Who said there isn't a North-South divide?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:If they moved there and then advocated for things to reduce the FARMS rate (e.g., no more AH in the area, relocating option programs to break up poverty clusters), I would respect that. But when you buy in a 70% FARMS school hoping you'll back-door into a "good" school via the option lottery or neighborhood transfer, don't throw a temper tantrum about the unfairness when it doesn't pan out and then demand that the county give you additional options for getting out of your own neighborhood. I have zero sympathy for that.

I really don't think this perspective is fair and I'm rather tired of hearing/reading it from so many posters on this forum and elsewhere. Not everyone who does not qualify for FRL can afford the most expensive neighborhoods in north Arlington. Or, they have a combination of priorities they want when purchasing a house and making a home for their family - not just the school. Like, size of house, condition of house, size of yard, availability at the time they are purchasing and budget, convenience to public transit, access to major roads for commute to work. Besides, not everyone was born and raised here and knows everything about every school before they buy a home; or have a naive understanding/vision of what academic sacrifices they might actually be making for their child. Not all of us bought here banking on option schools. We bought where we could find a home we like enough and could afford, under the impression that "all Arlington schools are good." And, with few exceptions, they are -- just not equally good.

Secondly, "they" ARE advocating but the SB doesn't give a crap and the AH advocates and providers have such a hold on the CB that "they" can't break through and everyone calls them racists when they try. South Arlington residents can't win no matter what - vitriol and accusations when they speak up, told they only have themselves to blame when they don't speak up.

What are "they" advocating for? What is "their" position on the upcoming boundary process? So far all I see is more elementary option programs and county-wide busing, neither of which is feasible at this point in time (or ever, in the case of the latter). Oh, and one person saying we should reopen the location review and move the immersion schools to Barcroft/Carlin Springs, which would be a good idea to look at further but it's kind of funny to be treating it as something "they" wanted all along considering that while the process was going on, "they" called the NA folks who also supported that plan racists who didn't want brown kids bused into 22207.

You have to admit, it's a little hard to figure out what "we're" supposed to be supporting "them" on here.

Not sure why you think there is one person, or even one group of people acting as a bloc, commenting in here. Who is calling for countywide busing? And as for increasing options, I haven't mentioned that yet, I only talked about placement and admissions policies. However, now that you mention it, if enrollment keeps going up, we may need to increase the number of option schools to keep pace and maintain the current level of access to those highly sought-after programs. Not sure that we're at that point yet, but we will be eventually. I think Key has to move. I have always said so. That area needs a neighborhood school and the program should be located closer the denser populations of native Spanish speakers. Carlin Springs makes more sense than Barcroft. That doesn't mean 22207 is off the hook. I think they're still going to get an option school, simply because there will be too many seats nearby. I don't think any school in that quadrant makes sense as an option program for any other reason.

Go ahead and put ATS at Nottingham, you'll only make it harder for your kid to get in when the application numbers from Tuckahoe, Discovery, and Jamestown skyrocket.

My kids are already in ES. Do you have a better suggestion for what they can do in the NW? I really don't care one way or the other how they solve the NW seat overrun. Not my mess or business.

How about they do it Williamsburg-style, making the schools under capacity and then allow neighborhood transfers up to the transfer cap. That would solve the "overrun," and I'm sure you wouldn't protest since you don't care one way or another.

Well, no, because without a program that is a draw, transfers won't happen in meaningful enough numbers. If you can't fill a school through a boundary, the only thing that makes sense is a program. If you can show that there isn't an "overrun," and that the schools can all be filled with regular neighborhood boundaries, problem solved.

Again, this is a mess of APS's own making. Be angry at them.

[Anonymous]

Side note, there isn't any private school capacity to take all, or even a meaningful proportion of the north Arlington kids at elementary, middle, or high school levels. Parents aren't going to send their kids to new private schools with no reputation en masse. Current private schools are already full and/or competitive. McLean publics are also full, so moving further north is only an option for a small number of people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Side note, there isn't any private school capacity to take all, or even a meaningful proportion of the north Arlington kids at elementary, middle, or high school levels. Parents aren't going to send their kids to new private schools with no reputation en masse. Current private schools are already full and/or competitive. McLean publics are also full, so moving further north is only an option for a small number of people.

Don't interject facts into their fantasy. Facts are not welcome here.

[Anonymous]

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You can do that for middle and high school option programs but the original point the pp made was that elementary option schools help keep the UMC in south Arlington into middle and high school. The transfer reports don't really speak to that phenomenon.

PP will need to provide some evidentiary support for that, because otherwise I'm not terribly convinced that someone who will fight tooth and nail to get their kid out of a 70% FARMS elementary school is going to be totally cool with a 50% FARMS high school.

