APS elementary planning initiative called off
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Anonymous
None of this is an argument for why ASFS needs a full rezoning to go into effect for 2019-20 rather than 2021-22. Yes, in most cases it would be highly inefficient to not put a neighborhood school in its own attendance zone during a rezoning, but it’s not as if the school ceases to function just because it sits outside of its attendance zone. After all, ASFS has functioned this way for years. |
Anonymous
actually- this is a case where sooner is definitely not better. If they do very much with the ASFS boundary, they are further tying their hands with Reed boundary since they won't move a planning unit twice in 5 years. THey need Reed to open- and they need to be able to show what those boundaries look like, in order to deal with ASFS. |
Anonymous
The sooner the better for sure. Rip off the band-aid and deal with the loud angry mommies one time. There is no need to open up Reed to understand what it's boundaries look like. We have drawn boundaries for schools years before they come online - this is not a new concept. Stalling and letting the problem get worse is not doing any children a favor. |
Anonymous
I live on the southern side of Rosslyn. We are a household with two working parents and we don't drive on a regular basis, though we do have a personal vehicle. My first choice would be to have a neighborhood school at Key, just under a mile walk. We are not technically in the walk zone, but we are people who would walk anyway because that's what we do. My second choice would be Long Branch, 2.4 mile drive that takes about 10 min at rush hour. There are also plenty of buses on this route. Third choice is Science Focus, 2.7 miles and closer to 15 min at rush hour, limited transit options. Taylor, the school that would actually have space, would be a terrible option. It's 3.6 miles away and more like 20 minutes because I would have to drive through Rosslyn to get there. Also, the transit options are awful. My obviously biased take is that the best long term solution, should the board be able to stomach it, is to move immersion to Carlin Springs and have a concentrated outreach effort to get neighborhood families to buy into the immersion idea. Key would continue to be a diverse school because of the neighborhood demographics and the area needs neighborhood seats. Science Focus would then be able to absorb its walk zone as well as apartments in Virginia Square and Ballston, hopefully remaining a reasonably diverse school and fixing the Ashlawn Jag. Ashlawn would then have capacity to pull up some of the Carlin Springs zone from below route 50. |
Anonymous
They can draw it now all they want, but they will be unable to implement most of it until Reed opens unless they both reopen the location review this fall and implement it on an expedited basis as compared to the original schedule (despite making the decision six months later than planned, which makes that challenging). |
Anonymous
| Please rip off the bandaid and just get these changes done sooner rather than later. All of this just prolongs hand wringing and worrying and makes all parents sound like whiny toddlers who aren't getting their way. Pushing this off until later just means needlessly including more parents with more kids in the process who just want their kid to go to school somewhere nearby. |
Anonymous
How do you see that working before Reed opens that isn't just pushing the burden onto people who aren't you? That's not to say you are more deserving of the burden, just that if we're going to create all that upheaval, it should be for some net benefit, not just a zero sum. |
Anonymous
I don't understand all the anger and hostility on this site? This is worse than whiny toddlers who can at least be convinced to refrain from name calling with guidance. Unclear why people seem to want to make this personal? This is basic objective decision making. Children can attend the nearby schools, those surrounding Reed. There are 5 neighborhood schools that will share a boundary with Reed when it opens. It's not difficult to figure that out and have children attend whichever neighborhood school they are closer to and be with other neighborhood children - when Reed opens the new boundary is implemented and those planning units move. Don't want to move twice? No problem, give parents the choice. Also not hard. This is certainly not difficult to do when you redrawn boundaries for the entire county and one time instead of looking at each 'onsey-twosy' schools at a time. |
Anonymous
THIS! thank you - balance enrollment across the system at one time! this is what we should be doing instead of the myopic decision making. Too bad the school board doesn't have the courage to do this. |
Anonymous
That doesn’t work bc they will have excess capacity out west at that point and may move an option school. And if they make the decision now 3 years before implementation it will be dragged it debated endlessly. They need to just table it until reed opens and yes, then do a big rezone in 2021. |
Anonymous
they need make Reed an option program is what needs to happen |
Anonymous
That is not a workable idea because NW Arlington as a whole is already substantially over capacity. If they would like to put an option school in NW, they need to make it one of the lower-capacity schools in the region - Nottingham (513), Tuckahoe (545) or Jamestown (597) - so that there is still net gain of at least 100 neighborhood seats to, at the very least, give McKinley (116 students over capacity last year) some relief. |
Anonymous
PP said absolutely nothing whiny or insulting, so stop trying to derail a legitimate question about the practical implementation of someone's proposal. More substantively, your suggestion doesn't work. Let's look at the past school year for those five schools: McKinley - 117% capacity Ashlawn - 101% capacity Tuckhoe - 98% capacity, 12 available seats Nottingham - 102% capacity Glebe - 122% capacity Where among those five schools are you going to put the 500-600 students who would need to put pushed in that direction for the eventual Reed opening? We don't have enough vacant trailers in the system to move there to accommodate all of those students. |
Anonymous
The irony of that poster calling PPs whiney toddlers is rich. Hopefully I used irony right 
But yeah, you can draw a boundary now, and the implement in 2021, but why base zones on 4 year old data? They need to help ASFS handle it’s short term bulge, with an upper school (hey I’ll call it ‘Urban’ to get that other nutty PP on board) at the Buck property temporarily. Then do a comprehensive rezone in 2021 when Reed opens they decide if moving option schools is in cards. |
Anonymous
the pp point is you can make them whatever capacity they need to be when you redraw boundaries. redrawing boundaries balances the system to evenly distribute the capacity. yes a school might need to operate at 115% for a year or two (many have operated much worse for much longer) and Reed opens and they all go down to 95%. To be correct for SY18-19: McKinley - 112.9% capacity Ashlawn - 103% capacity Tuckhoe - 95.1% capacity Nottingham - 102.6% capacity Glebe - 119.4% capacity this misses the point - the point he/she made was these numbers are irrelevant when redrawing aside from understanding historic capacity. an entirely new capacity projection is created when boundaries are redrawn - those are the numbers that matter and those can be drawn to balance the entire system. sometimes it's hard for folks to accept things for the greater good. i get it. |