense.

the locations of schools in arlington is really, really weird, but it's based on history, i guess, and rich folk wanting carefully tucked away schools up north.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Right now APS is saying 60% of the population would move to Reed. A majority but by no means all. The remaining could be split between as many as three different schools. In the end it may be best for the county but the school community is well aware that it isn’t moving lock, stock and barrel as a whole which is how the APS staff has viewed it. Splitting a school four ways is a big deal to those families.

It’s nearly 60% if McKinley and Reed are both neighborhood schools. They’re willing to throw in 15% more for a full move. The school move allows McKinley to stay McKinley. Under a what if boundary process many schools will change by 20-25% with the long narrow zones that are likely needed. McKinleys loudest most active parents are making no sense when you think about this.

They seem to be fine with breaking up McKinley as long as their kids can continue to be walkers to that specific building. They can talk "community" all they want but it's really about their convenience/proximity. They are fine with the "community" being broken up as long as it is other people's kids

[Anonymous]

At the end of the day, the downside of option 1 for the county is that by the time the boundary process is done the richest whitest s Co oils will all be under capacity while large parts of the county remain crunched. Especially because APS wants to move VPI from the northern schools and that’s partly how they are filling Jamestown now.

Optics of equity are going to be really really bad when they can’t balance capacity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Right now APS is saying 60% of the population would move to Reed. A majority but by no means all. The remaining could be split between as many as three different schools. In the end it may be best for the county but the school community is well aware that it isn’t moving lock, stock and barrel as a whole which is how the APS staff has viewed it. Splitting a school four ways is a big deal to those families.

It’s nearly 60% if McKinley and Reed are both neighborhood schools. They’re willing to throw in 15% more for a full move. The school move allows McKinley to stay McKinley. Under a what if boundary process many schools will change by 20-25% with the long narrow zones that are likely needed. McKinleys loudest most active parents are making no sense when you think about this.

They seem to be fine with breaking up McKinley as long as their kids can continue to be walkers to that specific building. They can talk "community" all they want but it's really about their convenience/proximity. They are fine with the "community" being broken up as long as it is other people's kids

Yes that’s the case for McCrazy and a handful of others. A lot of us are more concerned that Reed, Ashlawn and Glebe will all be over capacity almost immediately.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:if the county would just ditch the option schools, it would be so much easier to get this done. I just don't understand the move first approach.

Lisa Stengle made an interesting point at the SB meeting the other night about how option schools help manage capacity issues, just not in the way we usually think about them. She said that if there were no option schools and every school was neighborhood, they would have severe boundary issues and difficulty filling schools in certain parts of the county because of how schools are distributed geographically. One thing strategically-placed option schools allows them to do is open up space where schools are otherwise too close together to draw reasonable boundaries. Think Carlin Springs/Campbell/Barcroft/Claremont/Randolph or McKinley/Ashlawn/Reed/Barrett/Glebe/Tuckahoe, where it would be nearly impossible to draw boundaries for some schools without drawing from other schools' walk zones. Option schools do tend to draw disproportionately from surrounding schools so the impact on capacity in the area isn't as significant, and allows more reasonable boundaries to be drawn for the remaining neighborhood schools.

I'd always thought the argument that option schools help manage capacity was about pulling students from over-crowded schools to areas with excess capacity, and never bought into it because APS can't control where students come from (except for HB). This was a totally different way of looking at it that I hadn't thought of before, and it makes a lot of sense.

the locations of schools in arlington is really, really weird, but it's based on history, i guess, and rich folk wanting carefully tucked away schools up north.

It’s also about history of student population growth patterns. For instance, back in the early 2000s, Nottingham was so under capacity (I think around 60%) that they were talking about closing it. Within 10 years, it had swung to 140% capacity due to turnover in housing stock, Tuckahoe was also at 140%, and that part of Arlington was drowning - that was the impetus for Discovery. During at same period, the county started focusing more on increased affordable housing, but APS couldn’t start planning for that unless they had a reliable sense of how much housing would be put where, and how many students it would generate. APS knows now that affordable housing generates far more students per unit than other apartment-style housing, but that’s not something they could reasonably anticipate/plan for until it started happening. Given the number of years it takes to get a school construction project done, APS was necessarily behind the ball on responding to that growth, which they’re trying to do now (which is part of what this location process is about).

There are also geographic factors in play. For instance, the way the GE Parkway, Spout Run, 66 and Lee Highway all come together makes it virtually impossible to find a school site there where they could build a new elementary school that’s reasonably accessible transit-wise. People pointing to Dawson Terrace are completely ignoring the fact that it’s difficult to get to, would have virtually no teacher parking (even street parking), almost no walk zone so it couldn’t be a neighborhood school, and the buses needed for an option school would have difficulty navigating the roadways. So sure, we could use another elementary school in that area, but there’s no county-owned land that the county is willing to part with that would be suitable for a school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At the end of the day, the downside of option 1 for the county is that by the time the boundary process is done the richest whitest s Co oils will all be under capacity while large parts of the county remain crunched. Especially because APS wants to move VPI from the northern schools and that’s partly how they are filling Jamestown now.

