Fleeing APS schools for FFX County

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
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).

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.

You can’t just look at the individual numbers, you have to also look at what residents were accustomed to at the time of each vote. When you’re used to schools bonds around $30-40 million to cover projects at six different schools and then the SB presents you with one for nearly $80 million that primarily goes to one or two school projects, that’s a more shocking jump than if you’re used to $80 million primarily going to one or two major projects and then they present you with $100 million to also primarily go to one or two major projects.

I’m curious to know when you moved to Arlington, because the numbers alone really don’t fully capture the nuance. I moved here in 2002 and my spouse has lived here all their life, so between us we’ve seen a lot of this first hand.

[Anonymous]

Also, it’s important to remember that Arlington’s demographics have changed significantly since 2006 in relevant ways. The big enrollment increases we’ve seen over the past ten years have been primarily due to real estate prices getting high enough to motivate older residents whose kids had aged out of APS to sell their homes to people with young children and move out of the county. There are simply a lot more people in Arlington now who are willing to vote for larger school bonds because their own children will benefit from them than their were before 2006, so the dynamics both of what APS needs and what it can ask for have changed a lot.

[Anonymous]

Last few series of posts are like APS writ large: too much talk and not enough action.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Last few series of posts are like APS writ large: too much talk and not enough action.

“Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” - Winston Churchill

[Anonymous]

TL; DR

- people who are still alive

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:TL; DR

- people who are still alive

Fine, here’s the synopsis. The longer-term history of the current over capacity situation is that voters refused to recognize and acknowledge changing dynamics in the county and how they were affecting APS. As a result, the school,board was unable to respond proactively to those changing conditions without risking voters rejecting the entire bond, so they created compromise solutions voters were more willing to accept. Those compromise solutions were inadequate to the future need, though, and so now were in the position of not nearly enough seats and scrambling to play catch-up.

It is not hard to see this pattern repeated more recently, such as with middle school boundaries. The community refused to acknowledge the reality that plenty of groups had valid reasons to want to be zoned to schools other than Williamsburg but not everyone could be accommodated while maintaining balanced enrollment. As the arguments between communities got uglier, the school board did the best it could to find a solution that would keep the peace, and we ended up with Williamsburg projected to be significantly underenrolled and neighborhood transfers being the only solution in the near to middle term.

The CC high school process seems to be shaping up similarly as well, we’ll have to wait and see where we end up there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Also, it’s important to remember that Arlington’s demographics have changed significantly since 2006 in relevant ways. The big enrollment increases we’ve seen over the past ten years have been primarily due to real estate prices getting high enough to motivate older residents whose kids had aged out of APS to sell their homes to people with young children and move out of the county. There are simply a lot more people in Arlington now who are willing to vote for larger school bonds because their own children will benefit from them than their were before 2006, so the dynamics both of what APS needs and what it can ask for have changed a lot.

If there are a lot more people in Arlington now who are willing to vote for larger school bonds because their own children will benefit from them than their were before 2006, wouldn't the percentage of voters who are voting in favor of the school bonds should be increasing? It hasn't, it has stayed pretty steady in the high 70's to low 80's.
Also, if you look at the voting history on bond referendums since 1980, Arlington voters have said yes to all of them and usually by a large margin. Even the referendum for the Aquatic Center passed with 64% and there was an active drive to defeat that.

Anonymous wrote:The longer-term history of the current over capacity situation is that voters refused to recognize and acknowledge changing dynamics in the county and how they were affecting APS. As a result, the school,board was unable to respond proactively to those changing conditions without risking voters rejecting the entire bond, so they created compromise solutions voters were more willing to accept. Those compromise solutions were inadequate to the future need, though, and so now were in the position of not nearly enough seats and scrambling to play catch-up.

It wasn't the voters who refused to recognize and acknowledge the changing dynamics in the county and how they were affecting APS, it was the School Board. The voters have said yes every time they have been asked to approve funds. During the period that you claim the School Board was worried about risking voters rejecting the bonds, the bonds were approved by 78% and 80%. You repeatedly saying that the voters are too blame is just revisionist history. The School Board screwed up, they were reactive then and they are reactive now. The blame for the voters is that they should have voted them out, but in most cases they are running unopposed.

To answer your earlier question, I moved here in 2000, so I have also seen a lot of it first hand.

[Anonymous]

Since you've been here since 2000, I assume you remember the Yorktown controversy?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:APS has also renovated and built additions to existing schools in addition to building new schools. Their biggest fail IMO was not building the HS's bigger when they had a chance.

Which is really hard to understand. The DMV probably has more demographers than any area of the country, and they couldn't find an accurate estimate of what their capacity needs would be? Or is it that they got the right advice, but simply disregarded it?

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.

Zzzzzzz....

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.

They ain’t facts unless you source them appropriately, chief.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So OP, are you going to flee APS for FCPS?

OP here - and no. Maybe that was a bad choice of words & I should have just said "leaving." I've just read so many posts about parents moving to FFX because of their disillusionment with APS. The geography & number of students make comparing the districts like apples to oranges. But I genuinely wanted to know if FFX was dealing with similar issues in a different way, and if so - is there anything APS can learn and implement to make the district better. Maybe on some level I'm intrigued by FFX schools, but right now we love our short commute too much to move.

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.

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.

The county has mediocre leadership.

[Anonymous]

The county is salivating over amazon and will probably get them. There is no viable plan for how to handle the crush of new students that will bring. I can’t recall an example in American history of a school system that is so close to complete collapse due to bizarre planning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The county is salivating over amazon and will probably get them. There is no viable plan for how to handle the crush of new students that will bring. I can’t recall an example in American history of a school system that is so close to complete collapse due to bizarre planning.

Probably many. We're just seeing this one up close.

America's history is full of boom and bust. I doubt any school system handles those well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The county is salivating over amazon and will probably get them. There is no viable plan for how to handle the crush of new students that will bring. I can’t recall an example in American history of a school system that is so close to complete collapse due to bizarre planning.

Probably many. We're just seeing this one up close.

America's history is full of boom and bust. I doubt any school system handles those well.

It is like a slow motion train wreck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Since you've been here since 2000, I assume you remember the Yorktown controversy?

I believe that you are vastly overstating the "controversy". I am not sure why you are so intent on defending the school board. But want to do so, you are going to need more than your opinion as none of your "facts and stuff" have held up very well so far.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Since you've been here since 2000, I assume you remember the Yorktown controversy?

I believe that you are vastly overstating the "controversy". I am not sure why you are so intent on defending the school board. But want to do so, you are going to need more than your opinion as none of your "facts and stuff" have held up very well so far.

You haven't posted anything inconsistent with what I said. My whole point on the bond thing was that rather than upset voters by pushing for more aggressive growth (which even they theselves couldn't be sure they needed at that point, given the trends), the school board did smaller projects that required smaller bonds that were more likely to be acceptable to voters. That voters approved those bonds is fully consistent with that account.

As for the Yorktown, here are just a few links to articles and letters during that time around the debate, there are many more out there as well:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/group-backs-33-million-school-bond-package?_amp=true
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/10/AR2006071001287.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/07/AR2006060700702.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/25/AR2006102500469.html

This article is from 2004, but it details how overenrollment at the high school level was projected to be resolved by the high school expansions; if you look at what actually happened later, it didnt resolve overenrollment at all because the actual growth rate was much higher than anticipated: http://www.connectionnewspapers.com/news/2004/may/11/school-construction-to-cost-229-million/