the Key/ASFS building switch...
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Anonymous
Oh, come on. I'm a Nottingham parent so I don't have a dog in this fight, but this is a bit rich. |
Anonymous
| They rightfully want things to change for the better for south Arlington. Tired of hearing about ASFS. |
Anonymous
Sure. There's plenty of room at the new Drew. Let's just bus you right past Fleet to Drew? That ok with you? That's what's needed. Fleets opening simply moves the dividing line from route 50 to Columbia pike. |
Anonymous
Barcroft and Long Branch's zones meet at the corners, we could also send North Arlington kids across 50 there. If they don't want the year-round calendar, they can transfer to Randolph. |
Anonymous
The positive about 2 immersion schools close by and centrally locatesd is that they could do some joint special events. They could also optimize buses so that one bus could pick up for both schools - probably cut out a lot of extra option school buses. |
Anonymous
They wouldn't do one bus picking up simultaneously for two elementary schools because there's too much of a risk there of students ending up at the wrong school. If they did the common application pool, they said they envisioned a system where students who accepted spots in the program would be assigned to a school so as to minimize the number of bus routes for the program. So if your neighborhood already has a handful of kids who go to one school, that's probably where your kid would also go so they all could ride the same bus, even if you would prefer the other school for some reason. |
Anonymous
It’s only long enough to accommodate about three cars at a time, but yeah. There’s not a lot of parking in the neighborhood and the lot is just for teachers and bus pickup. (Also, sorry for possibly misidentifying you, PP. I probably see you at pickup! |
Anonymous
Huh. I thought they were really, really concerned about the well being of immersion in the county. |
Anonymous
puhleeze! fat chance |
Anonymous
Nottingham parent or not, the PP she was responding to doesn't seem to understand South Arlington. Should kids be crossing 50? Maybe, but not just so that Cherrydale can have a walkable school. If moving kids from Rosslyn into Long Branch actually helped South Arlington, they would be supportive. It doesn't, in fact, it would take seats needed for capacity relief at some very overcrowded South Arlington schools. This new school and the resulting shuffling around of the Montessori program and boundaries are all the capacity relief South Arlington is going to get for a very long while (so we've been told). They need to get it right, and there's the added variable of very disparate economic situations at neighboring schools. It's different from most of North Arlington in that regard, and so it's going to be more fraught and more difficult for Staff, and they don't need the added distraction of figuring out the Key/ASFS thing right now. Should we be thinking of the County as one? Probably. But it rings a bit hollow when this idea of coming together is only brought up in this context. If someone really wants to bridge the divide, they have to come to the table with something that is mutually beneficial. This is not that. |
Anonymous
AMEN. Standing ovation! +1 million! |
Anonymous
What's that mean, "hogged by specific neighborhoods?" If you mean only kids from certain boundaries have a realistic shot at option schools, well that used to be the case but is no longer. It's a blind lottery, just like DC or MoCo, and open to kids across the County. If you mean option schools shouldn't take up neighborhood seats, you're not making sense. The option schools have to go in existing buildings, which are in neighborhoods. So if it's not in YOUR neighborhood, they're going in someone else's. There is zero impetus to build a new school for Immersion. And APS is not getting rid of Immersion, so let's not even travel down that route. |
Anonymous
That's not what I was saying. ASFS was a neighborhood school/team hybrid and Key was a hybrid of sorts, too, being both an option and a neighborhood school. If you lived in the Key zone, you had guaranteed admittance to either school. I have seen comments that people are angry that they don't still have those guarantees, hence the "hogging" comment. The policy had to change, it was right for it to change, because kids should have equal opportunity to attend programs regardless of where they live. If they had made Key a purely neighborhood school last year, that would've meant moving immersion sooner. Is that what you are saying? They should've made the switch already? They can't both be option schools. To make ASFS the neighborhood school but keep Key countywide doesn't seem to make sense from a transportation perspective. They'd have to draw odd boundaries, increasing transportation costs, to make it work. If this were meeting some other objective, like balancing diversity, or maintaining access for Latino populations, it might make sense, but it doesn't appear to do either of those things. I suspect the one-time cost of moving the program is lower than the ongoing cost of keeping it where it is. I don't think they're doing this for sh**s and giggles. |
Anonymous
| The ASFS PTA is already taking the position that the Key building will need hundreds of thousands of dollars of upgrades/rennovations to house their program. This appears to be an expensive move, particularly since they will have to add more trailers at ASFS to house the immersion program, at least in the short run. |
Anonymous
| House their program? They are just a neighborhood school. T I have trouble believing they need several hundred thousand dollars to move a science lab. And if there's no room for the science lab, that's just how it goes. Plenty of schools have had to give up nice-to-have rooms or extra classrooms due to overcrowding. Spare us. |