Please explain how Henry parent position on CC makes sense

[Anonymous]

For perspective, the last CIP (2016) resulted in four bond issuances: Metro & Transportation ($59M); Parks & Rec ($19M); Community Infrastructure ($99M); and APS ($139M). About half of the Community Infrastructure bond was earmarked for the Lubber Run Community Center renovation, and the majority of the APS bond was earmarked for HB. I don't know what total number the County Manager is trying to hit for 2018 (his proposal hasn't been released yet). However, the Metro & Transportation bond won't have much wiggle room b/c of our obligations to Metro. So if we give APS a larger share of the bond capacity for high school seat construction, it probably will mean deferring other community capital infrastructure needs (things like renovations to the community centers & fire stations; upgrades to County technology; sewer replacement; etc.). In theory, some of these community infrastructure costs could also be funded through property tax revenue, but that would mean a property tax rate increase-- which the County Board has not been willing to do. It is worth noting though that Arlington's property tax rate is much lower than surrounding areas (see Falls Church City, for example), but nobody wants to be the Board member who raises property taxes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can someone help me make sense of their position. If you look at the 10 year projections, the school that will bear the disproportionate burden of the overcrowding in the next 10 years is Wakefield. This position of “if you don’t build us a full high school at the cost of $250 million, then build nothing” seems like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Wakefield will be 1000 students over capacity. The students least likely to be able to opt out for private school. This whole campaign seems ill-advised to me.

I live in Arlington Heights and am happy to answer any questions that you have. The neighborhoods said from the very beginning that we would accept a 4th neighborhood high school so long as it is equal to YT, WL, and WF. We are and have always been opposed to an unequal neighborhood high school. And APS knows this.

As to your questions about "build nothing," APS is already in the process of building more at the Career Center site. Arlington Tech will be adding up to 600-800 seats: 200 additional seats are being added this summer, and then 250-450 later (probably through the addition of another story onto the Career Center building). So we've never said absolutely no to APS's needs.

But we are saying no to anything more than that. We already have in our neighborhood two high schools, 1 middle school, and (in 2019) 2 elementary schools. On that 12 acre piece of land, when Arlington Tech is built out to 600-800 students, there will be approximately 2000-2200 option students on site (from preschoolers to adult high-school students). They will be mostly all bused in--about 30 to 40 buses a day.

I could not imagine any neighborhood saying, yes, pack even more kids in here with no green space, no fields, and no parking. In my view, there's lots of places in Arlington where another choice school could go (e.g., empty office space, or how about all that acreage at Kenmore?). I truly do not understand APS's need to stuff even more onto this lot. It seems like a huge waste of money to me, where that money could be used to create lots of small high school programs through out the county.

I hope I answered your questions. Please let me know if you have any further questions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can someone help me make sense of their position. If you look at the 10 year projections, the school that will bear the disproportionate burden of the overcrowding in the next 10 years is Wakefield. This position of “if you don’t build us a full high school at the cost of $250 million, then build nothing” seems like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Wakefield will be 1000 students over capacity. The students least likely to be able to opt out for private school. This whole campaign seems ill-advised to me.

I live in Arlington Heights and am happy to answer any questions that you have. The neighborhoods said from the very beginning that we would accept a 4th neighborhood high school so long as it is equal to YT, WL, and WF. We are and have always been opposed to an unequal neighborhood high school. And APS knows this.

As to your questions about "build nothing," APS is already in the process of building more at the Career Center site. Arlington Tech will be adding up to 600-800 seats: 200 additional seats are being added this summer, and then 250-450 later (probably through the addition of another story onto the Career Center building). So we've never said absolutely no to APS's needs.

But we are saying no to anything more than that. We already have in our neighborhood two high schools, 1 middle school, and (in 2019) 2 elementary schools. On that 12 acre piece of land, when Arlington Tech is built out to 600-800 students, there will be approximately 2000-2200 option students on site (from preschoolers to adult high-school students). They will be mostly all bused in--about 30 to 40 buses a day.

