Projected Overcrowding in High School APSVA

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hope some who left for private don't come back. My kid is entering HS next year and was in an overcrowded ES and MS. The opening of Hamm still left the MS overcrowded b/c they didn't put enough kids in Hamm. Now, with HS on the horizon, the plans for more space won't impact my kid until almost the end. We are even contemplating not taking the IB spot b/c of the overcrowding at WL.

Don’t worry. We left for good last year, decided pre-pandemic. No way in hell are we coming back.

And yet you're still here...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meanwhile HB Woodlawn has seen zero growth since moving to the new building. They still plan for just around 80 kids per MS grade and around 115 per HS grade. The lottery only accepted 75 6th graders and 26 9th graders (bringing the total 9th grade class next year to just 107 since they currently have 81 8th graders and I’m sure at least one or two will decide to move to another school). They really need to increase their enrollment to 100 per MS grade as promised when plans for them to move to the new building were being discussed. HS grades should each be at 125 at a minimum. They would still be a small program with these numbers.

HB is a perfect example of APS's fraud, waste and abuse of tax payer dollars.

Just stop it. All those kids would be back in the three comprehensive high schools if HB was still on Vacation Lane (where they wanted to stay) and that building was a neighborhood middle school, as originally proposed when they decided not to sell the land. And building it taller to hold more kids would have been cost-prohibitive. There are no fields.

If you have somewhere to put 900 middle and high schoolers, by all means, let us know where to build that school.

WAH we had to give up one of the largest parcels of land APS owns for an architects blinged out brand new vanity project. We can’t possibly accept more students...

HB should have moved to office buildings; they play on home school sports, and can walk off campus anytime they want is an office setting would have been ideal.

Agree - put HB in office space.

The Heights building should have been an elementary school.

Kindergarten and first grade have to be on the ground floor. If Montessori were there, that means the 3/4/5 classes and the 1st/2nd/3rd classes would have to be on the ground floor.

Virginia requirements for elementary school playgrounds are two 100'x120' play equipment areas and a 100'x120' hard surface area plus a 180'x140' field.

No need for Montessori so you can unlink the 2/3 from the VPI/K/1.

Get an exception because it's an urban environment. It's not like NYC public schools have enormous outdoor play areas. Or even all of existing APS schools for that matter? ASFS certainly doesn't have a hard surface area now with those trailers. And doesn't have two large play equipment areas.

Montessori at one point offered to go there, but it wouldn't work with their mixed-age classrooms (for those about to say "Montessori" in answer to my next question):

Who in Arlington is going to send their kids to an urban high rise elementary with no outdoor space? With HB they make the argument that no-one can complain about the lack of fields because the kids can play sports at their home schools and are at that school by choice. How would they attract 500-600 elementary students?

[Anonymous]

Is W-L really that much more crowded than Yorktown. I actually thought I saw Yorktown had more kids.

My kids ar W-L never had a problem with the size. We came from jam packed Swanson pre Hamm and they never mentioned anything about being crowded.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meanwhile HB Woodlawn has seen zero growth since moving to the new building. They still plan for just around 80 kids per MS grade and around 115 per HS grade. The lottery only accepted 75 6th graders and 26 9th graders (bringing the total 9th grade class next year to just 107 since they currently have 81 8th graders and I’m sure at least one or two will decide to move to another school). They really need to increase their enrollment to 100 per MS grade as promised when plans for them to move to the new building were being discussed. HS grades should each be at 125 at a minimum. They would still be a small program with these numbers.

HB is a perfect example of APS's fraud, waste and abuse of tax payer dollars.

Just stop it. All those kids would be back in the three comprehensive high schools if HB was still on Vacation Lane (where they wanted to stay) and that building was a neighborhood middle school, as originally proposed when they decided not to sell the land. And building it taller to hold more kids would have been cost-prohibitive. There are no fields.

If you have somewhere to put 900 middle and high schoolers, by all means, let us know where to build that school.

WAH we had to give up one of the largest parcels of land APS owns for an architects blinged out brand new vanity project. We can’t possibly accept more students...

HB should have moved to office buildings; they play on home school sports, and can walk off campus anytime they want is an office setting would have been ideal.

