APS Sinking Ship

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Busing and teams will just subject some kids to long bus rides, and then you will have a white flight situation like ACPS.



This is a joke, right? Arlington is the smallest county in America. There is no such thing as a long bus ride in Arlington.


Actually there is one route that takes from 1:06-1:20 for drew elementary this year. That’s the longest route.

Thanks for proving my point!

That is an idiotically long ride for ES kids. Why put a kid on a bus at 7:30 when they don't need to be there until 8:50? On the flip side, they aren't getting home until close to 5! Ridiculous.

I’m not sure anyone actually rides it. Any route that long to Drew would be a Montessori student, and would have to live near Chain Bridge. My guess is such student doesn’t actually exist.

Yep, must be Montessori and if that ride exists, it was your CHOICE to have your child in Montessori and thus not on a much shorter bus ride to your neighborhood school. The boundary for the Drew neighborhood program is tiny and no one rides the bus very far.

This chain is about the idea of teams to desegregate, right? That would have to include non-optional busing or else nothing would change. APS would also have to do some creative and gerrymandered drawing of team boundaries, and even then I can't see how you get Nottingham, Discovery, and Jamestown into a group with any low income schools without making islands.

I don't have time to create the actual map, but I think you could draw boundaries such that the teams are a little more balanced and palpable.
Something like:
Abingdon, Drew, Oakridge, Hoffman-Boston
Fleet, Long Branch, Barcroft, Randolph
Ashlawn, Carlin Springs, Mckinley, Tuckahoe
ASFS, Taylor, Jamestown, new neighborhood school at Key if that ever happens
Glebe, Barrett, Discovery, Nottingham

All this does is spread the low-income students more across the south arlington schools. Not many Latino families in the Carlin Springs community are going to opt for Ashlawn, let alone McKinley or Tuckahoe. This simply brings Oakridge and Fleet back in the direction they came from.
What's the point of ASFS, Taylor Jamestown, Key? That's exactly what there is NOW - and look how diverse those schools are!

[Anonymous]

Tee hee. Yes. Let's team Jamestown, ASFS, and Taylor to get some real diversity in the mix. Can I guess where you live?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Tee hee. Yes. Let's team Jamestown, ASFS, and Taylor to get some real diversity in the mix. Can I guess where you live?

LOL, this (+Key) was the "team" the JUST disbanded!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tee hee. Yes. Let's team Jamestown, ASFS, and Taylor to get some real diversity in the mix. Can I guess where you live?

LOL, this (+Key) was the "team" the JUST disbanded!

I actually don’t have kids in elementary anymore. My youngest just graduated from McKinley.
My older kids were at asfs before we moved to a house. This was over ten years ago. The team worked really well until two of the schools stopped accepting transfers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This argument is premised on the idea that the boundaries process is designed to move homes from overcrowded schools and into the undercrowded ones. The most recent round in South Arlington showed the exact opposite of that happening. Neighborhoods fought to stay in Oakridge, Abingdon, and Fleet (even under plans where Fleet was instantly oversubscribed) in order to avoid Barcroft and Drew. And all but one of those neighborhoods got their way.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1. Academic research concluded that throwing money at poor schools will only do so much to close the achievement gap. Socio economic Integration does a much better job.

2. Amazon will only worsen the school inequality issues because affordable housing advocates are lobbying hard to use amazon money (where ever it is) to build more affordable housing, in south Arlington of course. The board agrees with them. They all seem to think amazon people will want to live along the western pike and push up prices.

I agree with that assessment. Amazon employees will be no different than your typical high income people around here. They’ll pack into the Fleet and Oakridge zones, like has been happening for years, but that’s it. Every other SA school has so many CAFs and market rate (Barcroft Apts, mostly) and it’s not mathematically possible to replicate the steady lowering of a high FRL rate like at Henry or Oakridge. Those schools were above 60 percent 15 years ago,
but because their boundaries have always consisted of mostly SFH, it was possible for them to become balanced, even integrated for a time, as new families bought former rental homes and homes from grannies. Amazon money will bring even more CAFs. It’ll probably underwrite an expansion of Barcroft Apts.

They can try, but all it will do is push some of them into another school, like Barcroft. There isn't room in the boundary for Fleet for another school, and despite what some people think, the school your house was zoned to when you bought it doesn't mean you have access to it in perpetuity.

Yes, but at some point, APS would have to stop capitulating. Frankly, Drew didn't want those families at first. The original plan turned it into a UMC school, but the history there won out.

