school board work session on enrollment and transfers in options schools(and also a new high school)

[Anonymous]

Sounds like the concept of teams x100.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why not make clusters (with some minor boundary changes), and give everyone within the boundary four choices: immersion, Montessori, STEAM, or traditional/neighborhood. Then take three buildings and have an immersion/Montessori building, a STEAM building, and a neighborhood building. Everyone in the three-school boundary would rank their three choices and hopefully everyone would get their first or second choice. A good number of kids should be able to walk and APS would provide busing to all three but it wouldn't have to be cross-county. It wouldn't help diversity a ton if you wanted the boundaries to be contiguous but you could do east-west clusters and cross 50 where possible. Possible clusters could be Tuckahoe/McKinley/Ashlawn, Nottingham/Reed/ATS, Discovery/Glebe/ASF, Jamestown/Taylor/Key, Carlin Springs/Campbell/Barrett, Claremont/Abingdon/Drew, Barcroft/Randolph/New ES, and Long Branch/Patrick Henry/Hoffman Boston/Oakridge.

Why are we pushing immersion and montessori so much? We don't need 8 immersion options! What you're proposing is really confusing -- what the SB proposed is actually really easy to follow except for the fact that they changed ASFS to a neighborhood school without telling anyone. I was one of the previous posters who was pushing for having ASFS switch buildings with Key since that makes more sense if you look at the boundaries, but the arguments here have convinced me that its not really that strange to have a neighborhood school with no walk zone until they redo boundaries in a few years. Does anyone have a good feel for the level of grandfathering that they'll do for current students? Are all the Taylor students in ASFS going to be asked to transfer back or is the county going to stop providing transportation (which might cause a lot of them to transfer back anyways)?

I actually really like the layout that the school board came up with. The proposed options are nice because in general neighborhood schools are good quality, and other than a few county wide options that are difficult to access (ats), it allows for seemingly equitable access. It seems like the majority of hesitation here has been that Reed could be better utilized as a non-option school. Why not have it be like the IB middle schools where there are a certain number of seats for an IB program, but the majority of the school is a neighborhood school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why not make clusters (with some minor boundary changes), and give everyone within the boundary four choices: immersion, Montessori, STEAM, or traditional/neighborhood. Then take three buildings and have an immersion/Montessori building, a STEAM building, and a neighborhood building. Everyone in the three-school boundary would rank their three choices and hopefully everyone would get their first or second choice. A good number of kids should be able to walk and APS would provide busing to all three but it wouldn't have to be cross-county. It wouldn't help diversity a ton if you wanted the boundaries to be contiguous but you could do east-west clusters and cross 50 where possible. Possible clusters could be Tuckahoe/McKinley/Ashlawn, Nottingham/Reed/ATS, Discovery/Glebe/ASF, Jamestown/Taylor/Key, Carlin Springs/Campbell/Barrett, Claremont/Abingdon/Drew, Barcroft/Randolph/New ES, and Long Branch/Patrick Henry/Hoffman Boston/Oakridge.

While I like the creative thinking- I don't think this is feasible for a few reasons;
1. The immersion model is dual immersion and requires close to a 50/50 balance of native speakers. There is no way you are going to get anywhere close to that with those boundaries.
2. MOntessori is just not that popular- it doesn't fill county wide. I honestly think Arl should be ending it- but this probably won't happen b/c it has powerful advocates.
3. This is effectively the old Jamestown/Taylor/Key/ASFS 'team' model. As we saw- it works well with schools with space. With crowded schools the system locks up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why not make clusters (with some minor boundary changes), and give everyone within the boundary four choices: immersion, Montessori, STEAM, or traditional/neighborhood. Then take three buildings and have an immersion/Montessori building, a STEAM building, and a neighborhood building. Everyone in the three-school boundary would rank their three choices and hopefully everyone would get their first or second choice. A good number of kids should be able to walk and APS would provide busing to all three but it wouldn't have to be cross-county. It wouldn't help diversity a ton if you wanted the boundaries to be contiguous but you could do east-west clusters and cross 50 where possible. Possible clusters could be Tuckahoe/McKinley/Ashlawn, Nottingham/Reed/ATS, Discovery/Glebe/ASF, Jamestown/Taylor/Key, Carlin Springs/Campbell/Barrett, Claremont/Abingdon/Drew, Barcroft/Randolph/New ES, and Long Branch/Patrick Henry/Hoffman Boston/Oakridge.