Great, let's walk this one through. Sounds like you are saying they should rent an office building, since APS doesn't own one they can use. So, we're paying commercial rents, in Arlington. And also somehow coming up with several million dollars to convert commercial space to educational space out of a current budget, because you can't use bond funds to pay for improvements to buildings that you don't own. And that conversion will include combining multiple floors order to put in a cafeteria, gym, and theater, not to mention renovating utilities to put in all the other things you need for a high school like science labs, art rooms, etc. And at the end of the lease we will have to pay several million dollars to put it all back to commercial space.

Can you smug people stop recycling these dumb ideas year after year after year? All of this stuff has been floated, and vetted, and determined to be more costly and more complicated and create less capacity and take more time than the alternatives. There are multiple citizen advisory groups and task forces in addition to full-time staff who work on these issues. If it were easier and cheaper to make the Wilson building bigger, or put HB in an office building, or whatever, THEY WOULD HAVE DONE THAT. All of the things they do they do because there is no clear better alternative.

The Heights building cost $100M dollars. They could have done all what you are talking about simply from the interest paid on that $100M.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meanwhile HB Woodlawn has seen zero growth since moving to the new building. They still plan for just around 80 kids per MS grade and around 115 per HS grade. The lottery only accepted 75 6th graders and 26 9th graders (bringing the total 9th grade class next year to just 107 since they currently have 81 8th graders and I’m sure at least one or two will decide to move to another school). They really need to increase their enrollment to 100 per MS grade as promised when plans for them to move to the new building were being discussed. HS grades should each be at 125 at a minimum. They would still be a small program with these numbers.

HB is a perfect example of APS's fraud, waste and abuse of tax payer dollars.

Just stop it. All those kids would be back in the three comprehensive high schools if HB was still on Vacation Lane (where they wanted to stay) and that building was a neighborhood middle school, as originally proposed when they decided not to sell the land. And building it taller to hold more kids would have been cost-prohibitive. There are no fields.

If you have somewhere to put 900 middle and high schoolers, by all means, let us know where to build that school.

WAH we had to give up one of the largest parcels of land APS owns for an architects blinged out brand new vanity project. We can’t possibly accept more students...

HB should have moved to office buildings; they play on home school sports, and can walk off campus anytime they want is an office setting would have been ideal.

Great, let's walk this one through. Sounds like you are saying they should rent an office building, since APS doesn't own one they can use. So, we're paying commercial rents, in Arlington. And also somehow coming up with several million dollars to convert commercial space to educational space out of a current budget, because you can't use bond funds to pay for improvements to buildings that you don't own. And that conversion will include combining multiple floors order to put in a cafeteria, gym, and theater, not to mention renovating utilities to put in all the other things you need for a high school like science labs, art rooms, etc. And at the end of the lease we will have to pay several million dollars to put it all back to commercial space.

Can you smug people stop recycling these dumb ideas year after year after year? All of this stuff has been floated, and vetted, and determined to be more costly and more complicated and create less capacity and take more time than the alternatives. There are multiple citizen advisory groups and task forces in addition to full-time staff who work on these issues. If it were easier and cheaper to make the Wilson building bigger, or put HB in an office building, or whatever, THEY WOULD HAVE DONE THAT. All of the things they do they do because there is no clear better alternative.

Also, Arlington has has a slack commercial market for years, and Amazon was not in the pipeline when this happened.

I'm SURE if they can build the LARGEST ROCK CLIMBING gym on the East coast in Crystal City, we could have build some schools and had the landlords eat the cost of converting the space to meet our needs.

Instead we got a pretty building that leaks and houses far too few students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meanwhile HB Woodlawn has seen zero growth since moving to the new building. They still plan for just around 80 kids per MS grade and around 115 per HS grade. The lottery only accepted 75 6th graders and 26 9th graders (bringing the total 9th grade class next year to just 107 since they currently have 81 8th graders and I’m sure at least one or two will decide to move to another school). They really need to increase their enrollment to 100 per MS grade as promised when plans for them to move to the new building were being discussed. HS grades should each be at 125 at a minimum. They would still be a small program with these numbers.

HB is a perfect example of APS's fraud, waste and abuse of tax payer dollars.