This statement is not only inaccurate but nonsensical. There was no plan that made Drew UMC, lol. And there were no families that Drew didn't "want."

Actually, during the walk boundary/redistricting, one of the plans presented explored taking the PUs south of the Pike from Henry and some of the affluent PUs from Oakridge to Drew. The Drew PTA and Nauck civic assoc said they wanted a neighborhood school, not one overrun by UMC families from outside, so the Oakridge PUs were dropped.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This argument is premised on the idea that the boundaries process is designed to move homes from overcrowded schools and into the undercrowded ones. The most recent round in South Arlington showed the exact opposite of that happening. Neighborhoods fought to stay in Oakridge, Abingdon, and Fleet (even under plans where Fleet was instantly oversubscribed) in order to avoid Barcroft and Drew. And all but one of those neighborhoods got their way.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1. Academic research concluded that throwing money at poor schools will only do so much to close the achievement gap. Socio economic Integration does a much better job.

2. Amazon will only worsen the school inequality issues because affordable housing advocates are lobbying hard to use amazon money (where ever it is) to build more affordable housing, in south Arlington of course. The board agrees with them. They all seem to think amazon people will want to live along the western pike and push up prices.

I agree with that assessment. Amazon employees will be no different than your typical high income people around here. They’ll pack into the Fleet and Oakridge zones, like has been happening for years, but that’s it. Every other SA school has so many CAFs and market rate (Barcroft Apts, mostly) and it’s not mathematically possible to replicate the steady lowering of a high FRL rate like at Henry or Oakridge. Those schools were above 60 percent 15 years ago,
but because their boundaries have always consisted of mostly SFH, it was possible for them to become balanced, even integrated for a time, as new families bought former rental homes and homes from grannies. Amazon money will bring even more CAFs. It’ll probably underwrite an expansion of Barcroft Apts.

They can try, but all it will do is push some of them into another school, like Barcroft. There isn't room in the boundary for Fleet for another school, and despite what some people think, the school your house was zoned to when you bought it doesn't mean you have access to it in perpetuity.

Yes, but at some point, APS would have to stop capitulating. Frankly, Drew didn't want those families at first. The original plan turned it into a UMC school, but the history there won out.

This statement is not only inaccurate but nonsensical. There was no plan that made Drew UMC, lol. And there were no families that Drew didn't "want."

Actually, during the walk boundary/redistricting, one of the plans presented explored taking the PUs south of the Pike from Henry and some of the affluent PUs from Oakridge to Drew. The Drew PTA and Nauck civic assoc said they wanted a neighborhood school, not one overrun by UMC families from outside, so the Oakridge PUs were dropped.

Which plan included Oakridge PUs? Be specific, b/c none of the maps that were published during the boundary process did that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This argument is premised on the idea that the boundaries process is designed to move homes from overcrowded schools and into the undercrowded ones. The most recent round in South Arlington showed the exact opposite of that happening. Neighborhoods fought to stay in Oakridge, Abingdon, and Fleet (even under plans where Fleet was instantly oversubscribed) in order to avoid Barcroft and Drew. And all but one of those neighborhoods got their way.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1. Academic research concluded that throwing money at poor schools will only do so much to close the achievement gap. Socio economic Integration does a much better job.

2. Amazon will only worsen the school inequality issues because affordable housing advocates are lobbying hard to use amazon money (where ever it is) to build more affordable housing, in south Arlington of course. The board agrees with them. They all seem to think amazon people will want to live along the western pike and push up prices.

I agree with that assessment. Amazon employees will be no different than your typical high income people around here. They’ll pack into the Fleet and Oakridge zones, like has been happening for years, but that’s it. Every other SA school has so many CAFs and market rate (Barcroft Apts, mostly) and it’s not mathematically possible to replicate the steady lowering of a high FRL rate like at Henry or Oakridge. Those schools were above 60 percent 15 years ago,
but because their boundaries have always consisted of mostly SFH, it was possible for them to become balanced, even integrated for a time, as new families bought former rental homes and homes from grannies. Amazon money will bring even more CAFs. It’ll probably underwrite an expansion of Barcroft Apts.

They can try, but all it will do is push some of them into another school, like Barcroft. There isn't room in the boundary for Fleet for another school, and despite what some people think, the school your house was zoned to when you bought it doesn't mean you have access to it in perpetuity.

Yes, but at some point, APS would have to stop capitulating. Frankly, Drew didn't want those families at first. The original plan turned it into a UMC school, but the history there won out.

