Fleeing APS schools for FFX County
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Anonymous
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Fairfax County isn’t experiencing the same kind of growth. In fact, they believe they may have peaked for elementary numbers:
https://www.fcps.edu/sites/default/files/media/pdf/Adopted%20FY%202019-23%20CIP.pdf Meanwhile, growth in Arlington is still kicking. And attrition rates are lower than they typically have been in the past: https://www.arlingtonmagazine.com/crowd-control/ |
Anonymous
| I went to Fairfax schools for a few years, and I really don’t think my kids’ Arlington schools are as rigorous and demanding as my Fairfax schools. But there are so many other reasons not to flee. |
Anonymous
I think you need to look back at the history of APS over the past few decades to understand it. APS enrollment peaked in in the early 1960s around 26,500 students and then began a period of decline marked by enrollment increases for a year or two followed by several years of declining enrollment. During this time, APS closed several schools that simply weren't needed anymore and turned those parcels over to the county so that APS didn't have to carry the maintenance expense of buildings it wasn't using. School enrollment finally bottomed out in the 1980s, during which time it bounced up and down around 15,000, a decrease of over 10,000 students from its high 20 years earlier. There wasn't a single dedicated school bond referendum from 1974 to 1987 because there was no need for major construction projects. Around 1990, school enrollment started to rise again, peaking at around 18,000 students in 2001/2002. During this period of increase, voters (especially those whose children had already aged out of APS) resisted the idea of putting too much money into expanding school capacity because history told them enrollment was just going to fall again and they didn't want a lot of tax money wasted on creating new school seats that wouldn't be needed in a few years. Therefore, the school board (who also couldn't be certain enrollment increases would continue) only planned and requested bond funding for more modest projects, because they didn't want to risk having a bond fail. Sure enough, after 2001/02, school population started to fall again, confirming for those voters that we shouldn't be putting money into expanding capacity. As recently as 2006, the Yorktown renovation was very controversial because, among other reasons, people felt it was a waste of money to spending $115k expanding a high school when school enrollment was declining. That turned around the next year, though, and since 2007 we have seen enormous increases every year in enrollment. Voters initially still resisted the idea that we needed more school seats because history told them enrollment was just going to fall again so we should make due with trailers in the meantime. But regardless of voter support, keeping up with the pace of growth over the past decade simply wasn't feasible. APS enrollment has increased by nearly 10,000 students in the past ten years (a more than 50% increase over that period to a record high of about 27,000 students), the equivalent of about 15 elementary schools, 10 middle schools, or 4-5 high schools; roughly an entire school's worth of additional students each year. That is extremely aggressive growth for any school system to manage. |
Anonymous
This is correct. FCPS has seen growth during the past ten years ranging from about 0.1-2% per year and the average rate of increase has been falling over that period. APS's growth rates during the same period have been steadily 3-5% per year with no sign of dropping off. |
Anonymous
All the more reason why APS needed to add more seats and why its failure to do so ensures future high school students will have bad options. |
Anonymous
See 8:00. |
Anonymous
Zzzzzzz.... |
Anonymous
I know, it's so boring to educate yourself with facts and stuff. All the cool kids just spout off ignorant nonsense and expect others to take them seriously. |
Anonymous
| ^ more rationalizations than facts |
Anonymous
I look forward to your substantive, fact-based rebuttal. |
Anonymous
I bought my first house in Clarendon 20 years ago, when I was young and single and Clarendon was still kind of dump and houses were affordable. Schools were not important, bars opening in Clarendon were. Arlington county knew the plans of revitalization of Clarendon and make no investments in 2000 when all that was going on. Fast forward to two kids in ES, making a killing on that first home and two others and now paying over 20k in property taxes alone on the house we live in to this county I do expect more from APS. Williamsburg's "temporary" trailers have been there for like 10 years now. Two neighbors have blocked lighting the fields for that same time period, further limiting sports options on one of the nicest turfs the county has. I am glad we at least pay our teacher's above average, but managing what resources APS does have and investing for the long term is not rocket science. Cannot wait to see what happens when another 2000-3000 condos are complete in Ballston. Maybe APS will have classes in tethered airships. |
Anonymous
Arlington got drunk on the favorable publicity about its transit-oriented development in past decades. Its school planning has been atrocious and APS schools, especially the high schools that aren’t that great now, will only get worse. |
Anonymous
The story that you are trying to tell about the voters being resistant to putting money into schools is not supported by the results of the school bond referendums. Since 1998, school bonds have passes with an average of 81% voting yes. The lowest passed with 73% of the votes. I am not seeing the resistant that you are talking about. In contrast, during the 60's and 70's four bonds failed and the eight that passed only had an average of 60% voting yes. |
Anonymous
Like I said, because there was a resistance to investing significant sums in expanding capacity, the school board didn’t pursue big-ticket expansion projects that risked voters rejecting the bonds, they stuck with more modest projects (and substantially smaller bonds than we’ve seen in the last few referenda) that weren’t going to ruffle as many feathers and bring out anti-bond voters who otherwise weren’t motivated to show up at the polls (let’s not forget how dysmal Arlington’s voter turnout typically is). Going back to the Yorktown example, in retrospect the degree of political whiplash around that project was amazing (and I was among the people who did the 180, I won’t pretend I was more enlightened than everyone else at the time). In 2006 there was so much heat from the public about the cost of the Yorktown renovation, in significant part because, as I said, enrollment had been declining for several years and it seemed like such a potential waste of taxpayer dollars. All kinds of letters to the editor in the various papers, WaPo covered it repeatedly, some civic associations got involved not just in advocating on the bond itself but also in the whole bonding framework, it was a big deal. But then as the phases were completed, the school was so quickly over capacity again that people started attacking the school board for its poor planning in not adding even more seats to the project (and for not doing the same at W-L as well). |
Anonymous
The voters approved $79mm in 2002 with 78% of 56,135 total votes and $78mm in 2004 with 80% of 89,209 total votes. Using a simple CPI calculator, those bonds would have been around $100mm in 2014 and over $110mm in 2016. And the CPI understates the increase in construction costs. The last two school bonds approved were $106mm in 2014 with 75% of 66,328 total votes and $139mm in 2016 with 79% of 116,067 total votes. So no, the bonds were not substantially smaller than we’ve seen in the last few referenda. They also received a higher percentage of yes votes than the most recent referenda. |