Just stop it. All those kids would be back in the three comprehensive high schools if HB was still on Vacation Lane (where they wanted to stay) and that building was a neighborhood middle school, as originally proposed when they decided not to sell the land. And building it taller to hold more kids would have been cost-prohibitive. There are no fields.

If you have somewhere to put 900 middle and high schoolers, by all means, let us know where to build that school.

I believe many of us are not asking for HB to go away - at least I'm not. We are asking for them to do the same as every other secondary school in Arlington and that is to grow. To take just 75 6th graders and then add just 26 9th graders each year is ridiculous. There should have been some growth after they moved into the new building. You quote 900 MS and HS kids in your post but they don't have nearly that many. Current HB enrollment - as of Feb 2021 - is just 241 MS and 449 HS students. That is just 690 kids for combined 6-12 grades, unbelievably small. Yes, the building is shared with the Shriver program, but that program has just 35 kids in grades 6-12, so that brings the number of students currently in the Heights building up to 725. Building capacity is 775. Why is the HB program not growing if there is capacity for at least 50 more students? Why did they lottery in just 26 9th graders when current 8th grade enrollment is just 82? If they are planning for class sizes to be just 75 -80 in MS and 108-115 in HS that means APS is planning for HB enrollment to remain at just between 657-700? That is no where near the 900 you quoted, or even the official building capacity of 775.

This year is weird, look at the trend. They have been going up every year since 2016 in preparation for the move, and last year were at about 250 middle school and 475 high school (meaning they grew by about 10 percent in five years).

They need to add kids at 6th and 9th, so that the middle school grows and the high school grows on top of the middle schoolers who stay for high school. However, that means they need to retain the middle school growth and it looks like more kids than they expected didn't move to The Heights in 2019 and didn't come this year, so now they have to rebuild some. They had been adding 20 kids a year and will get back on track hopefully next year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meanwhile HB Woodlawn has seen zero growth since moving to the new building. They still plan for just around 80 kids per MS grade and around 115 per HS grade. The lottery only accepted 75 6th graders and 26 9th graders (bringing the total 9th grade class next year to just 107 since they currently have 81 8th graders and I’m sure at least one or two will decide to move to another school). They really need to increase their enrollment to 100 per MS grade as promised when plans for them to move to the new building were being discussed. HS grades should each be at 125 at a minimum. They would still be a small program with these numbers.

HB is a perfect example of APS's fraud, waste and abuse of tax payer dollars.

Just stop it. All those kids would be back in the three comprehensive high schools if HB was still on Vacation Lane (where they wanted to stay) and that building was a neighborhood middle school, as originally proposed when they decided not to sell the land. And building it taller to hold more kids would have been cost-prohibitive. There are no fields.

If you have somewhere to put 900 middle and high schoolers, by all means, let us know where to build that school.

I believe many of us are not asking for HB to go away - at least I'm not. We are asking for them to do the same as every other secondary school in Arlington and that is to grow. To take just 75 6th graders and then add just 26 9th graders each year is ridiculous. There should have been some growth after they moved into the new building. You quote 900 MS and HS kids in your post but they don't have nearly that many. Current HB enrollment - as of Feb 2021 - is just 241 MS and 449 HS students. That is just 690 kids for combined 6-12 grades, unbelievably small. Yes, the building is shared with the Shriver program, but that program has just 35 kids in grades 6-12, so that brings the number of students currently in the Heights building up to 725. Building capacity is 775. Why is the HB program not growing if there is capacity for at least 50 more students? Why did they lottery in just 26 9th graders when current 8th grade enrollment is just 82? If they are planning for class sizes to be just 75 -80 in MS and 108-115 in HS that means APS is planning for HB enrollment to remain at just between 657-700? That is no where near the 900 you quoted, or even the official building capacity of 775.

I don't think you're including the Shriver program in your numbers, though those kids are (it's my understanding) also at HB and in HB classes.

I don't quite understand how it works but for example when I first checked my HB 6th grader's classes in the fall (by looking at her "Teams" class list tab) I think it said there were about 86 kids in the 6th grade class, though the enrollment numbers at "HB" just show like 78; however there are another 4 kids in the 6th grade Shriver program. Maybe some kids also dropped out? Not sure how you would bring more kids into a lottery school in the middle of a year during a year like this.

