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Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)
Plan for Arlington overcrowding?
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Anonymous
Maybe by 2016 the economy will have picked up enough steam and more projected students will go private instead. |
Anonymous
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Maybe if the economy picks up steam, we will see more tear-downs and bigass houses with families of six or more.
I don't know how many Arlington parents go private -- the county doesn't have any big deal private schools, I don't think. |
Anonymous
Oh, this is already so common in my N. Arlington neighborhood. Maybe not 4 kids, but big houses with 2-3 kids and 4-5 bedrooms. The economy certainly is not hurting around here. |
Anonymous
| Even if more parents were to go private, that would do little to help with the overcrowding since Arlington's public schools are very popular, in particular the North Arlington schools... and more and more families continue to move to Arlington, a trend the county does not see tapering off anytime soon. |
Anonymous
In relative terms, Arlington has started to soften a bit price-wise compared to other parts of NoVa with lower prices. It was just getting too expensive for what it offered. Even so, there have been enough families moving into Arlington that redistrictings are inevitable. It makes no sense to end up with 1300-1500 students at Wakefield and over 2300 at W-L. |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
| The employee preschool should move out of Reed and into the Wilson Building in Rosslyn. Reed could then be freed up for conversion into a k-5 elementary for the surrounding neighborhoods that need an additional school. And if Reed were a grade k-2 neighborhood school, that would at least help with the overcrowding at Mckinley and/or Tuckahoe. |
Anonymous
Who wants to spend money to rebuild Wakefield and then have it sit under-enrolled while W-L is bursting at the seams? There are only two possibilities - either the boundaries will change or the projections will turn out to be wrong. |
Anonymous
we're a family of five in a small house. is that okay with you? |
Anonymous
I don't care how many kids you have or how big a house you have. I was just pointing out that an upturn in the economy is not necessarily going to lead to fewer kids in the public schools. |
Anonymous
I think these projections are pretty accurate. Just look at the feeder-elementaries that are overcrowded and growing, and some of these kids will be at W-L in 2016 (the last year for which projections were made): Mckinley, Taylor, Glebe, Science Focus, and now Ashlawn. Barrett and Long Branch are also growing, although at a slower pace it seems. Swanson is similarly overcrowded. |
Anonymous
| Most likely that Long Branch, or the portions of Patrick Henry and Hoffman-Boston assigned to W-L, will be reassigned to Wakefield at some point. |
Anonymous
I highly doubt all of Long Brach would ever go to Wakefield, because of the proximity of Ashton Heights to W-L. As in the 50s and early 60s, neighborhoods south of Pershing might go to Wakefield at some point in the future, but only as part of a major boundary adjustment for all three high schools, and not as a simple northward shift of the east-west boundary. The neighborhoods just north of 50 will fight any changes that affect them while other boundaries remain the same--remember the Ashlawn boundary controversy a couple years ago. Any proposed boundary changes will be countywide. But before that is even considered, the neighborhoods south of 50 that were zoned to W-L in a mid-90s boundary adjustment would very likely go back to Wakefield (i.e. Glencarlyn and the small Patrick Henry portion). The historically black neighborhoods around Hoffman Boston that are assigned to W-L were part of Arlington's 1960s desegregation plan, after Virginia's prolonged battle with the Brown v. Board of Ed Supreme Court ruling. I doubt that boundary will change. |
Anonymous
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In addition to just adding a school or two and redrawing lines, there are lots of creative ideas that will undoubtedly (hopefully) be discussed and vetted, including, for example:
* moving the IB program to the new Wakefield (from W/L) * having all 9th/10th graders attend pre-IB classes in their home high schools and only transfer to the full IB for Jr/Sr year * opening another 6-12 school (like HB but perhaps not like HB) at an existing smaller facility (or break up the middle and HS spaces -- to create another 500 or so seats in the upper grades) * offering more hybrid classes, where students do some high quality on-line work supported by a great teacher * etc.etc. But all of these will take significant effort by the community and the leadership to discuss, vet, implement. I hope all of us here will be engaged in this process; it will define the next generation of APS. |
Anonymous
| OT, but a bullet for "etc"? |