Optics of equity are going to be really really bad when they can’t balance capacity.

That’s in part because people aren’t bothering to understand APS’s goals. Since APS has very limited funds to add elementary capacity, they can’t afford to do a bunch of spot projects to add 80 seats here, 100 seats there. They’ve pretty much done all of the cost-effective expansion they can, and what’s left is more expensive per seat than a new school would be. So they’re looking to move capacity in around that’s 75% of the county in good shape so they can focus all of their elementary-level capital funding on building new capacity in the remaining portion, in the area they expect to see the most growth (western Columbia Pike).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Right now APS is saying 60% of the population would move to Reed. A majority but by no means all. The remaining could be split between as many as three different schools. In the end it may be best for the county but the school community is well aware that it isn’t moving lock, stock and barrel as a whole which is how the APS staff has viewed it. Splitting a school four ways is a big deal to those families.

It’s nearly 60% if McKinley and Reed are both neighborhood schools. They’re willing to throw in 15% more for a full move. The school move allows McKinley to stay McKinley. Under a what if boundary process many schools will change by 20-25% with the long narrow zones that are likely needed. McKinleys loudest most active parents are making no sense when you think about this.

They seem to be fine with breaking up McKinley as long as their kids can continue to be walkers to that specific building. They can talk "community" all they want but it's really about their convenience/proximity. They are fine with the "community" being broken up as long as it is other people's kids

Yes that’s the case for McCrazy and a handful of others. A lot of us are more concerned that Reed, Ashlawn and Glebe will all be over capacity almost immediately.

Except the numbers show they won’t be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At the end of the day, the downside of option 1 for the county is that by the time the boundary process is done the richest whitest s Co oils will all be under capacity while large parts of the county remain crunched. Especially because APS wants to move VPI from the northern schools and that’s partly how they are filling Jamestown now.

Optics of equity are going to be really really bad when they can’t balance capacity.

e is no VPI at Jamestown. Jamestown has Montessori preschool, and they’re struggling to fill those classes as it is, especially with lower-income students. What value is there in setting aside a bunch of seats that they know will go empty when they could make other uses of the space (e.g., shifting boundaries to create more capacity elsewhere)? Yes, Jamestown’s diversity numbers will look worse overall, but nothing will actually change because most of Jamestown’s diversity is sitting in isolated Montessori classrooms for K and then moves to other schools in first.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Option schools are some of the most integrated schools in the county, and do a lot to close the opportunity gap. People would still be upset about boundaries even without option schools.

Option schools are more integrated, in part, bc MC and UMC south Arlington parents won’t send their kids to their neighborhood ES.

UMC is not VPI or FARMS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At the end of the day, the downside of option 1 for the county is that by the time the boundary process is done the richest whitest s Co oils will all be under capacity while large parts of the county remain crunched. Especially because APS wants to move VPI from the northern schools and that’s partly how they are filling Jamestown now.

Optics of equity are going to be really really bad when they can’t balance capacity.

By Option 1, do you mean school moves or status quo? Because if you mean that the great white north will be emptier with school moves than with none I do not understand how that is possible. There is no way there are MORE kids at Nottingham, Tuckahoe, Jamestown, and Discovery if McKinley is also neighborhood.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At the end of the day, the downside of option 1 for the county is that by the time the boundary process is done the richest whitest s Co oils will all be under capacity while large parts of the county remain crunched. Especially because APS wants to move VPI from the northern schools and that’s partly how they are filling Jamestown now.

Optics of equity are going to be really really bad when they can’t balance capacity.

By Option 1, do you mean school moves or status quo? Because if you mean that the great white north will be emptier with school moves than with none I do not understand how that is possible. There is no way there are MORE kids at Nottingham, Tuckahoe, Jamestown, and Discovery if McKinley is also neighborhood.

Opponents of school moves are fiercely wedded to the notion that Lee Highway is an impenetrable barrier that cannot be crossed by school buses (current evidence to the contrary notwithstanding), and therefore no students living south of Lee Highway could be zoned for schools north of Lee Highway to balance capacity in the northwest region. They cannot be dissuaded from this belief because otherwise their whole argument falls apart.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Right now APS is saying 60% of the population would move to Reed. A majority but by no means all. The remaining could be split between as many as three different schools. In the end it may be best for the county but the school community is well aware that it isn’t moving lock, stock and barrel as a whole which is how the APS staff has viewed it. Splitting a school four ways is a big deal to those families.

It will be split multiple ways whether it moves to reed or not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think the option schools need to be disbanded, but I am very annoyed at option parents pretending like they need to be in a certain building or else all is lost. If keeping your optional school at Key means that kids are zoned to a “neighborhood” school 3 miles away, you need move 2 miles down the road for your special choice program.

+1

I'm an option parent NOT at one of the schools that will move in this proposal. I love our option school and I think options add value to the system and should be preserved.

But I absolutely agree that sometimes options need to move. The claims that Key must stay on Key are ridiculous and may be hurtful to the perception of option parents in general. We are not all entitled jerks who refuse to move 3 miles for the good of the whole system.