Including the Shriver program numbers adds another 35 kids to the school -- closer to but not at the additional 50 kids you say is your minimum fwiw.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meanwhile HB Woodlawn has seen zero growth since moving to the new building. They still plan for just around 80 kids per MS grade and around 115 per HS grade. The lottery only accepted 75 6th graders and 26 9th graders (bringing the total 9th grade class next year to just 107 since they currently have 81 8th graders and I’m sure at least one or two will decide to move to another school). They really need to increase their enrollment to 100 per MS grade as promised when plans for them to move to the new building were being discussed. HS grades should each be at 125 at a minimum. They would still be a small program with these numbers.

HB is a perfect example of APS's fraud, waste and abuse of tax payer dollars.

Just stop it. All those kids would be back in the three comprehensive high schools if HB was still on Vacation Lane (where they wanted to stay) and that building was a neighborhood middle school, as originally proposed when they decided not to sell the land. And building it taller to hold more kids would have been cost-prohibitive. There are no fields.

If you have somewhere to put 900 middle and high schoolers, by all means, let us know where to build that school.

WAH we had to give up one of the largest parcels of land APS owns for an architects blinged out brand new vanity project. We can’t possibly accept more students...

HB should have moved to office buildings; they play on home school sports, and can walk off campus anytime they want is an office setting would have been ideal.

Great, let's walk this one through. Sounds like you are saying they should rent an office building, since APS doesn't own one they can use. So, we're paying commercial rents, in Arlington. And also somehow coming up with several million dollars to convert commercial space to educational space out of a current budget, because you can't use bond funds to pay for improvements to buildings that you don't own. And that conversion will include combining multiple floors order to put in a cafeteria, gym, and theater, not to mention renovating utilities to put in all the other things you need for a high school like science labs, art rooms, etc. And at the end of the lease we will have to pay several million dollars to put it all back to commercial space.

Can you smug people stop recycling these dumb ideas year after year after year? All of this stuff has been floated, and vetted, and determined to be more costly and more complicated and create less capacity and take more time than the alternatives. There are multiple citizen advisory groups and task forces in addition to full-time staff who work on these issues. If it were easier and cheaper to make the Wilson building bigger, or put HB in an office building, or whatever, THEY WOULD HAVE DONE THAT. All of the things they do they do because there is no clear better alternative.

The Heights building cost $100M dollars. They could have done all what you are talking about simply from the interest paid on that $100M.

Do you know what the interest rate is on a AAA muni bond right now? Arlington paid 2.42% on its last issue. That's $2.4M a year in interest. When we built Discovery, Hamm, Fleet, etc. -- it cost $1 million just to buy the desks, white boards, cafeteria tables, markers, library books, and all that junk AFTER the school was built.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meanwhile HB Woodlawn has seen zero growth since moving to the new building. They still plan for just around 80 kids per MS grade and around 115 per HS grade. The lottery only accepted 75 6th graders and 26 9th graders (bringing the total 9th grade class next year to just 107 since they currently have 81 8th graders and I’m sure at least one or two will decide to move to another school). They really need to increase their enrollment to 100 per MS grade as promised when plans for them to move to the new building were being discussed. HS grades should each be at 125 at a minimum. They would still be a small program with these numbers.

HB is a perfect example of APS's fraud, waste and abuse of tax payer dollars.

Just stop it. All those kids would be back in the three comprehensive high schools if HB was still on Vacation Lane (where they wanted to stay) and that building was a neighborhood middle school, as originally proposed when they decided not to sell the land. And building it taller to hold more kids would have been cost-prohibitive. There are no fields.

If you have somewhere to put 900 middle and high schoolers, by all means, let us know where to build that school.

WAH we had to give up one of the largest parcels of land APS owns for an architects blinged out brand new vanity project. We can’t possibly accept more students...

HB should have moved to office buildings; they play on home school sports, and can walk off campus anytime they want is an office setting would have been ideal.

Agree - put HB in office space.

The Heights building should have been an elementary school.

Kindergarten and first grade have to be on the ground floor. If Montessori were there, that means the 3/4/5 classes and the 1st/2nd/3rd classes would have to be on the ground floor.

Virginia requirements for elementary school playgrounds are two 100'x120' play equipment areas and a 100'x120' hard surface area plus a 180'x140' field.