I could not imagine any neighborhood saying, yes, pack even more kids in here with no green space, no fields, and no parking. In my view, there's lots of places in Arlington where another choice school could go (e.g., empty office space, or how about all that acreage at Kenmore?). I truly do not understand APS's need to stuff even more onto this lot. It seems like a huge waste of money to me, where that money could be used to create lots of small high school programs through out the county.

I hope I answered your questions. Please let me know if you have any further questions.

I live in North Arlington, but have spent time at the Career Center site. I agree with the concerns raised by this PP. I would encourage everyone to visit the Career Center for context, because it is hard to understand what APS is asking for here if you have never actually seen the location. I don't even understand how APS is going to grow Arlington Tech to 800 students without allocating more money just for that effort. The Career Center doesn't have a gym or a library or an art room or a real cafeteria. (There is a kitchen that is used by the culinary students, but not a cafeteria.) How do you even have 800 Arlington Tech students full-time on the site without these basic amenities?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can someone explain how shift scheduling would work?
Also can we look at maybe doing something strange with the calendar to try to accommodate more students? Or if amazon or apple doesn't work out redoing an office building?

It could work a whole lot of ways depending on how they want to do it. For instance, you could break up the student body into two shifts, one running from 6 am-12:30 pm (if you also add in block scheduling to reduce transition time, you can get the school day down to 6.5 hours) and another running from 1:30 pm-8 pm. Extracurriculars would run at different times of the day and kids could apply for a lottery for the different schedules based on their extracurricular or other scheduling considerations. Another way is to extend the school day to nine hours, 8 am-5 pm, and then break the kids into four groups that rotate through three weeks at school and then one week off, so that only 75% of the student body is going to school any given week.

OK, Libby.

Is that how you want your kids to get an education?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can someone explain how shift scheduling would work?
Also can we look at maybe doing something strange with the calendar to try to accommodate more students? Or if amazon or apple doesn't work out redoing an office building?

It could work a whole lot of ways depending on how they want to do it. For instance, you could break up the student body into two shifts, one running from 6 am-12:30 pm (if you also add in block scheduling to reduce transition time, you can get the school day down to 6.5 hours) and another running from 1:30 pm-8 pm. Extracurriculars would run at different times of the day and kids could apply for a lottery for the different schedules based on their extracurricular or other scheduling considerations. Another way is to extend the school day to nine hours, 8 am-5 pm, and then break the kids into four groups that rotate through three weeks at school and then one week off, so that only 75% of the student body is going to school any given week.

OK, Libby.

Is that how you want your kids to get an education?

Oh, I think it's a terrible way to run a high school, I'm just laying out what it would look like. But if I lived near the Career Center site and my choices were that or sending my kids to the Career Center for the academic day and then having them bused to another school for extracurriculars and having to schedule their swimming classes on weekends or during the summer, I would likely take the shift scheduling.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can someone explain how shift scheduling would work?
Also can we look at maybe doing something strange with the calendar to try to accommodate more students? Or if amazon or apple doesn't work out redoing an office building?

It could work a whole lot of ways depending on how they want to do it. For instance, you could break up the student body into two shifts, one running from 6 am-12:30 pm (if you also add in block scheduling to reduce transition time, you can get the school day down to 6.5 hours) and another running from 1:30 pm-8 pm. Extracurriculars would run at different times of the day and kids could apply for a lottery for the different schedules based on their extracurricular or other scheduling considerations. Another way is to extend the school day to nine hours, 8 am-5 pm, and then break the kids into four groups that rotate through three weeks at school and then one week off, so that only 75% of the student body is going to school any given week.

OK, Libby.

Is that how you want your kids to get an education?

I believe that Libby has grandkids in APS. I assume she believes they would not be subject to shift scheduling or an amenity-free HS. Nobody would choose either for their own families.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:According to the board, nothing has been decided yet, so we can’t say anything about the site is “clear”. But it also doesn’t seem likely that they’ll make them choice seats at this point. None of the CIP planning scenarios involved adding choice seats to the CC; they all relied on making it neighborhood.