This statement is not only inaccurate but nonsensical. There was no plan that made Drew UMC, lol. And there were no families that Drew didn't "want."

Actually, during the walk boundary/redistricting, one of the plans presented explored taking the PUs south of the Pike from Henry and some of the affluent PUs from Oakridge to Drew. The Drew PTA and Nauck civic assoc said they wanted a neighborhood school, not one overrun by UMC families from outside, so the Oakridge PUs were dropped.

There’s no public record or debate containing any such statements that I’m aware of. Care to share it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This argument is premised on the idea that the boundaries process is designed to move homes from overcrowded schools and into the undercrowded ones. The most recent round in South Arlington showed the exact opposite of that happening. Neighborhoods fought to stay in Oakridge, Abingdon, and Fleet (even under plans where Fleet was instantly oversubscribed) in order to avoid Barcroft and Drew. And all but one of those neighborhoods got their way.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1. Academic research concluded that throwing money at poor schools will only do so much to close the achievement gap. Socio economic Integration does a much better job.

2. Amazon will only worsen the school inequality issues because affordable housing advocates are lobbying hard to use amazon money (where ever it is) to build more affordable housing, in south Arlington of course. The board agrees with them. They all seem to think amazon people will want to live along the western pike and push up prices.

I agree with that assessment. Amazon employees will be no different than your typical high income people around here. They’ll pack into the Fleet and Oakridge zones, like has been happening for years, but that’s it. Every other SA school has so many CAFs and market rate (Barcroft Apts, mostly) and it’s not mathematically possible to replicate the steady lowering of a high FRL rate like at Henry or Oakridge. Those schools were above 60 percent 15 years ago,
but because their boundaries have always consisted of mostly SFH, it was possible for them to become balanced, even integrated for a time, as new families bought former rental homes and homes from grannies. Amazon money will bring even more CAFs. It’ll probably underwrite an expansion of Barcroft Apts.

They can try, but all it will do is push some of them into another school, like Barcroft. There isn't room in the boundary for Fleet for another school, and despite what some people think, the school your house was zoned to when you bought it doesn't mean you have access to it in perpetuity.

Yes, but at some point, APS would have to stop capitulating. Frankly, Drew didn't want those families at first. The original plan turned it into a UMC school, but the history there won out.

This statement is not only inaccurate but nonsensical. There was no plan that made Drew UMC, lol. And there were no families that Drew didn't "want."

Actually, during the walk boundary/redistricting, one of the plans presented explored taking the PUs south of the Pike from Henry and some of the affluent PUs from Oakridge to Drew. The Drew PTA and Nauck civic assoc said they wanted a neighborhood school, not one overrun by UMC families from outside, so the Oakridge PUs were dropped.

The only Oakridge PU that was ever going to Drew is the one with The Berkeley in it, so how would that have helped balance the schools? The PUs in the walk zone for Oakridge are the wealthiest, all SFHs. They were never getting moved. Nothing in any walk zone is ever getting moved.

[Anonymous]

Feel free to rewatch the 10/17/18 livestream from the discussion

https://www.apsva.us/engage/livestream/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Feel free to rewatch the 10/17/18 livestream from the discussion

https://www.apsva.us/engage/livestream/

I was there, I don’t need to watch it. There was never any proposal to move any Oakridge units to Drew, with one very important exception: the long, gerrymandered PU that contains the Berkeley complex, and nothing else. That is hardly affluent; it’s being renovated now and when complete, will be the largest CAF in the county. APS estimates it will generate over 100 FRL students. Will be interesting to see where those kids get zoned, not that we don’t already know exactly where.

[Anonymous]

Hmm, I want to live in Bay Area, maybe I can qualify for CAF there on my GS12 salary... we need better transit not housing for a lucky few.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Feel free to rewatch the 10/17/18 livestream from the discussion

https://www.apsva.us/engage/livestream/

I was there, I don’t need to watch it. There was never any proposal to move any Oakridge units to Drew, with one very important exception: the long, gerrymandered PU that contains the Berkeley complex, and nothing else. That is hardly affluent; it’s being renovated now and when complete, will be the largest CAF in the county. APS estimates it will generate over 100 FRL students. Will be interesting to see where those kids get zoned, not that we don’t already know exactly where.

+1

Regarding the map sending the Berkeley to Drew, that was an illustrative map (for proximity) only. It was never a proposal.

