ACPS prohibits kids walking between high school campsuses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is it just me, or could all of this be solved with a crossing guard?

Maybe two crossing guards?

At the most, two guards and occasional PD help with traffic?

It’s about .7 miles between campuses so definitely walkable but about 15 mins and the transition between classes is only 13 mins. Ridiculous to shuttle 1,600 kids for such a short distance. Probably takes longer by bus than walking. What a mess!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:https://actheogony.com/8080/news/transportation-issues-plague-school-year

Absolutely bananas. What a colossal waste of students time. 1,600 student commuting between campuses everyday.

The best part of the piece is the disdain and attempt to gaslight student journalists with the "triangulating data" comment

Turns out the teacher is dumber than the student. LOL. What a moron.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it just me, or could all of this be solved with a crossing guard?

Maybe two crossing guards?

At the most, two guards and occasional PD help with traffic?

It’s about .7 miles between campuses so definitely walkable but about 15 mins and the transition between classes is only 13 mins. Ridiculous to shuttle 1,600 kids for such a short distance. Probably takes longer by bus than walking. What a mess!

Yep. They need to pay for crossing guard. It’s a mess that was predictable. Kids are missing class. Just let them walk with police/guards.

The other hysterical thing is that the school keeps saying we are a closed campus. Um. Y’all. Quit trying to make fetch happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is it just me, or could all of this be solved with a crossing guard?

Maybe two crossing guards?

At the most, two guards and occasional PD help with traffic?

It is you. Do you live here? There legit isn’t even enough room on the narrow sidewalks for the kids to wait for the light and walk. There are over a thousand kids, at any one time, transferring.

I live nearby and was in that intersection 3 times between 2-3:30. 1) that campus definitely isn’t closed, kids all over Bradlee at 2pm. Everywhere. Waiting for bus, hanging in front of McDonalds, sitting in front of Safeway, etc. I thought school got out around 3-3:15. At 2, 2:30 and 3:30 kids all over King, Braddock and Quaker. Kids waiting for the light to change so they’re piling into the actual street without a care in the world that their feet can get run over or worse. Kids jaywalking. Kids darting out and running. Kids who seem to deliberately walk against the light to upset drivers who have the right of way.

You think 2 crossing guards is going to fix that? Lol. BTW there already were 2 cop cars in bradlee parking lot by McDonalds, at 2pm.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it just me, or could all of this be solved with a crossing guard?

Maybe two crossing guards?

At the most, two guards and occasional PD help with traffic?

It is you. Do you live here? There legit isn’t even enough room on the narrow sidewalks for the kids to wait for the light and walk. There are over a thousand kids, at any one time, transferring.

I live nearby and was in that intersection 3 times between 2-3:30. 1) that campus definitely isn’t closed, kids all over Bradlee at 2pm. Everywhere. Waiting for bus, hanging in front of McDonalds, sitting in front of Safeway, etc. I thought school got out around 3-3:15. At 2, 2:30 and 3:30 kids all over King, Braddock and Quaker. Kids waiting for the light to change so they’re piling into the actual street without a care in the world that their feet can get run over or worse. Kids jaywalking. Kids darting out and running. Kids who seem to deliberately walk against the light to upset drivers who have the right of way.

You think 2 crossing guards is going to fix that? Lol. BTW there already were 2 cop cars in bradlee parking lot by McDonalds, at 2pm.

Ok, thank you for the context and details. It’s unbelievable to me that 1,000 kids would need to switch at any given time. Given that ACPS said that would rarely be necessary if I recall correctly. Sigh.

[Anonymous]

ACPS really need to reconsider this “connected high school” thing and look at a two school model (divided by grades or education tracks/programs). Shuttling that many kids on a daily basis is a wild approach and this appears to be a failed experiment! They are contorting themselves by insisting on one high school. Nowhere else in the country have I heard of a school board refusing to add additional high schools when the need so clearly arises (it should have been done decades ago in Alexandria City).

[Anonymous]

I maintain that a big motivation for this “one school” charade is to have a deeper bench for AC sports teams.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:ACPS really need to reconsider this “connected high school” thing and look at a two school model (divided by grades or education tracks/programs). Shuttling that many kids on a daily basis is a wild approach and this appears to be a failed experiment! They are contorting themselves by insisting on one high school. Nowhere else in the country have I heard of a school board refusing to add additional high schools when the need so clearly arises (it should have been done decades ago in Alexandria City).

“Decades ago” Alexandria had three high schools: GW, Hammond, and TC. The consolidation of the schools (then segregated along neighborhood and thus racial lines) into one high school with both Black and White students was memorialized in the blockbuster movie Remember the Titan some 25 years ago.

