Arlington capacity issues

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the concerns about staying "in the neighborhood" are kind of silly. The boundaries have to be drawn somewhere. We live on the very edge of the Glebe district--a mile from the school. Literally: the kids across the street go to Taylor. My son has lots of Glebe friends who live quite a distance away. He also has friends across the street who go to Taylor. Thems the breaks.

If the boundaries were redrawn, it's quite likely we could find ourselves in the Taylor district, or our neighbors could find themselves zoned for Glebe. Or maybe we would luck out and find ourselves smack in the middle of a school district so that every kid in any direction goes to the same school with my kid. Regardless, we will take much (if not all) of our immediate neighborhood with us. Likewise, if Nottingham's boundaries were redrawn, you AND many (even all) of your near neighbors are going with you. We aren't talking about a random lottery that sprinkles kids about the county.

We have no guarantee where our kids go to school, only that they have a school. The overcrowding (in North Arlington anyway) appears to have reached the point where we not only need to redraw boundaries, we likely need another elementary school or two. Even with a new school or two, boundaries will have to redrawn. Some people will have to go to different schools. It's really not that big of a deal.

The only other way is to use trailers, and even that's not the answer when the crowds get too big. There is a tipping point at which the school can no longer handle the extra kids in its cafeteria, library, gym, playground, no matter how many extra classrooms are created in the parking lot.

I know where you live, PP!

I agree with this. I don't think anyone is going to break up schools into small pieces, but something needs to change. What irks me is that the county did not seem to realize this was going to happen when any person who has walked around N. Arlington in the past 5 years could see that there were tons of babies, toddlers, preschoolers coming into most neighborhoods. On my own street (Glebe district), when we moved here 6 years ago, there was only 1 family with 1 child. Now there are 13 kids from 3rd grade down to toddler. Not all of them go to Glebe, but many of them do and some of the little ones will. I don't really notice the problem at Glebe yet other than the trailers, but with each class getting bigger (there are 5 classe in 1st and 4 in K), it is certainly going to become more of an issue as the years go on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hope is not a plan.

what's your plan then, defeatist?

[Anonymous]

"Likewise, if Nottingham's boundaries were redrawn, you AND many (even all) of your near neighbors are going with you."

I'm the PP who mentioned wanting to stay in Neighborhood. Given that my house is one block from Nottingham, I don't think I'd be moved if a boundary were redrawn, unless Nottingham was on the very outside edge of the boundary. I'm not sure how familiar you are with Nottingham, but with a school as severely overcrowded as we are, we are still a predominently "walker" school - the actual area we cover is quite small, especially when compared to some of the other schools (Jamestown in particular) that have larger boundaries. So no, I don't think staying in neighborhood is aridiculous distinction for me. I live very close to the school, all my kids friends live close to the school, we want to stay with our neighborhood peers.

That said, I didn't argue against redrawing boundary lines, I agree, something needs to be done. I argued against arbitrarily deciding that one or some small number of kids should go to a different, less crowded school just to ease the burden at your "home" school. In that case, no, your neighbors would not be moving with you.

To the person who suggested that people might voluntarily move to a different less crowded school, I think current experience is already showing that this is not likely. People could, right now, ask for transfers to different schools and it's likely that a transfer would be allowed for someone asking to move from a more crowded school to a less crowded school. However I do not exactly see people lining up in droves to do that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"Likewise, if Nottingham's boundaries were redrawn, you AND many (even all) of your near neighbors are going with you."

I'm the PP who mentioned wanting to stay in Neighborhood. Given that my house is one block from Nottingham, I don't think I'd be moved if a boundary were redrawn, unless Nottingham was on the very outside edge of the boundary. I'm not sure how familiar you are with Nottingham, but with a school as severely overcrowded as we are, we are still a predominently "walker" school - the actual area we cover is quite small, especially when compared to some of the other schools (Jamestown in particular) that have larger boundaries. So no, I don't think staying in neighborhood is aridiculous distinction for me. I live very close to the school, all my kids friends live close to the school, we want to stay with our neighborhood peers.

That said, I didn't argue against redrawing boundary lines, I agree, something needs to be done. I argued against arbitrarily deciding that one or some small number of kids should go to a different, less crowded school just to ease the burden at your "home" school. In that case, no, your neighbors would not be moving with you.

To the person who suggested that people might voluntarily move to a different less crowded school, I think current experience is already showing that this is not likely. People could, right now, ask for transfers to different schools and it's likely that a transfer would be allowed for someone asking to move from a more crowded school to a less crowded school. However I do not exactly see people lining up in droves to do that.

