Is there really nothing "specialized" about the HB curriculum?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:HB is not meaningfully increasing class size. Fall 2018: HB will have 249 MS and 440 HS students. Fall 2026: HB will have 279 MS and 440 HS students. HB is adding 10 kids to each MS class-- 30 kids total. That's it.

Meanwhile by 2026: WF will have 3,294 HS students, WJ will have 2,101 students, and YT will have 2,642 students-- that's 8,000 high school kids, in three existing high school buildings that are only built to hold 6,500 total. These are the APS projections posted to the APS website, not made up numbers.

You have to be completely clueless to not understand why there are so many elementary school parents who are pissed off about the decision to spend $100M in bond funding to build HB without meaningfully adding more capacity. The current CIP conversations right now are a complete disaster. They have no viable solution to create sufficient high school seats by 2026 with the available bond funding.

+1 Best post on this thread by far. Yet, the County Board instead of demanding proffers from developers to fund more school construction in exchange for increased density funnels all the cash into affordable housing which, in turn, probably holds a higher percentage of school age children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:HB is not meaningfully increasing class size. Fall 2018: HB will have 249 MS and 440 HS students. Fall 2026: HB will have 279 MS and 440 HS students. HB is adding 10 kids to each MS class-- 30 kids total. That's it.

Meanwhile by 2026: WF will have 3,294 HS students, WJ will have 2,101 students, and YT will have 2,642 students-- that's 8,000 high school kids, in three existing high school buildings that are only built to hold 6,500 total. These are the APS projections posted to the APS website, not made up numbers.

You have to be completely clueless to not understand why there are so many elementary school parents who are pissed off about the decision to spend $100M in bond funding to build HB without meaningfully adding more capacity. The current CIP conversations right now are a complete disaster. They have no viable solution to create sufficient high school seats by 2026 with the available bond funding.

HB has already started expanding in anticipation of the move and is currently the most overcrowded relative to capacity. Four years ago it only had 625 students, now it has 665, and is going up to 725. That's a 15 percent increase.

I'm not completely clueless. I remember perfectly well that the SB planned to use the bond money to build a 1300 seat middle school and leave HB where it was, and the north Arlington parents screamed bloody murder about their snowflakes being bussed to Rosslyn.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:HB is not meaningfully increasing class size. Fall 2018: HB will have 249 MS and 440 HS students. Fall 2026: HB will have 279 MS and 440 HS students. HB is adding 10 kids to each MS class-- 30 kids total. That's it.

Meanwhile by 2026: WF will have 3,294 HS students, WJ will have 2,101 students, and YT will have 2,642 students-- that's 8,000 high school kids, in three existing high school buildings that are only built to hold 6,500 total. These are the APS projections posted to the APS website, not made up numbers.

You have to be completely clueless to not understand why there are so many elementary school parents who are pissed off about the decision to spend $100M in bond funding to build HB without meaningfully adding more capacity. The current CIP conversations right now are a complete disaster. They have no viable solution to create sufficient high school seats by 2026 with the available bond funding.

Still cheaper to build at the Wilson site, which the SB already owns, than to buy more land. Or wait for the County Board to give us some--we would still be waiting. (Note: We are. That's why we're discussing the stupid Career Center site instead of somewhere more suitable for a school--because the CB won't give us anything better.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:HB is not meaningfully increasing class size. Fall 2018: HB will have 249 MS and 440 HS students. Fall 2026: HB will have 279 MS and 440 HS students. HB is adding 10 kids to each MS class-- 30 kids total. That's it.

Meanwhile by 2026: WF will have 3,294 HS students, WJ will have 2,101 students, and YT will have 2,642 students-- that's 8,000 high school kids, in three existing high school buildings that are only built to hold 6,500 total. These are the APS projections posted to the APS website, not made up numbers.

You have to be completely clueless to not understand why there are so many elementary school parents who are pissed off about the decision to spend $100M in bond funding to build HB without meaningfully adding more capacity. The current CIP conversations right now are a complete disaster. They have no viable solution to create sufficient high school seats by 2026 with the available bond funding.

Still cheaper to build at the Wilson site, which the SB already owns, than to buy more land. Or wait for the County Board to give us some--we would still be waiting. (Note: We are. That's why we're discussing the stupid Career Center site instead of somewhere more suitable for a school--because the CB won't give us anything better.)