I’m just not sure that choice seats are the answer, regardless where you put them. What happens if they can’t fill them? Or if enrollment growth doesn’t flatten out just outside the ten year window? Then we’d be back where we are right now, needing to build another comprehensive high school but with $100 million less to work with.

I don’t care where the high school goes, personally. But not building a comprehensive one now seems like it would be more expensive in the long run.

And does everyone actually understand WHY all the scenarios have those seats as neighborhood? Because the Arlington Heights and Penrose advocates have been insisting on a neighborhood school from the beginning!!!!! Well, they're likely to get their frickin' neighborhood school; but this demonstrates exactly why you need to be careful what you ask for, to advocate strategically, and to let the process (the working group) do its work. Then, if you don't like it, object. Despite their good intentions, these people have put the rest of us on the path to being screwed right along with them.

I don’t think you can blame the neighborhoods for this. The first proposal was for 1300 seats at one of the three sites. No way that was going to be a choice program. Then when the SB went with the hybrid option the SB deliberately left the type of seats ambiguous. Arlington Heights said at the beginning that they would support a neighborhood high school at the site if it could be done with facilities comparable to the other high schools. At no point did any of these neighborhoods “push” to get a neighborhood school divorced from the discussion about facilities. They were always linked.

The only reason the neighborhoods felt the need to speak out in the first place was because the SB refused to provide any clarity about what type of seats they would be. Why would they do that? Well, choice seats obviously wouldn’t provoke much neighborhood opposition, considering what was already there. So the only reason someone wouldn’t provide clarity is that they wanted to keep the option of neighborhood seats open. So why wouldn’t a neighborhood want to say something BEFORE design choices got made that would determine the type of seats? Waiting until the process played itself out would just give the county the ability to say “sorry folks, too late, it’s a done deal.”

The alternative strategy for the neighborhood would have been to go full NIMBY, like Glen Carlyn. But the neighborhood (apparently wrongly) thought that the SB wouldn’t use the slightest hint of cooperation as a chance to just screw the neighborhood in order to solve their problems elsewhere.

I do blame the hardcore advocates on this. The SB thinks and feels it has "listened" and has "heard" the community and is responding accordingly. They heard "neighborhood high school" above all else. The advocates at the outset did not differentiate between the 700-800 seats from the 1300 hybrid decision and a full-sized fourth comprehensive high school. They emphasized "neighborhood seats." And now, their all-or-nothing stance will preclude a lot of positive benefits that could be brought to their communities as well as the broader Pike community. The 800 seats are coming - that's the hybrid solution that was already determined. The neighborhood wasn't part of that. The working group was established to determine HOW, not IF 800 seats.

So, if the SB also listens and hears the everything or nothing, and doesn't push with the County to make it happen, we're going to spend millions of $s for 800 seats that makes the $ spent on HBW cost-effective. And, there will be no new fields, no new amenities, no new library, no new performance space, no new investment in the Pike redevelopment from this opportunity.

The CB is talking with the property owners of the land on the Pike. If they actually produce something out of that, and again APS says "no, never mind, we don't want the land"????? OMG!!! We have to get it together, folks!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a future Yorktown family, there's no way I would support shift scheduling for anyone - Yorktown or otherwise. It's just stupid. I support the building of a 4th comprehensive HS with all amenities, including the pool built there instead of at Longbridge.

I do think the Kenmore site would probably be the best site due to acreage alone, if they could get some good engineers working on the traffic issues. I think part of the opposition to a HS at Kenmore is due to the neighborhood parents who would prefer for their kids to go to W-L vs. the Kenmore site.

BINGO!!!!!!!!!
So, if people believe we need a fourth comprehensive high school and Kenmore would be a more efficient and easier site, then people need to start standing up and pushing the TWO BOARDS on it! Glencarlyn cannot forever hang on to its 30+ acres of open space while the rest of the County provides half-assed solutions. And Arlington Hts/Penrose should not be permitted to hold the system hostage and stand in the way of APS building the seats it needs (the 800 already promised).