The problem with this, too, is that there aren't really any less crowded schools in N. Arlington - they are all at or over capacity and expected to get more and more crowded in coming years. So, unless you are will to send your child to S. Arlington for school, I don't think that would work. Like a PP said, we really need to re-open some of the former elementary schools - Madison Ctr, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Likewise, if Nottingham's boundaries were redrawn, you AND many (even all) of your near neighbors are going with you."

I'm the PP who mentioned wanting to stay in Neighborhood. Given that my house is one block from Nottingham, I don't think I'd be moved if a boundary were redrawn, unless Nottingham was on the very outside edge of the boundary. I'm not sure how familiar you are with Nottingham, but with a school as severely overcrowded as we are, we are still a predominently "walker" school - the actual area we cover is quite small, especially when compared to some of the other schools (Jamestown in particular) that have larger boundaries. So no, I don't think staying in neighborhood is aridiculous distinction for me. I live very close to the school, all my kids friends live close to the school, we want to stay with our neighborhood peers.

That said, I didn't argue against redrawing boundary lines, I agree, something needs to be done. I argued against arbitrarily deciding that one or some small number of kids should go to a different, less crowded school just to ease the burden at your "home" school. In that case, no, your neighbors would not be moving with you.

To the person who suggested that people might voluntarily move to a different less crowded school, I think current experience is already showing that this is not likely. People could, right now, ask for transfers to different schools and it's likely that a transfer would be allowed for someone asking to move from a more crowded school to a less crowded school. However I do not exactly see people lining up in droves to do that.

The problem with this, too, is that there aren't really any less crowded schools in N. Arlington - they are all at or over capacity and expected to get more and more crowded in coming years. So, unless you are will to send your child to S. Arlington for school, I don't think that would work. Like a PP said, we really need to re-open some of the former elementary schools - Madison Ctr, etc.

Trailer would be better. More modern and comfortable and much less expensive. And you wouldn't displace the adult day care and preschools at Madison.

Moreover, you're talking about shifting children from one of the most well-equipped schools (funded in part by PTA donations by their parents) into an archaic building. Unless a reopening came with a hefty budget to rehab the building to equivalent standards, I don't think you're going get a lot of support for this one.

But I don't really fret about class size the way some people do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Likewise, if Nottingham's boundaries were redrawn, you AND many (even all) of your near neighbors are going with you."

I'm the PP who mentioned wanting to stay in Neighborhood. Given that my house is one block from Nottingham, I don't think I'd be moved if a boundary were redrawn, unless Nottingham was on the very outside edge of the boundary. I'm not sure how familiar you are with Nottingham, but with a school as severely overcrowded as we are, we are still a predominently "walker" school - the actual area we cover is quite small, especially when compared to some of the other schools (Jamestown in particular) that have larger boundaries. So no, I don't think staying in neighborhood is aridiculous distinction for me. I live very close to the school, all my kids friends live close to the school, we want to stay with our neighborhood peers.

That said, I didn't argue against redrawing boundary lines, I agree, something needs to be done. I argued against arbitrarily deciding that one or some small number of kids should go to a different, less crowded school just to ease the burden at your "home" school. In that case, no, your neighbors would not be moving with you.

To the person who suggested that people might voluntarily move to a different less crowded school, I think current experience is already showing that this is not likely. People could, right now, ask for transfers to different schools and it's likely that a transfer would be allowed for someone asking to move from a more crowded school to a less crowded school. However I do not exactly see people lining up in droves to do that.

The problem with this, too, is that there aren't really any less crowded schools in N. Arlington - they are all at or over capacity and expected to get more and more crowded in coming years. So, unless you are will to send your child to S. Arlington for school, I don't think that would work. Like a PP said, we really need to re-open some of the former elementary schools - Madison Ctr, etc.

Trailer would be better. More modern and comfortable and much less expensive. And you wouldn't displace the adult day care and preschools at Madison.

Moreover, you're talking about shifting children from one of the most well-equipped schools (funded in part by PTA donations by their parents) into an archaic building. Unless a reopening came with a hefty budget to rehab the building to equivalent standards, I don't think you're going get a lot of support for this one.

But I don't really fret about class size the way some people do.