Agreed, but they could also have increased the size of HB when the program moved. There is a lot of wasted air space in that weird staggered fan design they building out for HB (and I suspect a lot of extra architecture/building costs too). So 800 current HB snowflakes get to keep their small school for $100M after they move, even though it ate up all the bond capacity to create adequate seats for future generations of kids at the other three high schools. Maybe I win the HB lottery in the future, but likely I don't because the HB odds will keep getting slimmer as the larger APS elementary cohorts start working their way up to middle school. Do you want to keep a ~5% chance that your kid will attend HB for high school (odds in 2026) even if that means a much larger chance that your kid is going to be in a 2,600 student body crammed into a high school building built for 2,000? Or do you want to figure out a way to add students to HB to spread out the overcrowding? I'm a 1st grade parent who can't believe how bad the outlook is for high school seats for my kid-- and I can't begin to understand how anyone thought it was wise to use up $100M of bond funding on a new MS/HS building and not add capacity at the same time given where projections were pointing. It just defies all logic unless the HB parents were only looking out for their own kids at the time and not thinking about the longer-term picture for the entire county. If there is nothing specialized about the HB curriculum, then get rid of the program-- or at the very least, try to get more kids into the existing program with larger classes. We need those seats.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:HB is not meaningfully increasing class size. Fall 2018: HB will have 249 MS and 440 HS students. Fall 2026: HB will have 279 MS and 440 HS students. HB is adding 10 kids to each MS class-- 30 kids total. That's it.

Meanwhile by 2026: WF will have 3,294 HS students, WJ will have 2,101 students, and YT will have 2,642 students-- that's 8,000 high school kids, in three existing high school buildings that are only built to hold 6,500 total. These are the APS projections posted to the APS website, not made up numbers.

You have to be completely clueless to not understand why there are so many elementary school parents who are pissed off about the decision to spend $100M in bond funding to build HB without meaningfully adding more capacity. The current CIP conversations right now are a complete disaster. They have no viable solution to create sufficient high school seats by 2026 with the available bond funding.

Still cheaper to build at the Wilson site, which the SB already owns, than to buy more land. Or wait for the County Board to give us some--we would still be waiting. (Note: We are. That's why we're discussing the stupid Career Center site instead of somewhere more suitable for a school--because the CB won't give us anything better.)

Agreed, but they could also have increased the size of HB when the program moved. There is a lot of wasted air space in that weird staggered fan design they building out for HB (and I suspect a lot of extra architecture/building costs too). So 800 current HB snowflakes get to keep their small school for $100M after they move, even though it ate up all the bond capacity to create adequate seats for future generations of kids at the other three high schools. Maybe I win the HB lottery in the future, but likely I don't because the HB odds will keep getting slimmer as the larger APS elementary cohorts start working their way up to middle school. Do you want to keep a ~5% chance that your kid will attend HB for high school (odds in 2026) even if that means a much larger chance that your kid is going to be in a 2,600 student body crammed into a high school building built for 2,000? Or do you want to figure out a way to add students to HB to spread out the overcrowding? I'm a 1st grade parent who can't believe how bad the outlook is for high school seats for my kid-- and I can't begin to understand how anyone thought it was wise to use up $100M of bond funding on a new MS/HS building and not add capacity at the same time given where projections were pointing. It just defies all logic unless the HB parents were only looking out for their own kids at the time and not thinking about the longer-term picture for the entire county. If there is nothing specialized about the HB curriculum, then get rid of the program-- or at the very least, try to get more kids into the existing program with larger classes. We need those seats.

I guess I don't understand the hate for the "HB parents." They didn't make any of the decisions (school location, school size, building design)--the school board did. And HB is co-located with the Stratford program, which is taking up a fair amount of that space and bonding capacity, don't forget. The program is expanding and losing the history tied to its building, and it is getting moved to a building that doesn't have fields and doesn't have parking. HB parents weren't pushing this, at all. Go back and read the Sun Gazette archives or watch the SB hearings.

[Anonymous]

I haven’t heard HB parents pushing for more students and making the program more accessible for all...
I haven’t heard general concern for the seat deficit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I haven’t heard HB parents pushing for more students and making the program more accessible for all...
I haven’t heard general concern for the seat deficit.

Exactly. HB parents keep their heads down and stay out of it. They have to, their kids are getting a better experience than the rest for no reason other that having their name called. We all pay the taxes, but a lucky few get private school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:HB is not meaningfully increasing class size. Fall 2018: HB will have 249 MS and 440 HS students. Fall 2026: HB will have 279 MS and 440 HS students. HB is adding 10 kids to each MS class-- 30 kids total. That's it.

Meanwhile by 2026: WF will have 3,294 HS students, WJ will have 2,101 students, and YT will have 2,642 students-- that's 8,000 high school kids, in three existing high school buildings that are only built to hold 6,500 total. These are the APS projections posted to the APS website, not made up numbers.