Both sites can accommodate a 4th high school of comparable quality and experience. But both require money - so none of it matters unless the CB is pushed to prioritize schools and to find ways to make it happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can someone explain how shift scheduling would work?
Also can we look at maybe doing something strange with the calendar to try to accommodate more students? Or if amazon or apple doesn't work out redoing an office building?

Oh sure.
We could move kids around to off times of the year- just as long as it doesn’t interfere with AP or IB
Also football and every other sport
And district auditions for music...

There are models elsewhere (no, I don't have specific cities....y'all can google 'em too) whereby students begin their school year at different times so that at any given time, only 3/4 of the student body is in session. The building is used year-round.

But I find it really ironic that people are even suggesting a different calendar consideration, given the hatred parents on this forum have spouted for the modified calendar at Barcroft.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can someone explain how shift scheduling would work?
Also can we look at maybe doing something strange with the calendar to try to accommodate more students? Or if amazon or apple doesn't work out redoing an office building?

Oh sure.
We could move kids around to off times of the year- just as long as it doesn’t interfere with AP or IB
Also football and every other sport
And district auditions for music...

There are models elsewhere (no, I don't have specific cities....y'all can google 'em too) whereby students begin their school year at different times so that at any given time, only 3/4 of the student body is in session. The building is used year-round.

But I find it really ironic that people are even suggesting a different calendar consideration, given the hatred parents on this forum have spouted for the modified calendar at Barcroft.

Exactly my point.
Doesn’t work with AP
Doesn’t work with sports
Doesn’t work with auditions
Doesn’t work

It means some kids have to give up something.

Ya know. Maybe it’sa good thing. They have to learn some time. You can’t always get what you want.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:According to the board, nothing has been decided yet, so we can’t say anything about the site is “clear”. But it also doesn’t seem likely that they’ll make them choice seats at this point. None of the CIP planning scenarios involved adding choice seats to the CC; they all relied on making it neighborhood.

I’m just not sure that choice seats are the answer, regardless where you put them. What happens if they can’t fill them? Or if enrollment growth doesn’t flatten out just outside the ten year window? Then we’d be back where we are right now, needing to build another comprehensive high school but with $100 million less to work with.

I don’t care where the high school goes, personally. But not building a comprehensive one now seems like it would be more expensive in the long run.

And does everyone actually understand WHY all the scenarios have those seats as neighborhood? Because the Arlington Heights and Penrose advocates have been insisting on a neighborhood school from the beginning!!!!! Well, they're likely to get their frickin' neighborhood school; but this demonstrates exactly why you need to be careful what you ask for, to advocate strategically, and to let the process (the working group) do its work. Then, if you don't like it, object. Despite their good intentions, these people have put the rest of us on the path to being screwed right along with them.

I don’t think you can blame the neighborhoods for this. The first proposal was for 1300 seats at one of the three sites. No way that was going to be a choice program. Then when the SB went with the hybrid option the SB deliberately left the type of seats ambiguous. Arlington Heights said at the beginning that they would support a neighborhood high school at the site if it could be done with facilities comparable to the other high schools. At no point did any of these neighborhoods “push” to get a neighborhood school divorced from the discussion about facilities. They were always linked.

The only reason the neighborhoods felt the need to speak out in the first place was because the SB refused to provide any clarity about what type of seats they would be. Why would they do that? Well, choice seats obviously wouldn’t provoke much neighborhood opposition, considering what was already there. So the only reason someone wouldn’t provide clarity is that they wanted to keep the option of neighborhood seats open. So why wouldn’t a neighborhood want to say something BEFORE design choices got made that would determine the type of seats? Waiting until the process played itself out would just give the county the ability to say “sorry folks, too late, it’s a done deal.”

The alternative strategy for the neighborhood would have been to go full NIMBY, like Glen Carlyn. But the neighborhood (apparently wrongly) thought that the SB wouldn’t use the slightest hint of cooperation as a chance to just screw the neighborhood in order to solve their problems elsewhere.