PP, please stop spreading misinformation and suggesting that the NCA or the Drew community are exclusionary. I'm a member of both and it is not true.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Feel free to rewatch the 10/17/18 livestream from the discussion

https://www.apsva.us/engage/livestream/

I was there, I don’t need to watch it. There was never any proposal to move any Oakridge units to Drew, with one very important exception: the long, gerrymandered PU that contains the Berkeley complex, and nothing else. That is hardly affluent; it’s being renovated now and when complete, will be the largest CAF in the county. APS estimates it will generate over 100 FRL students. Will be interesting to see where those kids get zoned, not that we don’t already know exactly where.

+1

Regarding the map sending the Berkeley to Drew, that was an illustrative map (for proximity) only. It was never a proposal.

PP, please stop spreading misinformation and suggesting that the NCA or the Drew community are exclusionary. I'm a member of both and it is not true.

Maybe this is a situation where we all remember events differently. I recall pages and pages of threads where it was mentioned that Drew didn't want families from Oakridge. Not as crazy as the Henry families who claimed Alcova would make Fleet to affluent, but it did happen. Of course, DCUM isn't actually reality.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Feel free to rewatch the 10/17/18 livestream from the discussion

https://www.apsva.us/engage/livestream/

I was there, I don’t need to watch it. There was never any proposal to move any Oakridge units to Drew, with one very important exception: the long, gerrymandered PU that contains the Berkeley complex, and nothing else. That is hardly affluent; it’s being renovated now and when complete, will be the largest CAF in the county. APS estimates it will generate over 100 FRL students. Will be interesting to see where those kids get zoned, not that we don’t already know exactly where.

+1

Regarding the map sending the Berkeley to Drew, that was an illustrative map (for proximity) only. It was never a proposal.

PP, please stop spreading misinformation and suggesting that the NCA or the Drew community are exclusionary. I'm a member of both and it is not true.

Maybe this is a situation where we all remember events differently. I recall pages and pages of threads where it was mentioned that Drew didn't want families from Oakridge. Not as crazy as the Henry families who claimed Alcova would make Fleet to affluent, but it did happen. Of course, DCUM isn't actually reality.

I recall all those threads too, because I posted on many of them trying to dispel this falsehood. First, it wasn't Oakridge b/c the threads your referring to and the livestream you linked were after Map 2 proposed moving Abingdon PUs to Drew. But more importantly, it's just not the case that Drew "wanted" or "didn't want" certain PUs or families. It's not really even the case that there was a coherent "Drew" voice and, while NCA made its views known in previous years, I believe it was fairly quiet as an organization during the boundary process itself. And it's definitely not the case now, months after the boundary lines have been finalized, that Drew wants or doesn't want the kids that are now zoned to it. That's why it's important to please stop spreading this around; the fact is, Drew has a boundary now and no one, whether at Drew or outside looking in, should be making families who will be new to Drew feel unwelcome.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Feel free to rewatch the 10/17/18 livestream from the discussion

https://www.apsva.us/engage/livestream/

I was there, I don’t need to watch it. There was never any proposal to move any Oakridge units to Drew, with one very important exception: the long, gerrymandered PU that contains the Berkeley complex, and nothing else. That is hardly affluent; it’s being renovated now and when complete, will be the largest CAF in the county. APS estimates it will generate over 100 FRL students. Will be interesting to see where those kids get zoned, not that we don’t already know exactly where.

+1

Regarding the map sending the Berkeley to Drew, that was an illustrative map (for proximity) only. It was never a proposal.

PP, please stop spreading misinformation and suggesting that the NCA or the Drew community are exclusionary. I'm a member of both and it is not true.

Maybe this is a situation where we all remember events differently. I recall pages and pages of threads where it was mentioned that Drew didn't want families from Oakridge. Not as crazy as the Henry families who claimed Alcova would make Fleet to affluent, but it did happen. Of course, DCUM isn't actually reality.

I recall all those threads too, because I posted on many of them trying to dispel this falsehood. First, it wasn't Oakridge b/c the threads your referring to and the livestream you linked were after Map 2 proposed moving Abingdon PUs to Drew. But more importantly, it's just not the case that Drew "wanted" or "didn't want" certain PUs or families. It's not really even the case that there was a coherent "Drew" voice and, while NCA made its views known in previous years, I believe it was fairly quiet as an organization during the boundary process itself. And it's definitely not the case now, months after the boundary lines have been finalized, that Drew wants or doesn't want the kids that are now zoned to it. That's why it's important to please stop spreading this around; the fact is, Drew has a boundary now and no one, whether at Drew or outside looking in, should be making families who will be new to Drew feel unwelcome.

+1000