You have to be completely clueless to not understand why there are so many elementary school parents who are pissed off about the decision to spend $100M in bond funding to build HB without meaningfully adding more capacity. The current CIP conversations right now are a complete disaster. They have no viable solution to create sufficient high school seats by 2026 with the available bond funding.

Still cheaper to build at the Wilson site, which the SB already owns, than to buy more land. Or wait for the County Board to give us some--we would still be waiting. (Note: We are. That's why we're discussing the stupid Career Center site instead of somewhere more suitable for a school--because the CB won't give us anything better.)

Agreed, but they could also have increased the size of HB when the program moved. There is a lot of wasted air space in that weird staggered fan design they building out for HB (and I suspect a lot of extra architecture/building costs too). So 800 current HB snowflakes get to keep their small school for $100M after they move, even though it ate up all the bond capacity to create adequate seats for future generations of kids at the other three high schools. Maybe I win the HB lottery in the future, but likely I don't because the HB odds will keep getting slimmer as the larger APS elementary cohorts start working their way up to middle school. Do you want to keep a ~5% chance that your kid will attend HB for high school (odds in 2026) even if that means a much larger chance that your kid is going to be in a 2,600 student body crammed into a high school building built for 2,000? Or do you want to figure out a way to add students to HB to spread out the overcrowding? I'm a 1st grade parent who can't believe how bad the outlook is for high school seats for my kid-- and I can't begin to understand how anyone thought it was wise to use up $100M of bond funding on a new MS/HS building and not add capacity at the same time given where projections were pointing. It just defies all logic unless the HB parents were only looking out for their own kids at the time and not thinking about the longer-term picture for the entire county. If there is nothing specialized about the HB curriculum, then get rid of the program-- or at the very least, try to get more kids into the existing program with larger classes. We need those seats.

You're a first grade parent already worried about high school? My dear, maybe the public school system isn't made for you -- especially not APS. APS has grappled with over and underenrollment issues for decades while consistently managing to provide a top notch public education. This will work itself out.

Btw, HB's student/teacher ratio is no better than the neighborhood schools. And, as others have said, it IS increasing in size. It's also the last high school in Arlington to get new space. The current building is an absolute dump. Finally, it has virtually no extracurriculars which drives down the per student cost.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I haven’t heard HB parents pushing for more students and making the program more accessible for all...
I haven’t heard general concern for the seat deficit.

Exactly. HB parents keep their heads down and stay out of it. They have to, their kids are getting a better experience than the rest for no reason other that having their name called. We all pay the taxes, but a lucky few get private school.

Wow. Just wow. You people are really something else. How many of you have had kids attend both neighborhood schools and HB? Very few, I'd bet. If you did, you'd know that the education is no different.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:HB is not meaningfully increasing class size. Fall 2018: HB will have 249 MS and 440 HS students. Fall 2026: HB will have 279 MS and 440 HS students. HB is adding 10 kids to each MS class-- 30 kids total. That's it.

Meanwhile by 2026: WF will have 3,294 HS students, WJ will have 2,101 students, and YT will have 2,642 students-- that's 8,000 high school kids, in three existing high school buildings that are only built to hold 6,500 total. These are the APS projections posted to the APS website, not made up numbers.

You have to be completely clueless to not understand why there are so many elementary school parents who are pissed off about the decision to spend $100M in bond funding to build HB without meaningfully adding more capacity. The current CIP conversations right now are a complete disaster. They have no viable solution to create sufficient high school seats by 2026 with the available bond funding.

Still cheaper to build at the Wilson site, which the SB already owns, than to buy more land. Or wait for the County Board to give us some--we would still be waiting. (Note: We are. That's why we're discussing the stupid Career Center site instead of somewhere more suitable for a school--because the CB won't give us anything better.)

Agreed, but they could also have increased the size of HB when the program moved. There is a lot of wasted air space in that weird staggered fan design they building out for HB (and I suspect a lot of extra architecture/building costs too). So 800 current HB snowflakes get to keep their small school for $100M after they move, even though it ate up all the bond capacity to create adequate seats for future generations of kids at the other three high schools. Maybe I win the HB lottery in the future, but likely I don't because the HB odds will keep getting slimmer as the larger APS elementary cohorts start working their way up to middle school. Do you want to keep a ~5% chance that your kid will attend HB for high school (odds in 2026) even if that means a much larger chance that your kid is going to be in a 2,600 student body crammed into a high school building built for 2,000? Or do you want to figure out a way to add students to HB to spread out the overcrowding? I'm a 1st grade parent who can't believe how bad the outlook is for high school seats for my kid-- and I can't begin to understand how anyone thought it was wise to use up $100M of bond funding on a new MS/HS building and not add capacity at the same time given where projections were pointing. It just defies all logic unless the HB parents were only looking out for their own kids at the time and not thinking about the longer-term picture for the entire county. If there is nothing specialized about the HB curriculum, then get rid of the program-- or at the very least, try to get more kids into the existing program with larger classes. We need those seats.