Hard to quantify, agree. Across SA elementary population as a whole, the farms rate is 50%. That's the same as Wakefield, which they all feed into. So it's reasonable to imagine that Wakefield draws roughly proportionately from SA elementaries. Obviously Henry and Oakridge are the biggest sources of Wakefield's non-farms, since they aren't title 1 schools. So it follows that other schools that aren't title 1 are also sources, and that means option schools. Wakefields nonfarms students must come from somewhere.

That's not a necessary conclusion, in fact that data suggests an alternative explanation that a significant number of non-ED students families may continue to transfer out of their neighborhood schools through high school are are partially off-set by non-ED transfers into Wakefield. Looking again at the 2016-17 transfer data, of the 357 students who transferred out of Wakefield to other Arlington high schools, at bare minimum 139 of them (39% of transfers) were non-ED. More likely the number is closer to 216 (61% of transfers), if not higher.* Wherever the number falls between 139 or 216 (or more), though, it was definitely more than the 118 non-ED students who transferred into Wakefield that year.

* The 139 was calculated by looking at the number of students who transferred from Wakefield to each school and assumed that as many of them as possible were ED given the number of ED students who transferred to each high school. The 216 was calculated by assuming that ED transfers into each school came proportionally from each of the sending schools. So in the case of HB Woodlawn, which draws from all three schools, assume 48% of the ED transfers to HB came from Wakefield, because Wakefield's zone had roughly 48% of the ED population across the three schools at that point. When looking at transfers to W-L, assume transfers from Wakefield accounted for 79% of the ED transfers into W-L, because when looking at just Wakefield and Yorktown, Wakefield has about 79% of the total ED population.

Yes, some non-ed students transfer out of SA/Wakefield, and others (a smaller number) from NA transfer in. But we're taking about a net of well under 200. There are about 1,000 non-ed students at Wakefield. The churn you describe simply isn't big enough to account for where most of those non-ED students came from. Perhaps some portion moved here after going to middle school a different school district. But the simplest explanation is that they came from SA elementary and then middle schools.

None of this means elementary option programs are keeping UMC families in Wakefield. You haven’t shown us anything to support that claim.

It's just not the perfect data for it, but I've supplied evidence that makes it a reasonable conclusion. Why do you think we even have option schools? THe first one, Key, was established to promote integration - that was its stated goal and APS own website says so.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they moved there and then advocated for things to reduce the FARMS rate (e.g., no more AH in the area, relocating option programs to break up poverty clusters), I would respect that. But when you buy in a 70% FARMS school hoping you'll back-door into a "good" school via the option lottery or neighborhood transfer, don't throw a temper tantrum about the unfairness when it doesn't pan out and then demand that the county give you additional options for getting out of your own neighborhood. I have zero sympathy for that.

I really don't think this perspective is fair and I'm rather tired of hearing/reading it from so many posters on this forum and elsewhere. Not everyone who does not qualify for FRL can afford the most expensive neighborhoods in north Arlington. Or, they have a combination of priorities they want when purchasing a house and making a home for their family - not just the school. Like, size of house, condition of house, size of yard, availability at the time they are purchasing and budget, convenience to public transit, access to major roads for commute to work. Besides, not everyone was born and raised here and knows everything about every school before they buy a home; or have a naive understanding/vision of what academic sacrifices they might actually be making for their child. Not all of us bought here banking on option schools. We bought where we could find a home we like enough and could afford, under the impression that "all Arlington schools are good." And, with few exceptions, they are -- just not equally good.

Secondly, "they" ARE advocating but the SB doesn't give a crap and the AH advocates and providers have such a hold on the CB that "they" can't break through and everyone calls them racists when they try. South Arlington residents can't win no matter what - vitriol and accusations when they speak up, told they only have themselves to blame when they don't speak up.

What are "they" advocating for? What is "their" position on the upcoming boundary process? So far all I see is more elementary option programs and county-wide busing, neither of which is feasible at this point in time (or ever, in the case of the latter). Oh, and one person saying we should reopen the location review and move the immersion schools to Barcroft/Carlin Springs, which would be a good idea to look at further but it's kind of funny to be treating it as something "they" wanted all along considering that while the process was going on, "they" called the NA folks who also supported that plan racists who didn't want brown kids bused into 22207.

You have to admit, it's a little hard to figure out what "we're" supposed to be supporting "them" on here.

Not sure why you think there is one person, or even one group of people acting as a bloc, commenting in here. Who is calling for countywide busing? And as for increasing options, I haven't mentioned that yet, I only talked about placement and admissions policies. However, now that you mention it, if enrollment keeps going up, we may need to increase the number of option schools to keep pace and maintain the current level of access to those highly sought-after programs. Not sure that we're at that point yet, but we will be eventually. I think Key has to move. I have always said so. That area needs a neighborhood school and the program should be located closer the denser populations of native Spanish speakers. Carlin Springs makes more sense than Barcroft. That doesn't mean 22207 is off the hook. I think they're still going to get an option school, simply because there will be too many seats nearby. I don't think any school in that quadrant makes sense as an option program for any other reason.