No need for Montessori so you can unlink the 2/3 from the VPI/K/1.

Get an exception because it's an urban environment. It's not like NYC public schools have enormous outdoor play areas. Or even all of existing APS schools for that matter? ASFS certainly doesn't have a hard surface area now with those trailers. And doesn't have two large play equipment areas.

Montessori at one point offered to go there, but it wouldn't work with their mixed-age classrooms (for those about to say "Montessori" in answer to my next question):

Who in Arlington is going to send their kids to an urban high rise elementary with no outdoor space? With HB they make the argument that no-one can complain about the lack of fields because the kids can play sports at their home schools and are at that school by choice. How would they attract 500-600 elementary students?

I would have sent my kids there because I live down the street. It would have been a better solution than what they are doing now where most of the kids that can walk to key don’t go there because they need to make room for rosslyn.
I would have lived to walk my kids to school there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meanwhile HB Woodlawn has seen zero growth since moving to the new building. They still plan for just around 80 kids per MS grade and around 115 per HS grade. The lottery only accepted 75 6th graders and 26 9th graders (bringing the total 9th grade class next year to just 107 since they currently have 81 8th graders and I’m sure at least one or two will decide to move to another school). They really need to increase their enrollment to 100 per MS grade as promised when plans for them to move to the new building were being discussed. HS grades should each be at 125 at a minimum. They would still be a small program with these numbers.

HB is a perfect example of APS's fraud, waste and abuse of tax payer dollars.

Just stop it. All those kids would be back in the three comprehensive high schools if HB was still on Vacation Lane (where they wanted to stay) and that building was a neighborhood middle school, as originally proposed when they decided not to sell the land. And building it taller to hold more kids would have been cost-prohibitive. There are no fields.

If you have somewhere to put 900 middle and high schoolers, by all means, let us know where to build that school.

WAH we had to give up one of the largest parcels of land APS owns for an architects blinged out brand new vanity project. We can’t possibly accept more students...

HB should have moved to office buildings; they play on home school sports, and can walk off campus anytime they want is an office setting would have been ideal.

Agree - put HB in office space.

The Heights building should have been an elementary school.

Kindergarten and first grade have to be on the ground floor. If Montessori were there, that means the 3/4/5 classes and the 1st/2nd/3rd classes would have to be on the ground floor.

Virginia requirements for elementary school playgrounds are two 100'x120' play equipment areas and a 100'x120' hard surface area plus a 180'x140' field.

No need for Montessori so you can unlink the 2/3 from the VPI/K/1.

Get an exception because it's an urban environment. It's not like NYC public schools have enormous outdoor play areas. Or even all of existing APS schools for that matter? ASFS certainly doesn't have a hard surface area now with those trailers. And doesn't have two large play equipment areas.

Montessori at one point offered to go there, but it wouldn't work with their mixed-age classrooms (for those about to say "Montessori" in answer to my next question):

Who in Arlington is going to send their kids to an urban high rise elementary with no outdoor space? With HB they make the argument that no-one can complain about the lack of fields because the kids can play sports at their home schools and are at that school by choice. How would they attract 500-600 elementary students?

I would have sent my kids there because I live down the street. It would have been a better solution than what they are doing now where most of the kids that can walk to key don’t go there because they need to make room for rosslyn.
I would have lived to walk my kids to school there.

Yup. There are tons of kids in the area - more than they can fit into Key even with the whole switcheroo. They should have built an elementary school there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meanwhile HB Woodlawn has seen zero growth since moving to the new building. They still plan for just around 80 kids per MS grade and around 115 per HS grade. The lottery only accepted 75 6th graders and 26 9th graders (bringing the total 9th grade class next year to just 107 since they currently have 81 8th graders and I’m sure at least one or two will decide to move to another school). They really need to increase their enrollment to 100 per MS grade as promised when plans for them to move to the new building were being discussed. HS grades should each be at 125 at a minimum. They would still be a small program with these numbers.

HB is a perfect example of APS's fraud, waste and abuse of tax payer dollars.

Just stop it. All those kids would be back in the three comprehensive high schools if HB was still on Vacation Lane (where they wanted to stay) and that building was a neighborhood middle school, as originally proposed when they decided not to sell the land. And building it taller to hold more kids would have been cost-prohibitive. There are no fields.

