APS actual enrollment numbers online

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do the Montessori/VPI preschool kids utilize the same resources as a K-5 kid-- in other words, are they given the same access to the cafeteria, art room, gifted services, playground, gym, extended day etc.? Just trying to figure out why APS breaks them out separately on their spreadsheet and how that relates to resource allocation.

yes and no. I have had kids both in the VPI classrooms and in the special ed classrooms at different schools. I would imagine that different schools may do things differently.
Extended day varies from school to school- some have extended day for 3 year olds, some for 4 year olds.
In all of the preschool classrooms I have been in, kids eat in their rooms but the food comes from the cafeteria-- someone brings it to them. I don't know if this is due to space in the cafeteria or b/c they don't want to deal with 3 and 4 year olds in the cafeteria line.
They do specials like art and gym. Not so much gifted services.
They go out to the playground- but some schools have a smaller playground for the preschool, particularly for the special education classes.

I think the real difference is that they are less tied to the neighborhood and they are more flexible. The montessori class that used to be at Key was moved to Jamestown I believe. The McKinley montessori is still considered McKinley- but at least as of a couple of years ago was actually at the Reed School.

My child is in Montessori. They eat in the cafeteria and play on the playground with the rest of the school. It's Drew though, so the Montessori is a huge part of that school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do the Montessori/VPI preschool kids utilize the same resources as a K-5 kid-- in other words, are they given the same access to the cafeteria, art room, gifted services, playground, gym, extended day etc.? Just trying to figure out why APS breaks them out separately on their spreadsheet and how that relates to resource allocation.

yes and no. I have had kids both in the VPI classrooms and in the special ed classrooms at different schools. I would imagine that different schools may do things differently.
Extended day varies from school to school- some have extended day for 3 year olds, some for 4 year olds.
In all of the preschool classrooms I have been in, kids eat in their rooms but the food comes from the cafeteria-- someone brings it to them. I don't know if this is due to space in the cafeteria or b/c they don't want to deal with 3 and 4 year olds in the cafeteria line.
They do specials like art and gym. Not so much gifted services.
They go out to the playground- but some schools have a smaller playground for the preschool, particularly for the special education classes.

I think the real difference is that they are less tied to the neighborhood and they are more flexible. The montessori class that used to be at Key was moved to Jamestown I believe. The McKinley montessori is still considered McKinley- but at least as of a couple of years ago was actually at the Reed School.

My child is in Montessori. They eat in the cafeteria and play on the playground with the rest of the school. It's Drew though, so the Montessori is a huge part of that school.

I think it varies by school, or maybe even teacher. My child is in a Montessori class at a different ES, and they eat in the classroom. But I think the VPI students do go to the cafeteria to eat. And we all use the playground. I think this is more a logistics issue, because there are a lot of three-year-olds in our class, and the cafeteria might be too much for them. The kids are integrated into all other aspects of the school.

[Anonymous]

To be meaningful, you have to look at capacity vs enrollment. Then you can see how many students are smashed into each school. It has always bothered me that APS does not include capacity numbers on the actual enrollment chart - forces you to go back to another document to get capacity. They don't make this easy for us, for sure.

[Anonymous]

Yes ,you dimwit, people prefer not send their kids to failing schools. So they crowd north. The middle class in south Arlington have been sending their children to choice schools for years. Now those choice schools are full, and can't hold them. So, they move north.

Just don't act like people crowding into 22205 and 22207 ten years ago....which is when all the people with kids in elementary school now moved there....is because of government policy. That was upper middle class people buying into neighborhoods where their kids wouldn't have to go to schools with a lot of low-income kids. AKA, "failing schools." And north Arlington uses choice more than south Arlington--according to the transfer report, there are more kids at ATS from north Arlington than south Arlington, W-L gets as many kids from Yorktown as it does from Wakefield, and H-B wait lists are longer from north Arlington schools than south Arlington schools.

How the heck do you know when or why those of us who live in zip codes 22205 and 22207 and have elementary school age kids moved there??? I, for one, moved there in 1998. And I moved there because it was the only house I found at that time that I could afford in Arlington from which I could walk to the metro.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Yes ,you dimwit, people prefer not send their kids to failing schools. So they crowd north. The middle class in south Arlington have been sending their children to choice schools for years. Now those choice schools are full, and can't hold them. So, they move north.