While I like the creative thinking- I don't think this is feasible for a few reasons;
1. The immersion model is dual immersion and requires close to a 50/50 balance of native speakers. There is no way you are going to get anywhere close to that with those boundaries.
2. MOntessori is just not that popular- it doesn't fill county wide. I honestly think Arl should be ending it- but this probably won't happen b/c it has powerful advocates.
3. This is effectively the old Jamestown/Taylor/Key/ASFS 'team' model. As we saw- it works well with schools with space. With crowded schools the system locks up.

Np. I will add that it would be much more difficult to staff 8(!) immersion schools than it is to staff 2.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No additional choice schools. Don't allow those that got into choice in elementary apply for choice in MS or HS.

I don't think these are the most effective arguments to make together. The only reason to prevent families from entering both lotteries is to allow more people entry into a choice school. If there is greater interest in choice schools, then why not build another one?

Lots of the people who apply for choice aren't actually interested in the program. They're interested in a smaller school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why not make clusters (with some minor boundary changes), and give everyone within the boundary four choices: immersion, Montessori, STEAM, or traditional/neighborhood. Then take three buildings and have an immersion/Montessori building, a STEAM building, and a neighborhood building. Everyone in the three-school boundary would rank their three choices and hopefully everyone would get their first or second choice. A good number of kids should be able to walk and APS would provide busing to all three but it wouldn't have to be cross-county. It wouldn't help diversity a ton if you wanted the boundaries to be contiguous but you could do east-west clusters and cross 50 where possible. Possible clusters could be Tuckahoe/McKinley/Ashlawn, Nottingham/Reed/ATS, Discovery/Glebe/ASF, Jamestown/Taylor/Key, Carlin Springs/Campbell/Barrett, Claremont/Abingdon/Drew, Barcroft/Randolph/New ES, and Long Branch/Patrick Henry/Hoffman Boston/Oakridge.

Why are we pushing immersion and montessori so much? We don't need 8 immersion options! What you're proposing is really confusing -- what the SB proposed is actually really easy to follow except for the fact that they changed ASFS to a neighborhood school without telling anyone. I was one of the previous posters who was pushing for having ASFS switch buildings with Key since that makes more sense if you look at the boundaries, but the arguments here have convinced me that its not really that strange to have a neighborhood school with no walk zone until they redo boundaries in a few years. Does anyone have a good feel for the level of grandfathering that they'll do for current students? Are all the Taylor students in ASFS going to be asked to transfer back or is the county going to stop providing transportation (which might cause a lot of them to transfer back anyways)?

I actually really like the layout that the school board came up with. The proposed options are nice because in general neighborhood schools are good quality, and other than a few county wide options that are difficult to access (ats), it allows for seemingly equitable access. It seems like the majority of hesitation here has been that Reed could be better utilized as a non-option school. Why not have it be like the IB middle schools where there are a certain number of seats for an IB program, but the majority of the school is a neighborhood school?

I like the basic concept too.

I think people are freaking out way too much about this. They didn't "changed ASFS to a neighborhood school without telling anyone" -- this is a very early concept put out as a thought/discussion starter about what a long range plan could look like. People want transparency into discussions/decisions but then freak out that decisions have been already made when that is not what is happening. This is an idea to think about and keep in mind for several years out but having a long-range plan in mind is important as new schools come on line over the next few years. e.g. if the plan down the road would be to make Randolph a IB option school then perhaps that piece of the plan should be taken care of when the Montessori/Henry move prompts all the S. Arlington ES boundaries to be redrawn.

I appreciate that APS is, for once, thinking about a long-term plan and getting input early in the process.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Lots of the people who apply for choice aren't actually interested in the program. They're interested in a smaller school.

I think this is probably true for ATS and Campbell and HB.
This is definitely not true for Immersion- those are some of the largest elementary schools.
This is probably not true for Montessori.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No additional choice schools. Don't allow those that got into choice in elementary apply for choice in MS or HS.

I don't think these are the most effective arguments to make together. The only reason to prevent families from entering both lotteries is to allow more people entry into a choice school. If there is greater interest in choice schools, then why not build another one?

Lots of the people who apply for choice aren't actually interested in the program. They're interested in a smaller school.

True, but I still don't think this is the best paired arguments to present to the SB.

[Anonymous]

No clusters! No team schools! Just no.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No clusters! No team schools! Just no.