I don't really mind class size increasing either until you get over about 28 kids per class (I am a teacher). But this goes beyond class size because the school populations are increasing so rapidly. For example, there are 104 first graders at Glebe right now compared to 72 5th graders and only 60 4th graders. You could not just increase class size to deal with that huge growth in population, you need to add 2-3 classes. If this keeps happening over 3-4 years, each grade will have 4-5 classes - rather than 2-3. That would be 10-15 extra trailers that are needed. The grounds of Glebe are actually pretty large so they could probably fit, but a lot of the field space would be gone. To me, class size is not the issue because it is not even possible to increase class size to solve the problem - unless you are willing to have classes of 30-40 kids!

http://www.apsva.us/cms/lib2/VA01000586/Centricity/Domain/11/2011-12%20Membership/123111.pdf

[Anonymous]

I hope I never meet in person the poster who wrote that Glebe is a substandard school because of its: "Resources, student quality, and test scores. Full stop."

We're at Glebe and absolutely love it. Amazing Principal and V. Principal. Incredibly active PTA. No issue with resources, sweet kids, and no issue with test scores that I have been able to discern.

I hope there's no redistricting because if my kids have to go to school with kids whose parents think like said poster, I will be absolutely horrified!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I hope I never meet in person the poster who wrote that Glebe is a substandard school because of its: "Resources, student quality, and test scores. Full stop."

We're at Glebe and absolutely love it. Amazing Principal and V. Principal. Incredibly active PTA. No issue with resources, sweet kids, and no issue with test scores that I have been able to discern.

I hope there's no redistricting because if my kids have to go to school with kids whose parents think like said poster, I will be absolutely horrified!

+100

I miss the days when people said they lived in Arlington and "N" and "S" only mattered to the postal service. Now Arlington is full of snobs who tell everyone they live in "North Arlington" to make sure you know they don't live in "South Arlington" and think great schools like Glebe must be second-rate because they don't have the demographics of Nottingham or Jamestown.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
To the person who suggested that people might voluntarily move to a different less crowded school, I think current experience is already showing that this is not likely. People could, right now, ask for transfers to different schools and it's likely that a transfer would be allowed for someone asking to move from a more crowded school to a less crowded school. However I do not exactly see people lining up in droves to do that.

i wasn't talking about crowed schools.

it's about filling up class rooms to the max allowed #, without having to create a new class and adding a trailer because of that, for ONE kid. it's called not wasting resources and being fiscally responsible. it's also called 'going green.' don't forget the qualified extra teachers/aid and what not they had to scrambled to hire/find for that one class.

let's say Taylor had 94 rising K kids (4x23 + 2), and Jamestown had 118 (5x23 + 3), and Nottingham had 128 (5x23 + 13). now would it make more sense to add three classes, one in each school, or get them into one extra class in any one of the schools?

i know our kids are entitled to go to neighborhood school, but what if there're parents who really don't care that much? like i said you never know until you ask.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hope I never meet in person the poster who wrote that Glebe is a substandard school because of its: "Resources, student quality, and test scores. Full stop."

We're at Glebe and absolutely love it. Amazing Principal and V. Principal. Incredibly active PTA. No issue with resources, sweet kids, and no issue with test scores that I have been able to discern.

I hope there's no redistricting because if my kids have to go to school with kids whose parents think like said poster, I will be absolutely horrified!

+100

I miss the days when people said they lived in Arlington and "N" and "S" only mattered to the postal service. Now Arlington is full of snobs who tell everyone they live in "North Arlington" to make sure you know they don't live in "South Arlington" and think great schools like Glebe must be second-rate because they don't have the demographics of Nottingham or Jamestown.

Oh, how I agree with you. Arlington is completely segregated. I am a fairly new transplant here, I find the extreme attitude between north and south Arlington sad.

About 3 years ago I went to a school board meeting regarding overcrowding. At the time, now still I lived in a apartment. Realizing the county lack of preparedness regarding this issue, particularly the lack of awareness about the type of families living in apartments; I felt they accounted for what they perceived to be the typical families living in apartments. Typical meaning "lower income", but not others. In my building alone, we had 2 school aged children when I first moved in. Within a 2 year time, I counted 21 children 10 and under. At least half were young couples just starting a family. When asked, most were not planning on moving to the burds (as I suppose hoped by the county) when their children reached school age. In two years, 10 babies were born in just that one apartment building. People get spoil by the conveniences and the amenities of living closer in and I think find it hard as I have to move further out once the kids arrived. I think the county have no clue about the demographic change and the psychology behind the type of families moving into condo buildings within the Rosslyn/Ballston corridor. When I mentioned the sentiment of people such as myself and my neighbors at the meeting, the school board representatives were truly perplexed by my statement, and asked if I could write a letter regarding what I perceived to be the "new" apartment living mindset. It seems, but I may be wrong that county planning have not include middle class couples moving into apartments, have kids, and not move to the suburbs afterwards. I think they plan for the predictable cycle - people moving out after having kids. I think the condo developers do too. That is why you don't see many kids play area in those buildings as you would in similar buildings in New York for example. But mine, is just one observation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hope I never meet in person the poster who wrote that Glebe is a substandard school because of its: "Resources, student quality, and test scores. Full stop."

