APS elementary planning initiative called off

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

There’s a hundred of them. That definitely moves enrollment one way or another. Not to mention that they are a different demographic than the people being zoned out. Sure keep the rich white kids, but toss out the poor kids in apartments. That is the Arlington way.

[Anonymous]

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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.

Did you read my post on transfers? I am saying don’t do anything until 2021 for exactly this reason — they are planning to make changes for 2019!!

I know most families would prefer not to leave, so they just need to manage this population; if they do kill the lower income Rosslyn neighborhoods and leave the Taylor transfers, there will be a riot. Better to just manage it for a couple of years and then rezone when transfer and siblings are out of pipeline (and there are a LOT of siblings, so you will still likely have more than 20 in 2021).

[Anonymous]

*kill should be kull

[Anonymous]

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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.

As of now there is no plan to do a full boundary change on ASFS for 2019, only to move planning units as needed to accommodate the boundary changes in South Arlington. There is no feasible way to do a full redraw of ASFS to go into effect for 2019 because they don't have the ability to move students around to the necessary extent until Reed opens in 2021. Realistically, the only way it possibly happens sooner is if they come back to the location review this fall and decide to move Key out of the neighborhood, but even then they won't move it until the summer of 2020 at the earliest, and probably still not until 2021, because of the capacity problems it would create in western Arlington until Reed opens (as was the original plan, for any option schools that were relocating to do it in the summers of 2020 or 2021).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

No, there will not be over a hundred team transfer students at the school in 2019 because the policy has been discontinued and the population is aging out. We're probably talking about 55 or so total across all grades in 2019-20.

[Anonymous]

I’m not sure where you get the 80 transfer students number. To be clear everyone at ASFS is a transfer student … what’s that, 500-600 students now. Every single student from Key, Taylor, and Jamestown came to the school as a Team transfer student. All the students at Key who live in the Key attendance zone are enrolled there as neighborhood kids. Come September, when the new Options and Transfer Policy takes effect, everything gets out of whack as a former Neighborhood School (Key) will become an Option School, and a former Choice School (ASFS) will become a faux-Neighborhood School. It’s “faux” because it will be the only Neighborhood School in Arlington that doesn’t reside in it’s neighborhood. It’ll then be up to APS to solve the mess they created. But to imply that somehow one group of people have a right be to be there and others don’t is not supported by the facts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m not sure where you get the 80 transfer students number. To be clear everyone at ASFS is a transfer student … what’s that, 500-600 students now. Every single student from Key, Taylor, and Jamestown came to the school as a Team transfer student. All the students at Key who live in the Key attendance zone are enrolled there as neighborhood kids. Come September, when the new Options and Transfer Policy takes effect, everything gets out of whack as a former Neighborhood School (Key) will become an Option School, and a former Choice School (ASFS) will become a faux-Neighborhood School. It’s “faux” because it will be the only Neighborhood School in Arlington that doesn’t reside in it’s neighborhood. It’ll then be up to APS to solve the mess they created. But to imply that somehow one group of people have a right be to be there and others don’t is not supported by the facts.

Right now we are talking specifically about the Jamestown/Taylor team transfers who have home schools they could theoretically go back to that aren't directly invovled in the Key/ASFS mess. If you look at the pupil transfer report, they separate the Key transfer students from the Jamestown/Taylor team transfer students because of the different ways previous policies treated them. The 100/80 figures come from the APS statistics on Jamestown/Taylor students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m not sure where you get the 80 transfer students number. To be clear everyone at ASFS is a transfer student … what’s that, 500-600 students now. Every single student from Key, Taylor, and Jamestown came to the school as a Team transfer student. All the students at Key who live in the Key attendance zone are enrolled there as neighborhood kids. Come September, when the new Options and Transfer Policy takes effect, everything gets out of whack as a former Neighborhood School (Key) will become an Option School, and a former Choice School (ASFS) will become a faux-Neighborhood School. It’s “faux” because it will be the only Neighborhood School in Arlington that doesn’t reside in it’s neighborhood. It’ll then be up to APS to solve the mess they created. But to imply that somehow one group of people have a right be to be there and others don’t is not supported by the facts.