Ditto. Keep it simple. Either the whole county can apply to an option school or, if enough demand is demonstrated, offer two locations. I think the basic outline they put out is a good idea. I'm not sure the types of options are the right ones but get rid of these teams/clusters/etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why not make clusters (with some minor boundary changes), and give everyone within the boundary four choices: immersion, Montessori, STEAM, or traditional/neighborhood. Then take three buildings and have an immersion/Montessori building, a STEAM building, and a neighborhood building. Everyone in the three-school boundary would rank their three choices and hopefully everyone would get their first or second choice. A good number of kids should be able to walk and APS would provide busing to all three but it wouldn't have to be cross-county. It wouldn't help diversity a ton if you wanted the boundaries to be contiguous but you could do east-west clusters and cross 50 where possible. Possible clusters could be Tuckahoe/McKinley/Ashlawn, Nottingham/Reed/ATS, Discovery/Glebe/ASF, Jamestown/Taylor/Key, Carlin Springs/Campbell/Barrett, Claremont/Abingdon/Drew, Barcroft/Randolph/New ES, and Long Branch/Patrick Henry/Hoffman Boston/Oakridge.

Why are we pushing immersion and montessori so much? We don't need 8 immersion options! What you're proposing is really confusing -- what the SB proposed is actually really easy to follow except for the fact that they changed ASFS to a neighborhood school without telling anyone. I was one of the previous posters who was pushing for having ASFS switch buildings with Key since that makes more sense if you look at the boundaries, but the arguments here have convinced me that its not really that strange to have a neighborhood school with no walk zone until they redo boundaries in a few years. Does anyone have a good feel for the level of grandfathering that they'll do for current students? Are all the Taylor students in ASFS going to be asked to transfer back or is the county going to stop providing transportation (which might cause a lot of them to transfer back anyways)?

I actually really like the layout that the school board came up with. The proposed options are nice because in general neighborhood schools are good quality, and other than a few county wide options that are difficult to access (ats), it allows for seemingly equitable access. It seems like the majority of hesitation here has been that Reed could be better utilized as a non-option school. Why not have it be like the IB middle schools where there are a certain number of seats for an IB program, but the majority of the school is a neighborhood school?

I like the basic concept too.

I think people are freaking out way too much about this. They didn't "changed ASFS to a neighborhood school without telling anyone" -- this is a very early concept put out as a thought/discussion starter about what a long range plan could look like. People want transparency into discussions/decisions but then freak out that decisions have been already made when that is not what is happening. This is an idea to think about and keep in mind for several years out but having a long-range plan in mind is important as new schools come on line over the next few years. e.g. if the plan down the road would be to make Randolph a IB option school then perhaps that piece of the plan should be taken care of when the Montessori/Henry move prompts all the S. Arlington ES boundaries to be redrawn.

I appreciate that APS is, for once, thinking about a long-term plan and getting input early in the process.

Eh, my kids go to ASFS and I disagree. I only started paying attention to this because of prompting from Ms Begley and the PTA. They removed the idea of Team schools and ASFS is removed from the list of option schools on the official policy (which is supposed to be approved in June?). No one has explicitly called the change, and since it hasn't accepted non-sibling transfers in a few years, its not really a big deal anyways since it was effectively a neighborhood school. There is no mention of sibling preference for admission for transfers between neighborhood schools, and they say that transportation will not be provided for transfers between neighborhood schools. If you follow that policy, most of the kids that are currently at asfs from taylor (even if they grandfather them in) might not be able to take the bus anymore and might not be able to easily transfer younger siblings since the school will likely be at capacity or over capacity and there is no mention of sibling preference for transfers in neighborhood schools. This effects the older kids parents a lot more than my kids (especially since we're zoned for asfs), but I'm glad we didn't buy a house in the taylor school district thinking that the kids wouldn't have to change schools (since before you could move and stay at your school as long as you stayed within the team boundaries).

[Anonymous]

Immersion and Montessori are both ideas that are thought will attract white, wealthy parents. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Even when it works, the kids are simply self segregating in the school itself.

Arlington's problem is there is no middle class so the divide is sharp - very rich and very poor - and so no efforts to relabel or create new schools will ever produce the desired result.

[Anonymous]

The idea that Reed will be a neighborhood school with some portion of it being IB isn't going to fly if they remove the neighborhood preference policy.

[Anonymous]

Seems like the McKinley parents are just looking for a "win" at this point. I think this solution will likely benefit them. They need to relax about Reed.

[Anonymous]

No I think the McKinley parents want some relief, not necessarily a "win". I don't think they view this as some sort of fun game. Why do you think they are just looking for a win?