I guess I don't understand the hate for the "HB parents." They didn't make any of the decisions (school location, school size, building design)--the school board did. And HB is co-located with the Stratford program, which is taking up a fair amount of that space and bonding capacity, don't forget. The program is expanding and losing the history tied to its building, and it is getting moved to a building that doesn't have fields and doesn't have parking. HB parents weren't pushing this, at all. Go back and read the Sun Gazette archives or watch the SB hearings.

Exactly. No one can reasonably have any beef with HB parent's over any of this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I haven’t heard HB parents pushing for more students and making the program more accessible for all...
I haven’t heard general concern for the seat deficit.

Exactly. HB parents keep their heads down and stay out of it. They have to, their kids are getting a better experience than the rest for no reason other that having their name called. We all pay the taxes, but a lucky few get private school.

Wow. Just wow. You people are really something else. How many of you have had kids attend both neighborhood schools and HB? Very few, I'd bet. If you did, you'd know that the education is no different.

Great, then it should be no problem to add another 500 kids to the program.
#noHBWL

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I haven’t heard HB parents pushing for more students and making the program more accessible for all...
I haven’t heard general concern for the seat deficit.

Exactly. HB parents keep their heads down and stay out of it. They have to, their kids are getting a better experience than the rest for no reason other that having their name called. We all pay the taxes, but a lucky few get private school.

Wow. Just wow. You people are really something else. How many of you have had kids attend both neighborhood schools and HB? Very few, I'd bet. If you did, you'd know that the education is no different.

Great, then it should be no problem to add another 500 kids to the program.
#noHBWL

Very intelligent response. Obviously there are other meaningful differences between the programs. The point is that the differences don't make one program necessarily "better" than the other. Just different. We had kids thrive in both (and get into virtually the same top colleges, for all you DCUM posters obsessed with that). As I've said before, you don't send your kid to HB over the neighborhood school for the academics.

Arlington is a liberal county with a progressive and varied approach to education. It's been committed to "choice" programs for decades. If that's not a philosophy that you agree with, there are plenty of other fine districts in the DC area.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:HB is not meaningfully increasing class size. Fall 2018: HB will have 249 MS and 440 HS students. Fall 2026: HB will have 279 MS and 440 HS students. HB is adding 10 kids to each MS class-- 30 kids total. That's it.

Meanwhile by 2026: WF will have 3,294 HS students, WJ will have 2,101 students, and YT will have 2,642 students-- that's 8,000 high school kids, in three existing high school buildings that are only built to hold 6,500 total. These are the APS projections posted to the APS website, not made up numbers.

You have to be completely clueless to not understand why there are so many elementary school parents who are pissed off about the decision to spend $100M in bond funding to build HB without meaningfully adding more capacity. The current CIP conversations right now are a complete disaster. They have no viable solution to create sufficient high school seats by 2026 with the available bond funding.

Still cheaper to build at the Wilson site, which the SB already owns, than to buy more land. Or wait for the County Board to give us some--we would still be waiting. (Note: We are. That's why we're discussing the stupid Career Center site instead of somewhere more suitable for a school--because the CB won't give us anything better.)

Agreed, but they could also have increased the size of HB when the program moved. There is a lot of wasted air space in that weird staggered fan design they building out for HB (and I suspect a lot of extra architecture/building costs too). So 800 current HB snowflakes get to keep their small school for $100M after they move, even though it ate up all the bond capacity to create adequate seats for future generations of kids at the other three high schools. Maybe I win the HB lottery in the future, but likely I don't because the HB odds will keep getting slimmer as the larger APS elementary cohorts start working their way up to middle school. Do you want to keep a ~5% chance that your kid will attend HB for high school (odds in 2026) even if that means a much larger chance that your kid is going to be in a 2,600 student body crammed into a high school building built for 2,000? Or do you want to figure out a way to add students to HB to spread out the overcrowding? I'm a 1st grade parent who can't believe how bad the outlook is for high school seats for my kid-- and I can't begin to understand how anyone thought it was wise to use up $100M of bond funding on a new MS/HS building and not add capacity at the same time given where projections were pointing. It just defies all logic unless the HB parents were only looking out for their own kids at the time and not thinking about the longer-term picture for the entire county. If there is nothing specialized about the HB curriculum, then get rid of the program-- or at the very least, try to get more kids into the existing program with larger classes. We need those seats.

