APS - Elementary school -who is opting for virtual in 2021/22
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Anonymous
I was talking about the Innovation School, which is the new elementary at Key, and not the elementary at Patrick Henry from 2019. Innovation School is also opening up in Fall 2021: https://www.apsva.us/post/school-board-approves-name-for-new-elementary-school-at-key-site/ But you make a good point: If redrawing boundaries around Fleet caused an additional $270K total, budgeted to Fleet, why would redrawing boundaries that would be split across at least two new opening elementary schools cost one school (Reed) twice that amount ($370 new in the budget PLUS the excess leftover from McKinley's old bus overage costs at Reed, if what APS told McKinley about 60/28% was true)? |
Anonymous
I am truly sorry that your child faces depression. I know from personal and family member experience that is challenging, to say the least. I posted my (admittedly snarky) comment because I find it immensely frustrating that people continue making the blanket (and inaccurate) assertion that COVID is less dangerous for kids. That is an absolute statement that is simply false. COVID is less dangerous for a lot of kids (maybe even most), but certainly not all kids. Continuing to assert the absolute "COVID is less dangerous for kids" is simply false and implies that kids with health conditions do not exist, or are invisible to those who continue to make this claim. |
Anonymous
You are not reading the budget properly. While the budget document put this expense under the “opening Reed” line item, it’s not saying that Reed is getting all these additional drivers and buses beyond what McKinley had. The only actual new school opening is Reed; immersion left Key and it’s getting a neighborhood boundary, but it’s not a new school so APS hasn’t labeled it that way in the summary. Opening Reed was the trigger for making all of these other school moves and redrawing boundaries, so the budget summary labels it all as associated with opening Reed. But that doesn’t mean all of these additional resources are going directly to Reed itself. The other problem with your analysis is that you don’t know what you’re comparing these numbers to, but are seemingly assuming the alternative would have been no additional drivers/attendants needed. If opening Reed as a neighborhood school but not moving any programs would result in a net increase of 12 new drivers/attendants, and moving immersion to ATS but moving ATS to Reed instead of McKinley would have required 10 new drivers/attendants, then only needing 6 new drivers/attendants with the adopted plan would be a bargain. |
Anonymous
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Ultimately, moving around all of these schools actually resulted in very substantial increased rather than reduced bus costs (again, all of the differential in bus costs that McKinley was supposedly eating by having so many non-walkers PLUS the additional $370K which is more than Fleet's cost in frictional costs). In fact, it seems like when you move 4 different schools around at once, the extra bus costs are substantial (my estimate from these numbers is that they are somewhere upwards of $600K).
So to me it seems like these additional costs are something that APS should have considered and included in the discussion upfront when discussing the idea of playing musical chairs with four schools instead of just adding one to the system. Those costs were not considered when deciding the move let alone raised with the community. What McKinley heard was 60 vs. 28% walkability, and not "all of this money saved from walkability -- and more! -- will later be eaten by the rest of our plan to move everything around!" Your point that this may have been the cheapest possible alternative of all of them may be correct. It is possible. At the same time, these additional costs weren't noted at the time and don't seem to have been considered when making the decision that moving 4 schools at once would be the most cost effective solution (and which still leaves Reed, Ashlawn, and Glebe (and Tuckahoe, too?) oversubscribed and made negative progress in solving that area's overenrollment problem that Reed was originally supposed to assist with). Finally, to circle back to the beginning, I think Kadera had a point in raising the bus cost issue, and was at least grappling with understanding the ins and outs of the complex APS school budget in a way that Miranda clearly is not. And I still think her main point was correct: These costs are a surprise that we weren't told about when everyone was saying that in fact the achievable net bus savings we'd create were the reason we should move in the first place. |
Anonymous
| Anyone who regularly follows school issues could have anticipated that opening Reed (or any new school) necessarily was going to result in increased transportation costs. For Kadera to claim now that she didn’t see it coming either is deeply disingenuous or underscores her fundamental lack of understanding of how a school system functions. |
Anonymous
Is this really the case? I'm only in my second year as an APS parent so I'm trying to figure out all of the rezoning plans and debates, but personally I would have thought that one more school would have meant more kids could walk to school so fewer busses. |