ASFS has not been an option school for a very long time, well before any of the current families were enrolled. That Key was designated as the "neighborhood" school for the Key/ASFS zone rather than ASFS was basically an arbitrary decision because families in that zone were free to choose between the two schools, whereas Jamestown and Taylor, as "team" schools, were more restricted in their transfer rights (but still had more access than non-team neighborhood transfers). Key, Jamestown and Taylor families were not truly similarly situated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m not sure where you get the 80 transfer students number. To be clear everyone at ASFS is a transfer student … what’s that, 500-600 students now. Every single student from Key, Taylor, and Jamestown came to the school as a Team transfer student. All the students at Key who live in the Key attendance zone are enrolled there as neighborhood kids. Come September, when the new Options and Transfer Policy takes effect, everything gets out of whack as a former Neighborhood School (Key) will become an Option School, and a former Choice School (ASFS) will become a faux-Neighborhood School. It’s “faux” because it will be the only Neighborhood School in Arlington that doesn’t reside in it’s neighborhood. It’ll then be up to APS to solve the mess they created. But to imply that somehow one group of people have a right be to be there and others don’t is not supported by the facts.

ASFS has not been an option school for a very long time, well before any of the current families were enrolled. That Key was designated as the "neighborhood" school for the Key/ASFS zone rather than ASFS was basically an arbitrary decision because families in that zone were free to choose between the two schools, whereas Jamestown and Taylor, as "team" schools, were more restricted in their transfer rights (but still had more access than non-team neighborhood transfers). Key, Jamestown and Taylor families were not truly similarly situated.

All that said, I can see why it makes you feel like it's arbitrary to let the Jamestown/Taylor students stay while making students zoned away from ASFS move, so maybe they will make everyone leave. It just seems needlessly petty -- "If I have to leave, I want every single other student to have to leave also."

[Anonymous]

All that said, I can see why it makes you feel like it's arbitrary to let the Jamestown/Taylor students stay while making students zoned away from ASFS move, so maybe they will make everyone leave. It just seems needlessly petty -- "If I have to leave, I want every single other student to have to leave also."

Agree - they need to blow the whole thing up for all boundaries and start from scratch without looking at a few schools here and there through one or two viewpoints. I was glad to see school board members thinking like this. The Science Focus boundary revisions could really help relieve some of the crowding we have at Glebe. Some of our planning units are closer to Science Focus than Glebe so taking a bigger picture view of the entire county will be necessary when boundaries are redrawn everywhere - and we definitely need to do this in the Fall, there is no reason to wait any longer. there are 700 new seats coming on line in the fall so boundary changes are coming.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

All that said, I can see why it makes you feel like it's arbitrary to let the Jamestown/Taylor students stay while making students zoned away from ASFS move, so maybe they will make everyone leave. It just seems needlessly petty -- "If I have to leave, I want every single other student to have to leave also."

Agree - they need to blow the whole thing up for all boundaries and start from scratch without looking at a few schools here and there through one or two viewpoints. I was glad to see school board members thinking like this. The Science Focus boundary revisions could really help relieve some of the crowding we have at Glebe. Some of our planning units are closer to Science Focus than Glebe so taking a bigger picture view of the entire county will be necessary when boundaries are redrawn everywhere - and we definitely need to do this in the Fall, there is no reason to wait any longer. there are 700 new seats coming on line in the fall so boundary changes are coming.

Even if they redraw the map this fall, they can't implement most of the North Arlington changes until Reed opens. All of the schools are either over capacity or within a dozen or so students of being over capacity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

All that said, I can see why it makes you feel like it's arbitrary to let the Jamestown/Taylor students stay while making students zoned away from ASFS move, so maybe they will make everyone leave. It just seems needlessly petty -- "If I have to leave, I want every single other student to have to leave also."

