Let’s Talk APS High Schools: 4th one or no?
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
Could they move one of the prime programs to Wakefield to make it more attractive for transfers? |
Anonymous
They can have Glen Carlyn and Arlington Forest?? Seriously, we cannot be an entire high school short of seats because of a notion that it could "doom" one school. Maybe the SB will finally balance diversity over all 4 schools then. |
Anonymous
This. 4th comprehensive neighborhood high school, rip the bandaid off. |
Anonymous
Last summer APS, Murphy and staff, did a whole analysis and meetings about this. They ruled out Kenmore for any high school development, now or EVER. It is OUT. I don't remember all the reasons. |
Anonymous
The actual reasons or the ostensible reasons? Traffic (because as noted above, they would have to work with FFx to deal with congestion on Carlin Springs, as though they aren't going to have to deal with traffic on Carlin Springs) Speed of solution (because it wouldn't alleviate crowding fast enough, because they wouldn't make 11th and 12th graders move, so basically APS made it into not-a-solution according to the terms APS chose to set) |
Anonymous
|
It's not a question of yes or no. APS does not have sufficient high school seats for the tide of children currently in elementary school and younger. There must be more seats. They are running into the limits of how many kids can reasonably be crammed into the existing 3 high schools.
Can they come up with sufficient smaller programs that will draw equally from all three schools, and that can accept their share of overcrowding (i.e. no more protection like HB enjoys)? Or, must they find comprehensive solutions in the form of a free-standing high school? Seats are not an option. They are needed. |
Anonymous
Fat chance of diversity being anything more than a talking point, just like it is in the current boundary discussion. Wakefield will be very underenrolled if and when a 4th hs at the career center is built. It'll basically be high school for the western pike. Any UMC families swept up in that are going to bail after middle school. This is he same reason that many south Arlington es are underenrolled. The career center hs gets built, and because the county hasn't put dev restriction on that area like they have on he western pike, it'll get overcrowded right away. |
Anonymous
|
Diversity is a non-issue for the SB. Heaven forbid it is raised as a concern and Talento starts with the microaggression defense. From what I have seen, Goldstein is the only one who care about this issue and he is only one vote.
If a 4th high school is built at the career center, the SB (and the county) will have permanently blocked any gentrification of any part of the western pike. Period. Many UMC families already move out of the western Pike area before kids reach elementary school (house across the street with 2 kids is moving for one reason - avoid neighborhood elementary school). Those that stay choice out. Many more leave before middle school. Done. Might as well concentrate all of the county's poorer folks in one area and take diversity off the table. Let them all be in the same handful of schools and forget about all the debate. |
Anonymous
Exactly. W-L is doomed, too, if they end up with 3000 high school kids in the immediate vicinity of the school. The only winner under the current strategy is Yorktown. |
Anonymous
| If there were not a concentration of poor housing in certain neighborhoods then WL would not be so crowded because neighborhoods would not fight tooth and nail to stay out of wakefield. |
Anonymous
| Only way I'd ever support a 4th comprehensive HS is with massive re-zoning of the boundaries. Otherwise as a PP noted, it's a horrible outcome for Wakefield. So I'll be pushing for smaller choice options at the HS level. |
Anonymous
The wouldn't move northside Arlington Forest, and southside is already zoned there. Glencarlyn is one small neighborhood, and can't balance anything, and to move them to Wakefield they'd also have to take all of the CAF's around Columbia Pike that are currently zoned W-L to maintain contiguity. Maybe Barcroft? But maybe not, because I think the N half is walkable to the CC site. I don't know what they have planned for the Kenmore site, but it had better be a hell of a lot more seats of some sort. That is land that nobody else has and we can't just sit on it because "traffic." |
Anonymous
What programs would successfully draw from all three high schools? How would you handle extracurricular such that those activities at the comprehensive high schools aren’t weighed down by kids who are at programs? |
Anonymous
Correct. Overcrowding is a result of many factors, a major one being perceived school quality (fleeing "bad" for "good"). Any attempt to address overcrowding that doesn't acknowledge that fact is just going to create more reeds and discoveries, because it's easier politics to overbuild and overpay for more north arl elementaries than it is to send kids north of fifty south of it. |
Anonymous
Which means everyone on DCUM who votes Dem should be letting the Arlington Democratic Party and its candidates know that they will not support candidates who continue to approve affordable housing developments unless those developments are on Lee Highway or north. Stop putting in place elected officials who spout this party line when we know it is doing huge damage to our schools both in terms of overcrowding generally and in concentrations of low SES children. |