You're a first grade parent already worried about high school? My dear, maybe the public school system isn't made for you -- especially not APS. APS has grappled with over and underenrollment issues for decades while consistently managing to provide a top notch public education. This will work itself out.

Btw, HB's student/teacher ratio is no better than the neighborhood schools. And, as others have said, it IS increasing in size. It's also the last high school in Arlington to get new space. The current building is an absolute dump. Finally, it has virtually no extracurriculars which drives down the per student cost.

dp- wow, could you be more of a condescending B;tch?
Parents of 1st graders are exactly who should be weighing in. But you are right on talking point, if you don’t like to idiocy of the last 10 years, move or go private...
As a home owner who likely has made a much MUCH greater financial commitment to Arlington, they have every right to get involved now. They should be involved now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:HB is not meaningfully increasing class size. Fall 2018: HB will have 249 MS and 440 HS students. Fall 2026: HB will have 279 MS and 440 HS students. HB is adding 10 kids to each MS class-- 30 kids total. That's it.

Meanwhile by 2026: WF will have 3,294 HS students, WJ will have 2,101 students, and YT will have 2,642 students-- that's 8,000 high school kids, in three existing high school buildings that are only built to hold 6,500 total. These are the APS projections posted to the APS website, not made up numbers.

You have to be completely clueless to not understand why there are so many elementary school parents who are pissed off about the decision to spend $100M in bond funding to build HB without meaningfully adding more capacity. The current CIP conversations right now are a complete disaster. They have no viable solution to create sufficient high school seats by 2026 with the available bond funding.

Still cheaper to build at the Wilson site, which the SB already owns, than to buy more land. Or wait for the County Board to give us some--we would still be waiting. (Note: We are. That's why we're discussing the stupid Career Center site instead of somewhere more suitable for a school--because the CB won't give us anything better.)

Agreed, but they could also have increased the size of HB when the program moved. There is a lot of wasted air space in that weird staggered fan design they building out for HB (and I suspect a lot of extra architecture/building costs too). So 800 current HB snowflakes get to keep their small school for $100M after they move, even though it ate up all the bond capacity to create adequate seats for future generations of kids at the other three high schools. Maybe I win the HB lottery in the future, but likely I don't because the HB odds will keep getting slimmer as the larger APS elementary cohorts start working their way up to middle school. Do you want to keep a ~5% chance that your kid will attend HB for high school (odds in 2026) even if that means a much larger chance that your kid is going to be in a 2,600 student body crammed into a high school building built for 2,000? Or do you want to figure out a way to add students to HB to spread out the overcrowding? I'm a 1st grade parent who can't believe how bad the outlook is for high school seats for my kid-- and I can't begin to understand how anyone thought it was wise to use up $100M of bond funding on a new MS/HS building and not add capacity at the same time given where projections were pointing. It just defies all logic unless the HB parents were only looking out for their own kids at the time and not thinking about the longer-term picture for the entire county. If there is nothing specialized about the HB curriculum, then get rid of the program-- or at the very least, try to get more kids into the existing program with larger classes. We need those seats.

You're a first grade parent already worried about high school? My dear, maybe the public school system isn't made for you -- especially not APS. APS has grappled with over and underenrollment issues for decades while consistently managing to provide a top notch public education. This will work itself out.

Btw, HB's student/teacher ratio is no better than the neighborhood schools. And, as others have said, it IS increasing in size. It's also the last high school in Arlington to get new space. The current building is an absolute dump. Finally, it has virtually no extracurriculars which drives down the per student cost.

dp- wow, could you be more of a condescending B;tch?
Parents of 1st graders are exactly who should be weighing in. But you are right on talking point, if you don’t like to idiocy of the last 10 years, move or go private...
As a home owner who likely has made a much MUCH greater financial commitment to Arlington, they have every right to get involved now. They should be involved now.

Doubtful.

And I'm not saying they shouldn't get involved. What I am saying is that they need to chill. Seriously.

[Anonymous]

Why tell the 1st grade parents to chill out? We're in the middle of the CIP cycle for 2018-2028. It is make or break time for a 4th comprehensive high school. The PP telling all the concerned elementary school parents to "chill out" clearly hasn't been following the Career Center conversation. She's probably too busy making plans to swim in the Long Bridge Park lap pool with the rest of Arlington's self-centered retirees.