Agree - they need to blow the whole thing up for all boundaries and start from scratch without looking at a few schools here and there through one or two viewpoints. I was glad to see school board members thinking like this. The Science Focus boundary revisions could really help relieve some of the crowding we have at Glebe. Some of our planning units are closer to Science Focus than Glebe so taking a bigger picture view of the entire county will be necessary when boundaries are redrawn everywhere - and we definitely need to do this in the Fall, there is no reason to wait any longer. there are 700 new seats coming on line in the fall so boundary changes are coming.

There are 750 seats coming online in 2019, but they will mostly be used to directly or indirectly accommodate the 650-ish students at Henry who will be displaced by the Montessori move, and the rest will be used to help Oakridge out with their overcrowding. Very few of those seats, if any, will be used to help North Arlington.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

All that said, I can see why it makes you feel like it's arbitrary to let the Jamestown/Taylor students stay while making students zoned away from ASFS move, so maybe they will make everyone leave. It just seems needlessly petty -- "If I have to leave, I want every single other student to have to leave also."

Agree - they need to blow the whole thing up for all boundaries and start from scratch without looking at a few schools here and there through one or two viewpoints. I was glad to see school board members thinking like this. The Science Focus boundary revisions could really help relieve some of the crowding we have at Glebe. Some of our planning units are closer to Science Focus than Glebe so taking a bigger picture view of the entire county will be necessary when boundaries are redrawn everywhere - and we definitely need to do this in the Fall, there is no reason to wait any longer. there are 700 new seats coming on line in the fall so boundary changes are coming.

Even if they redraw the map this fall, they can't implement most of the North Arlington changes until Reed opens. All of the schools are either over capacity or within a dozen or so students of being over capacity.

Exactly, the can't do realistically re-draw ASFS twice, so they should wait until Reed opens and just find a way to deal with the capacity bulge, which will shrink eventually).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

All that said, I can see why it makes you feel like it's arbitrary to let the Jamestown/Taylor students stay while making students zoned away from ASFS move, so maybe they will make everyone leave. It just seems needlessly petty -- "If I have to leave, I want every single other student to have to leave also."

Agree - they need to blow the whole thing up for all boundaries and start from scratch without looking at a few schools here and there through one or two viewpoints. I was glad to see school board members thinking like this. The Science Focus boundary revisions could really help relieve some of the crowding we have at Glebe. Some of our planning units are closer to Science Focus than Glebe so taking a bigger picture view of the entire county will be necessary when boundaries are redrawn everywhere - and we definitely need to do this in the Fall, there is no reason to wait any longer. there are 700 new seats coming on line in the fall so boundary changes are coming.

Even if they redraw the map this fall, they can't implement most of the North Arlington changes until Reed opens. All of the schools are either over capacity or within a dozen or so students of being over capacity.

And even then, they can’t send anyone east from Glebe unless they make Key neighborhood. Otherwise everyone will have to be pushed west instead. There aren’t enough seats.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

All that said, I can see why it makes you feel like it's arbitrary to let the Jamestown/Taylor students stay while making students zoned away from ASFS move, so maybe they will make everyone leave. It just seems needlessly petty -- "If I have to leave, I want every single other student to have to leave also."

Agree - they need to blow the whole thing up for all boundaries and start from scratch without looking at a few schools here and there through one or two viewpoints. I was glad to see school board members thinking like this. The Science Focus boundary revisions could really help relieve some of the crowding we have at Glebe. Some of our planning units are closer to Science Focus than Glebe so taking a bigger picture view of the entire county will be necessary when boundaries are redrawn everywhere - and we definitely need to do this in the Fall, there is no reason to wait any longer. there are 700 new seats coming on line in the fall so boundary changes are coming.

Even if they redraw the map this fall, they can't implement most of the North Arlington changes until Reed opens. All of the schools are either over capacity or within a dozen or so students of being over capacity.

And even then, they can’t send anyone east from Glebe unless they make Key neighborhood. Otherwise everyone will have to be pushed west instead. There aren’t enough seats.

I agree. If they don't move Key, Glebe probably keeps its current units to the east (and may even pick up one or two more for busing efficiency) and then some of their western units get bused to Reed, even if they could walk to Glebe.