I do blame the hardcore advocates on this. The SB thinks and feels it has "listened" and has "heard" the community and is responding accordingly. They heard "neighborhood high school" above all else. The advocates at the outset did not differentiate between the 700-800 seats from the 1300 hybrid decision and a full-sized fourth comprehensive high school. They emphasized "neighborhood seats." And now, their all-or-nothing stance will preclude a lot of positive benefits that could be brought to their communities as well as the broader Pike community. The 800 seats are coming - that's the hybrid solution that was already determined. The neighborhood wasn't part of that. The working group was established to determine HOW, not IF 800 seats.

So, if the SB also listens and hears the everything or nothing, and doesn't push with the County to make it happen, we're going to spend millions of $s for 800 seats that makes the $ spent on HBW cost-effective. And, there will be no new fields, no new amenities, no new library, no new performance space, no new investment in the Pike redevelopment from this opportunity.

The CB is talking with the property owners of the land on the Pike. If they actually produce something out of that, and again APS says "no, never mind, we don't want the land"????? OMG!!! We have to get it together, folks!

This is simply not true. From the very beginning, the community said no neighborhood seats unless you build an equivalent 4th high school. I have gone to every single career center working group meeting and this has been said over, and over, and over again by community representatives. The SB has decided to bring all seat levels up at the same time and so they don't have the money for a comparable HS, which is fine, but don't say that they actually listened to us.

BTW, the school board has made very clear to us that they have zero intention of asking the county board for more money. The county board is still pissed that SB threw so much money for so few seats at the Wilson site. And, btw, the ECDC property has been unofficially for sale for a while now. The county lets properties like this slip through its fingers due to inaction time and time again. I could be wrong, but given the current climate, I highly doubt any reinvestment in the area.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a future Yorktown family, there's no way I would support shift scheduling for anyone - Yorktown or otherwise. It's just stupid. I support the building of a 4th comprehensive HS with all amenities, including the pool built there instead of at Longbridge.

I do think the Kenmore site would probably be the best site due to acreage alone, if they could get some good engineers working on the traffic issues. I think part of the opposition to a HS at Kenmore is due to the neighborhood parents who would prefer for their kids to go to W-L vs. the Kenmore site.

BINGO!!!!!!!!!
So, if people believe we need a fourth comprehensive high school and Kenmore would be a more efficient and easier site, then people need to start standing up and pushing the TWO BOARDS on it! Glencarlyn cannot forever hang on to its 30+ acres of open space while the rest of the County provides half-assed solutions. And Arlington Hts/Penrose should not be permitted to hold the system hostage and stand in the way of APS building the seats it needs (the 800 already promised).

Both sites can accommodate a 4th high school of comparable quality and experience. But both require money - so none of it matters unless the CB is pushed to prioritize schools and to find ways to make it happen.

Yeeesh. Arlington Heights/Penrose is not standing in the way! By all means, please build the 4th HS at Kenmore and take your $100 million with you. After getting criticized by all sides, I'll never be anything but a NIMBY again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:According to the board, nothing has been decided yet, so we can’t say anything about the site is “clear”. But it also doesn’t seem likely that they’ll make them choice seats at this point. None of the CIP planning scenarios involved adding choice seats to the CC; they all relied on making it neighborhood.

I’m just not sure that choice seats are the answer, regardless where you put them. What happens if they can’t fill them? Or if enrollment growth doesn’t flatten out just outside the ten year window? Then we’d be back where we are right now, needing to build another comprehensive high school but with $100 million less to work with.

I don’t care where the high school goes, personally. But not building a comprehensive one now seems like it would be more expensive in the long run.

And does everyone actually understand WHY all the scenarios have those seats as neighborhood? Because the Arlington Heights and Penrose advocates have been insisting on a neighborhood school from the beginning!!!!! Well, they're likely to get their frickin' neighborhood school; but this demonstrates exactly why you need to be careful what you ask for, to advocate strategically, and to let the process (the working group) do its work. Then, if you don't like it, object. Despite their good intentions, these people have put the rest of us on the path to being screwed right along with them.