If you have somewhere to put 900 middle and high schoolers, by all means, let us know where to build that school.

WAH we had to give up one of the largest parcels of land APS owns for an architects blinged out brand new vanity project. We can’t possibly accept more students...

HB should have moved to office buildings; they play on home school sports, and can walk off campus anytime they want is an office setting would have been ideal.

Agree - put HB in office space.

The Heights building should have been an elementary school.

Kindergarten and first grade have to be on the ground floor. If Montessori were there, that means the 3/4/5 classes and the 1st/2nd/3rd classes would have to be on the ground floor.

Virginia requirements for elementary school playgrounds are two 100'x120' play equipment areas and a 100'x120' hard surface area plus a 180'x140' field.

No need for Montessori so you can unlink the 2/3 from the VPI/K/1.

Get an exception because it's an urban environment. It's not like NYC public schools have enormous outdoor play areas. Or even all of existing APS schools for that matter? ASFS certainly doesn't have a hard surface area now with those trailers. And doesn't have two large play equipment areas.

Montessori at one point offered to go there, but it wouldn't work with their mixed-age classrooms (for those about to say "Montessori" in answer to my next question):

Who in Arlington is going to send their kids to an urban high rise elementary with no outdoor space? With HB they make the argument that no-one can complain about the lack of fields because the kids can play sports at their home schools and are at that school by choice. How would they attract 500-600 elementary students?

I would have sent my kids there because I live down the street. It would have been a better solution than what they are doing now where most of the kids that can walk to key don’t go there because they need to make room for rosslyn.
I would have lived to walk my kids to school there.

Yup. There are tons of kids in the area - more than they can fit into Key even with the whole switcheroo. They should have built an elementary school there.

Yes, we are nearby and would have loved to send our kids there. It’s more important to have ESs located closer to the kids than MSs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meanwhile HB Woodlawn has seen zero growth since moving to the new building. They still plan for just around 80 kids per MS grade and around 115 per HS grade. The lottery only accepted 75 6th graders and 26 9th graders (bringing the total 9th grade class next year to just 107 since they currently have 81 8th graders and I’m sure at least one or two will decide to move to another school). They really need to increase their enrollment to 100 per MS grade as promised when plans for them to move to the new building were being discussed. HS grades should each be at 125 at a minimum. They would still be a small program with these numbers.

HB is a perfect example of APS's fraud, waste and abuse of tax payer dollars.

Just stop it. All those kids would be back in the three comprehensive high schools if HB was still on Vacation Lane (where they wanted to stay) and that building was a neighborhood middle school, as originally proposed when they decided not to sell the land. And building it taller to hold more kids would have been cost-prohibitive. There are no fields.

If you have somewhere to put 900 middle and high schoolers, by all means, let us know where to build that school.

WAH we had to give up one of the largest parcels of land APS owns for an architects blinged out brand new vanity project. We can’t possibly accept more students...

HB should have moved to office buildings; they play on home school sports, and can walk off campus anytime they want is an office setting would have been ideal.

Great, let's walk this one through. Sounds like you are saying they should rent an office building, since APS doesn't own one they can use. So, we're paying commercial rents, in Arlington. And also somehow coming up with several million dollars to convert commercial space to educational space out of a current budget, because you can't use bond funds to pay for improvements to buildings that you don't own. And that conversion will include combining multiple floors order to put in a cafeteria, gym, and theater, not to mention renovating utilities to put in all the other things you need for a high school like science labs, art rooms, etc. And at the end of the lease we will have to pay several million dollars to put it all back to commercial space.

Can you smug people stop recycling these dumb ideas year after year after year? All of this stuff has been floated, and vetted, and determined to be more costly and more complicated and create less capacity and take more time than the alternatives. There are multiple citizen advisory groups and task forces in addition to full-time staff who work on these issues. If it were easier and cheaper to make the Wilson building bigger, or put HB in an office building, or whatever, THEY WOULD HAVE DONE THAT. All of the things they do they do because there is no clear better alternative.

The Heights building cost $100M dollars. They could have done all what you are talking about simply from the interest paid on that $100M.