We're at Glebe and absolutely love it. Amazing Principal and V. Principal. Incredibly active PTA. No issue with resources, sweet kids, and no issue with test scores that I have been able to discern.

I hope there's no redistricting because if my kids have to go to school with kids whose parents think like said poster, I will be absolutely horrified!

+100

I miss the days when people said they lived in Arlington and "N" and "S" only mattered to the postal service. Now Arlington is full of snobs who tell everyone they live in "North Arlington" to make sure you know they don't live in "South Arlington" and think great schools like Glebe must be second-rate because they don't have the demographics of Nottingham or Jamestown.

We say with pride that we live in S. Arlington and my mother-in-law pretends we live in N. Arlington. I've actually heard her tell people we live in N. Arlington

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Likewise, if Nottingham's boundaries were redrawn, you AND many (even all) of your near neighbors are going with you."

I'm the PP who mentioned wanting to stay in Neighborhood. Given that my house is one block from Nottingham, I don't think I'd be moved if a boundary were redrawn, unless Nottingham was on the very outside edge of the boundary. I'm not sure how familiar you are with Nottingham, but with a school as severely overcrowded as we are, we are still a predominently "walker" school - the actual area we cover is quite small, especially when compared to some of the other schools (Jamestown in particular) that have larger boundaries. So no, I don't think staying in neighborhood is aridiculous distinction for me. I live very close to the school, all my kids friends live close to the school, we want to stay with our neighborhood peers.

That said, I didn't argue against redrawing boundary lines, I agree, something needs to be done. I argued against arbitrarily deciding that one or some small number of kids should go to a different, less crowded school just to ease the burden at your "home" school. In that case, no, your neighbors would not be moving with you.

To the person who suggested that people might voluntarily move to a different less crowded school, I think current experience is already showing that this is not likely. People could, right now, ask for transfers to different schools and it's likely that a transfer would be allowed for someone asking to move from a more crowded school to a less crowded school. However I do not exactly see people lining up in droves to do that.

The problem with this, too, is that there aren't really any less crowded schools in N. Arlington - they are all at or over capacity and expected to get more and more crowded in coming years. So, unless you are will to send your child to S. Arlington for school, I don't think that would work. Like a PP said, we really need to re-open some of the former elementary schools - Madison Ctr, etc.

Trailer would be better. More modern and comfortable and much less expensive. And you wouldn't displace the adult day care and preschools at Madison.

Moreover, you're talking about shifting children from one of the most well-equipped schools (funded in part by PTA donations by their parents) into an archaic building. Unless a reopening came with a hefty budget to rehab the building to equivalent standards, I don't think you're going get a lot of support for this one.

But I don't really fret about class size the way some people do.

I don't really mind class size increasing either until you get over about 28 kids per class (I am a teacher). But this goes beyond class size because the school populations are increasing so rapidly. For example, there are 104 first graders at Glebe right now compared to 72 5th graders and only 60 4th graders. You could not just increase class size to deal with that huge growth in population, you need to add 2-3 classes. If this keeps happening over 3-4 years, each grade will have 4-5 classes - rather than 2-3. That would be 10-15 extra trailers that are needed. The grounds of Glebe are actually pretty large so they could probably fit, but a lot of the field space would be gone. To me, class size is not the issue because it is not even possible to increase class size to solve the problem - unless you are willing to have classes of 30-40 kids!

http://www.apsva.us/cms/lib2/VA01000586/Centricity/Domain/11/2011-12%20Membership/123111.pdf

One of the reasons we are in Arlington is because the class sizes are soooo much smaller than Fairfax County. I was shocked to see the ratios. I am feeling pretty lucky and I know our Arlington elem school is fighting hard to keep it this way. We have had 3 meetings on tis subject in the last week. ASFS is ready to fight this and the block scheduling proposed for middle schools!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Likewise, if Nottingham's boundaries were redrawn, you AND many (even all) of your near neighbors are going with you."

I'm the PP who mentioned wanting to stay in Neighborhood. Given that my house is one block from Nottingham, I don't think I'd be moved if a boundary were redrawn, unless Nottingham was on the very outside edge of the boundary. I'm not sure how familiar you are with Nottingham, but with a school as severely overcrowded as we are, we are still a predominently "walker" school - the actual area we cover is quite small, especially when compared to some of the other schools (Jamestown in particular) that have larger boundaries. So no, I don't think staying in neighborhood is aridiculous distinction for me. I live very close to the school, all my kids friends live close to the school, we want to stay with our neighborhood peers.