Sports are still big in Alexandria and the city probably wanted to honor the legacy of the movie, hence the one high school approach going forward.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:ACPS really need to reconsider this “connected high school” thing and look at a two school model (divided by grades or education tracks/programs). Shuttling that many kids on a daily basis is a wild approach and this appears to be a failed experiment! They are contorting themselves by insisting on one high school. Nowhere else in the country have I heard of a school board refusing to add additional high schools when the need so clearly arises (it should have been done decades ago in Alexandria City).

+1. They will try everything but the thing we know would work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it just me, or could all of this be solved with a crossing guard?

Maybe two crossing guards?

At the most, two guards and occasional PD help with traffic?

It is you. Do you live here? There legit isn’t even enough room on the narrow sidewalks for the kids to wait for the light and walk. There are over a thousand kids, at any one time, transferring.

I live nearby and was in that intersection 3 times between 2-3:30. 1) that campus definitely isn’t closed, kids all over Bradlee at 2pm. Everywhere. Waiting for bus, hanging in front of McDonalds, sitting in front of Safeway, etc. I thought school got out around 3-3:15. At 2, 2:30 and 3:30 kids all over King, Braddock and Quaker. Kids waiting for the light to change so they’re piling into the actual street without a care in the world that their feet can get run over or worse. Kids jaywalking. Kids darting out and running. Kids who seem to deliberately walk against the light to upset drivers who have the right of way.

You think 2 crossing guards is going to fix that? Lol. BTW there already were 2 cop cars in bradlee parking lot by McDonalds, at 2pm.

Ok, thank you for the context and details. It’s unbelievable to me that 1,000 kids would need to switch at any given time. Given that ACPS said that would rarely be necessary if I recall correctly. Sigh.

Do you know any kids who attend right now? If so, talk to them, ask them about their schedule and what it is like transferring between buildings. Go straight to the source and see what they say.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ACPS really need to reconsider this “connected high school” thing and look at a two school model (divided by grades or education tracks/programs). Shuttling that many kids on a daily basis is a wild approach and this appears to be a failed experiment! They are contorting themselves by insisting on one high school. Nowhere else in the country have I heard of a school board refusing to add additional high schools when the need so clearly arises (it should have been done decades ago in Alexandria City).

“Decades ago” Alexandria had three high schools: GW, Hammond, and TC. The consolidation of the schools (then segregated along neighborhood and thus racial lines) into one high school with both Black and White students was memorialized in the blockbuster movie Remember the Titan some 25 years ago.

Sports are still big in Alexandria and the city probably wanted to honor the legacy of the movie, hence the one high school approach going forward.

I agree with everything you said; however, seeing it play out in our 2024 reality clearly demonstrates that we need to move on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ACPS really need to reconsider this “connected high school” thing and look at a two school model (divided by grades or education tracks/programs). Shuttling that many kids on a daily basis is a wild approach and this appears to be a failed experiment! They are contorting themselves by insisting on one high school. Nowhere else in the country have I heard of a school board refusing to add additional high schools when the need so clearly arises (it should have been done decades ago in Alexandria City).

“Decades ago” Alexandria had three high schools: GW, Hammond, and TC. The consolidation of the schools (then segregated along neighborhood and thus racial lines) into one high school with both Black and White students was memorialized in the blockbuster movie Remember the Titan some 25 years ago.

Sports are still big in Alexandria and the city probably wanted to honor the legacy of the movie, hence the one high school approach going forward.

I’m talking about 20-30 years ago, not during integration in 1965-1970. For example, when the school board decided to construct a new TC Williams building in 2004, that would have been an opportunity to also plan for a second high school. There have been many chances to get this right and yet here we are.

[Anonymous]

Yes, they just walk through the streets through busy intersections, hundreds of teens without waiting for a walk signal. It's a mess. You know what would make this better. If they séparés the two campuses and the kids just stayed in one building! It's maddening why ACPS won't do this. Why make things so difficult for No reason.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, they just walk through the streets through busy intersections, hundreds of teens without waiting for a walk signal. It's a mess. You know what would make this better. If they séparés the two campuses and the kids just stayed in one building! It's maddening why ACPS won't do this. Why make things so difficult for No reason.

Because if it sucks for everyone, then it is equitable.

[Anonymous]

It is absolutely stupid to have students transfer back and forth between the buildings. Even just the time wasted is awful. I attended GW back in the late 80s and had to go to TC to take math and language classes. At the time they had gotten rid of any type of accelerated classes, so if you ended up at GW and were ahead they would bus you to TC, where you’d miss the first 10 minutes of the class. Then they’d bus you back to GW and you’d miss 10 mins of whatever class you had then. The dumbest part was my 2 classes at GW were not back to back, so I went back and forth twice a day. You’d think 30 years later they would have caught on that this doesn’t work.