Do you know what the interest rate is on a AAA muni bond right now? Arlington paid 2.42% on its last issue. That's $2.4M a year in interest. When we built Discovery, Hamm, Fleet, etc. -- it cost $1 million just to buy the desks, white boards, cafeteria tables, markers, library books, and all that junk AFTER the school was built.

FFS, you are making stuff up on. They have to buy those essentially consumable school products in BOTH cases, so why are you tacking it on now?

But in the 4 years of planning and construction of Heights, that would be $10M, which surely could cover a large part of the conversion again of some discount rate excess office space.

And we would save a ton on busing kids from ROSSLYN to Taylor for the next decades, and Rosslyn to Innovation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meanwhile HB Woodlawn has seen zero growth since moving to the new building. They still plan for just around 80 kids per MS grade and around 115 per HS grade. The lottery only accepted 75 6th graders and 26 9th graders (bringing the total 9th grade class next year to just 107 since they currently have 81 8th graders and I’m sure at least one or two will decide to move to another school). They really need to increase their enrollment to 100 per MS grade as promised when plans for them to move to the new building were being discussed. HS grades should each be at 125 at a minimum. They would still be a small program with these numbers.

HB is a perfect example of APS's fraud, waste and abuse of tax payer dollars.

Just stop it. All those kids would be back in the three comprehensive high schools if HB was still on Vacation Lane (where they wanted to stay) and that building was a neighborhood middle school, as originally proposed when they decided not to sell the land. And building it taller to hold more kids would have been cost-prohibitive. There are no fields.

If you have somewhere to put 900 middle and high schoolers, by all means, let us know where to build that school.

I believe many of us are not asking for HB to go away - at least I'm not. We are asking for them to do the same as every other secondary school in Arlington and that is to grow. To take just 75 6th graders and then add just 26 9th graders each year is ridiculous. There should have been some growth after they moved into the new building. You quote 900 MS and HS kids in your post but they don't have nearly that many. Current HB enrollment - as of Feb 2021 - is just 241 MS and 449 HS students. That is just 690 kids for combined 6-12 grades, unbelievably small. Yes, the building is shared with the Shriver program, but that program has just 35 kids in grades 6-12, so that brings the number of students currently in the Heights building up to 725. Building capacity is 775. Why is the HB program not growing if there is capacity for at least 50 more students? Why did they lottery in just 26 9th graders when current 8th grade enrollment is just 82? If they are planning for class sizes to be just 75 -80 in MS and 108-115 in HS that means APS is planning for HB enrollment to remain at just between 657-700? That is no where near the 900 you quoted, or even the official building capacity of 775.

I don't think you're including the Shriver program in your numbers, though those kids are (it's my understanding) also at HB and in HB classes.

I don't quite understand how it works but for example when I first checked my HB 6th grader's classes in the fall (by looking at her "Teams" class list tab) I think it said there were about 86 kids in the 6th grade class, though the enrollment numbers at "HB" just show like 78; however there are another 4 kids in the 6th grade Shriver program. Maybe some kids also dropped out? Not sure how you would bring more kids into a lottery school in the middle of a year during a year like this.

Including the Shriver program numbers adds another 35 kids to the school -- closer to but not at the additional 50 kids you say is your minimum fwiw.

As seen above, the Shriver program numbers were inluded. HB MS and HS = 690. Shriver = 35. Total = 725.

[Anonymous]

I have a 4yr old, is there any chance this will be sorted out in 10 years??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Who in Arlington is going to send their kids to an urban high rise elementary with no outdoor space? With HB they make the argument that no-one can complain about the lack of fields because the kids can play sports at their home schools and are at that school by choice. How would they attract 500-600 elementary students?

I would have sent my kids there because I live down the street. It would have been a better solution than what they are doing now where most of the kids that can walk to key don’t go there because they need to make room for rosslyn.
I would have lived to walk my kids to school there.

And I would have sent my kids to a plain 1300-seat middle school if they'd built one (it was the most cost-effective option), either as a straight middle school or as an expanded HB (and if you're about to say you can't expand HB, then we'd have to end HB, because we need all the seats we can get).

I wish APS would create an FAQ about building, because I am so very tired of people convinced that they have a brilliant solution no one has thought of, such as using office buildings or community centers.