Just don't act like people crowding into 22205 and 22207 ten years ago....which is when all the people with kids in elementary school now moved there....is because of government policy. That was upper middle class people buying into neighborhoods where their kids wouldn't have to go to schools with a lot of low-income kids. AKA, "failing schools." And north Arlington uses choice more than south Arlington--according to the transfer report, there are more kids at ATS from north Arlington than south Arlington, W-L gets as many kids from Yorktown as it does from Wakefield, and H-B wait lists are longer from north Arlington schools than south Arlington schools.

How the heck do you know when or why those of us who live in zip codes 22205 and 22207 and have elementary school age kids moved there??? I, for one, moved there in 1998. And I moved there because it was the only house I found at that time that I could afford in Arlington from which I could walk to the metro.

OK, so you're not there because of government housing policy either

[Anonymous]

School capacity matters a great deal - some were built bigger than others. And you'll see lower per-class numbers in the Title I schools like Barcroft and Randolph, which can translate to a smaller population overall.

I wonder if they deliberately kept Discovery under-enrolled for a couple of years until the dust settled. Would make sense to not immediately put a new school at capacity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Would make sense to not immediately put a new school at capacity.

Hmmmmm.........see any post about McKinley above.

[Anonymous]

11:35 - Discovery and Jamestown have such low FARMS rates because the houses around them cost minimum $700K and there's little to no rental housing. It's not rocket science that a neighborhood school surrounded by expensive housing will have fewer poor kids. (I'm not opposed to AH going up along Lee Highway or something to drive FARMS numbers up.)

I suspect ATS attracts more N. Arl kids because there are more middle class parents up there, the parents may be more willing to make the time and effort to do the school tours required by the application process, and because many people prefer to have their kids attend a closer school. As a 22207 parent whose child attends ATS, I would not have applied if the school were located in Crystal City, for example, because it would have been a PITA to do dropoff and pickup every day. The current location is less than 2 miles away.

[Anonymous]

14:43 - McKinley is not new. "Expansion" does not equal "new."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:11:35 - Discovery and Jamestown have such low FARMS rates because the houses around them cost minimum $700K and there's little to no rental housing. It's not rocket science that a neighborhood school surrounded by expensive housing will have fewer poor kids. (I'm not opposed to AH going up along Lee Highway or something to drive FARMS numbers up.)

I suspect ATS attracts more N. Arl kids because there are more middle class parents up there, the parents may be more willing to make the time and effort to do the school tours required by the application process, and because many people prefer to have their kids attend a closer school. As a 22207 parent whose child attends ATS, I would not have applied if the school were located in Crystal City, for example, because it would have been a PITA to do dropoff and pickup every day. The current location is less than 2 miles away.

To be fair, I think this is why ATS is centrally located. So that geography is not a barrier.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:14:43 - McKinley is not new. "Expansion" does not equal "new."

It's the same idea, though. If one is making an argument that you shouldn't fill a new school to capacity, the same logic applies to an addition. You can't argue that 712 in a school that (will be) 684 makes sense. The situation gets even more ridiculous when you find out from Chadwick that they knew of the delay in December of 2015, but decided to move forward with the boundary change anyway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We don't have a North vs. South inequity problem-- we have a 22207 vs. the rest of the County inequity problem.

Well said!!

YES!!!!!! So freaking true.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:11:35 - Discovery and Jamestown have such low FARMS rates because the houses around them cost minimum $700K and there's little to no rental housing. It's not rocket science that a neighborhood school surrounded by expensive housing will have fewer poor kids. (I'm not opposed to AH going up along Lee Highway or something to drive FARMS numbers up.)

I suspect ATS attracts more N. Arl kids because there are more middle class parents up there, the parents may be more willing to make the time and effort to do the school tours required by the application process, and because many people prefer to have their kids attend a closer school. As a 22207 parent whose child attends ATS, I would not have applied if the school were located in Crystal City, for example, because it would have been a PITA to do dropoff and pickup every day. The current location is less than 2 miles away.

SO many of the families on free and reduced lunch have no idea that ATS exists. They do not know how to work the system.

[Anonymous]

13:15 - we're at about 20% FARMS. Enough families know about ATS that the VPI preschool program has a lottery to get in. Those kids are grandfathered into the school after preschool, along with their siblings. An extra VPI class was added this year, so I expect the FARMS rates to rise.

I suspect some folks don't want to work the system. If I were a lower-income parent working long hours, I'm not sure I'd want to go out of my way when there was a perfectly good elementary school 3 blocks from my home. Even though we're a small county, heavy traffic and the timing of stoplights can mean that crossing that small county can take forever. it's taken me 45 minutes to get from ATS to Longbridge at times.

[Anonymous]

ATS & HB & Drew Model should have 30% FARM quotas. Countywide schools. Hope that's part of the choice school policy revisions.