I don’t think you can blame the neighborhoods for this. The first proposal was for 1300 seats at one of the three sites. No way that was going to be a choice program. Then when the SB went with the hybrid option the SB deliberately left the type of seats ambiguous. Arlington Heights said at the beginning that they would support a neighborhood high school at the site if it could be done with facilities comparable to the other high schools. At no point did any of these neighborhoods “push” to get a neighborhood school divorced from the discussion about facilities. They were always linked.

The only reason the neighborhoods felt the need to speak out in the first place was because the SB refused to provide any clarity about what type of seats they would be. Why would they do that? Well, choice seats obviously wouldn’t provoke much neighborhood opposition, considering what was already there. So the only reason someone wouldn’t provide clarity is that they wanted to keep the option of neighborhood seats open. So why wouldn’t a neighborhood want to say something BEFORE design choices got made that would determine the type of seats? Waiting until the process played itself out would just give the county the ability to say “sorry folks, too late, it’s a done deal.”

The alternative strategy for the neighborhood would have been to go full NIMBY, like Glen Carlyn. But the neighborhood (apparently wrongly) thought that the SB wouldn’t use the slightest hint of cooperation as a chance to just screw the neighborhood in order to solve their problems elsewhere.

I do blame the hardcore advocates on this. The SB thinks and feels it has "listened" and has "heard" the community and is responding accordingly. They heard "neighborhood high school" above all else. The advocates at the outset did not differentiate between the 700-800 seats from the 1300 hybrid decision and a full-sized fourth comprehensive high school. They emphasized "neighborhood seats." And now, their all-or-nothing stance will preclude a lot of positive benefits that could be brought to their communities as well as the broader Pike community. The 800 seats are coming - that's the hybrid solution that was already determined. The neighborhood wasn't part of that. The working group was established to determine HOW, not IF 800 seats.

So, if the SB also listens and hears the everything or nothing, and doesn't push with the County to make it happen, we're going to spend millions of $s for 800 seats that makes the $ spent on HBW cost-effective. And, there will be no new fields, no new amenities, no new library, no new performance space, no new investment in the Pike redevelopment from this opportunity.

The CB is talking with the property owners of the land on the Pike. If they actually produce something out of that, and again APS says "no, never mind, we don't want the land"????? OMG!!! We have to get it together, folks!

So wait, let me get this right. APS vomits up a half-baked proposal with a bunch of unknowns. The neighborhood says "It looks like you're considering making these neighborhoods seats. We'd support that IF you can provide facilities comparable to the other schools." The SB says "great, so neighborhood seats it is, no facilities, got it!"

And you blame the neighborhood for this?

The only thing I can think of to blame the neighborhood for is thinking the school board understands how "if-then" statements work.

[Anonymous]

What is the yearly budget for all Arlington county?
Is it like 500 million?

[Anonymous]

NP. I’ve been following relatively closely but am confused by one thing. When the SB announced the hybrid solution — which I agree 100% was/is stupid, poorly thought out, and poorly articulated, and that Kenmore was/is the right choice for a 4th comprehensive HS — I read it entirely as choice seats for the CC site. I recall the presentation saying something about needing to settle on the educational focus, or whatever the lingo, for those seats. Fast forward 9 months or so, the neighborhoods in question are now rejecting inferior neighborhood seats (fair) *but also* rejecting additional choice seats. So how are we to read this as anything other than the neighborhoods making a grab for their own 4th comprehensive HS (which was basically already rejected as an option by the SB last year) and then throwing a hissy fit when they’re told that isn’t going to happen? Am I misremembering how we got here? Again, I completely and totally agree that this sucks and is stupid, but I don’t see how these neighborhoods truly expected some other outcome. Arl Heights poster and others in the know, what’s the answer?

And please, I’m on the 22204 list serve and am by now familiar with the talking points. Yes, it’s unfair to have inferior neighborhood seats. Yes, no other site has so many choice seats. I’m trying to figure out if I’m really missing information, or if the advocates have just wholly bought into their own spin.