That said, I didn't argue against redrawing boundary lines, I agree, something needs to be done. I argued against arbitrarily deciding that one or some small number of kids should go to a different, less crowded school just to ease the burden at your "home" school. In that case, no, your neighbors would not be moving with you.

To the person who suggested that people might voluntarily move to a different less crowded school, I think current experience is already showing that this is not likely. People could, right now, ask for transfers to different schools and it's likely that a transfer would be allowed for someone asking to move from a more crowded school to a less crowded school. However I do not exactly see people lining up in droves to do that.

The problem with this, too, is that there aren't really any less crowded schools in N. Arlington - they are all at or over capacity and expected to get more and more crowded in coming years. So, unless you are will to send your child to S. Arlington for school, I don't think that would work. Like a PP said, we really need to re-open some of the former elementary schools - Madison Ctr, etc.

Trailer would be better. More modern and comfortable and much less expensive. And you wouldn't displace the adult day care and preschools at Madison.

Moreover, you're talking about shifting children from one of the most well-equipped schools (funded in part by PTA donations by their parents) into an archaic building. Unless a reopening came with a hefty budget to rehab the building to equivalent standards, I don't think you're going get a lot of support for this one.

But I don't really fret about class size the way some people do.

I don't really mind class size increasing either until you get over about 28 kids per class (I am a teacher). But this goes beyond class size because the school populations are increasing so rapidly. For example, there are 104 first graders at Glebe right now compared to 72 5th graders and only 60 4th graders. You could not just increase class size to deal with that huge growth in population, you need to add 2-3 classes. If this keeps happening over 3-4 years, each grade will have 4-5 classes - rather than 2-3. That would be 10-15 extra trailers that are needed. The grounds of Glebe are actually pretty large so they could probably fit, but a lot of the field space would be gone. To me, class size is not the issue because it is not even possible to increase class size to solve the problem - unless you are willing to have classes of 30-40 kids!

http://www.apsva.us/cms/lib2/VA01000586/Centricity/Domain/11/2011-12%20Membership/123111.pdf

One of the reasons we are in Arlington is because the class sizes are soooo much smaller than Fairfax County. I was shocked to see the ratios. I am feeling pretty lucky and I know our Arlington elem school is fighting hard to keep it this way. We have had 3 meetings on tis subject in the last week. ASFS is ready to fight this and the block scheduling proposed for middle schools!

I think it's good that Arlington Science Focus and Arlington Traditional and the other county-wide schools are being made to absorb more students to pick up the slack.

I was really alarmed reading a PTA thing recently from Jamestown in which a fuss was made about "caps" at Arlington Traditional that comply with their "philosophy" -- turns out the info was immaterial b/c the board is already going to be increasing the population of those schools to take pressure off some of the neighborhood schools, but any pushback against the board that divides the schools is going to be ineffective.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think it's good that Arlington Science Focus and Arlington Traditional and the other county-wide schools are being made to absorb more students to pick up the slack.

I was really alarmed reading a PTA thing recently from Jamestown in which a fuss was made about "caps" at Arlington Traditional that comply with their "philosophy" -- turns out the info was immaterial b/c the board is already going to be increasing the population of those schools to take pressure off some of the neighborhood schools, but any pushback against the board that divides the schools is going to be ineffective.

ASFS does not have 23 kids in every class, according to a PP. ASFS being a N Arl neighborhood-lottery-based school has more potential to 'pick up the slack' for your N Arl school.

ATS, on the other hand, has 24 for every K/1/2 grade class. ATS being a county-wide lottery school has less potential to 'pick up the slack' for your N Arl schools.

how many kids in your DC school's class?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't know why anyone would be up in arms about their child going to Glebe. As far as we are concerned it is a hidden gem and has typically smaller classes 18 last year in k and 20 this year in First. Teachers are great and energetic and the building is brand new. It got the 2011 board of education excellence award. So what if all the kids are not white.

I am the poster at 14:34 -- my point was (is!) there are people all over N Arlington who picked their house/school using some calculus to determine which one(s) were/are perceived to be the BEST and that anything less will not do. My kids go to Barrett, and I personally think bright kids can get a good education at any of the Arlington public schools, but I'm sure there are plenty of parents who probably think I'm jeopardizing my kids' education by letting them go to a FARMS school when I could've bought a house in Jamestown/Nottingham/Taylor/Tuckahoe/McKinley school district instead.

I think the county should have redistricted years ago so people would just get over it. Now I think they're playing catch-up and by the time they ARE caught up, all our kids will be in college.