Go ahead and put ATS at Nottingham, you'll only make it harder for your kid to get in when the application numbers from Tuckahoe, Discovery, and Jamestown skyrocket.

My kids are already in ES. Do you have a better suggestion for what they can do in the NW? I really don't care one way or the other how they solve the NW seat overrun. Not my mess or business.

How about they do it Williamsburg-style, making the schools under capacity and then allow neighborhood transfers up to the transfer cap. That would solve the "overrun," and I'm sure you wouldn't protest since you don't care one way or another.

Well, no, because without a program that is a draw, transfers won't happen in meaningful enough numbers. If you can't fill a school through a boundary, the only thing that makes sense is a program. If you can show that there isn't an "overrun," and that the schools can all be filled with regular neighborhood boundaries, problem solved.

Again, this is a mess of APS's own making. Be angry at them.

So UMC folks in the Randolph zone will pay for private school or move if they can't get out of Randolph via an option school, but they won't take a transfer to a NA school?

The arguments are falling apart here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

So UMC folks in the Randolph zone will pay for private school or move if they can't get out of Randolph via an option school, but they won't take a transfer to a NA school?

The arguments are falling apart here.

well quite frankly, going to an option school vs transferring to a different neighborhood school are totally different choices- and I would say that for the vast majority of people, the option is going to be much more appealing.

1. An option school means that you get transportation vs. having to provide your own transportation. This is a huge difference.
2. An option school means that your child's classmates are from all over the county vs all from a different neighborhood that you don't live in.

I would say that private is also a fairly different animal- I have no experience with private but I know friends in private are constantly doing carpooling-- and the schools help facilitate this. That's hard to make work to a public neighborhood school that is not your neighborhood.

[Anonymous]

Also if we live in S Arlington we really don’t want to be isolated at school with only N Arlington folk. Sorry I want my kid at a decent school but we chose S Arlington over N Arlington in part for the down to earth feel and economic and racial diversity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

So UMC folks in the Randolph zone will pay for private school or move if they can't get out of Randolph via an option school, but they won't take a transfer to a NA school?

The arguments are falling apart here.

well quite frankly, going to an option school vs transferring to a different neighborhood school are totally different choices- and I would say that for the vast majority of people, the option is going to be much more appealing.

1. An option school means that you get transportation vs. having to provide your own transportation. This is a huge difference.
2. An option school means that your child's classmates are from all over the county vs all from a different neighborhood that you don't live in.

I would say that private is also a fairly different animal- I have no experience with private but I know friends in private are constantly doing carpooling-- and the schools help facilitate this. That's hard to make work to a public neighborhood school that is not your neighborhood.

You'd pay tens of thousands of dollars for more convenient carpooling?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Also if we live in S Arlington we really don’t want to be isolated at school with only N Arlington folk. Sorry I want my kid at a decent school but we chose S Arlington over N Arlington in part for the down to earth feel and economic and racial diversity.

Dp- So you were always planning to send jr to the neighborhood school? You are just advocating for a better mix through out the county and in south Arlington in particular?
If yes- I get that.
Someone up thread was saying that spreading out poverty through out sa ( all elementary schools farms % around 50) didn’t address NA- implying it wasn’t an acceptable solution. I think that’s a great way to keep Henry, Hoffman Boston, and Oakridge from being Tittle 1. If that’s your goal.... we get it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

So UMC folks in the Randolph zone will pay for private school or move if they can't get out of Randolph via an option school, but they won't take a transfer to a NA school?

The arguments are falling apart here.

well quite frankly, going to an option school vs transferring to a different neighborhood school are totally different choices- and I would say that for the vast majority of people, the option is going to be much more appealing.

1. An option school means that you get transportation vs. having to provide your own transportation. This is a huge difference.
2. An option school means that your child's classmates are from all over the county vs all from a different neighborhood that you don't live in.

I would say that private is also a fairly different animal- I have no experience with private but I know friends in private are constantly doing carpooling-- and the schools help facilitate this. That's hard to make work to a public neighborhood school that is not your neighborhood.

Also, the massively overcrowded area is going to be in Clarendon/Courthouse/Rosslyn. As a person living in this area who works in DC, I can assure you that I have no interest in driving to Tuckahoe or Nottingham twice a day. It has to be a program with transportation to get people to sign up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
You can do that for middle and high school option programs but the original point the pp made was that elementary option schools help keep the UMC in south Arlington into middle and high school. The transfer reports don't really speak to that phenomenon.

PP will need to provide some evidentiary support for that, because otherwise I'm not terribly convinced that someone who will fight tooth and nail to get their kid out of a 70% FARMS elementary school is going to be totally cool with a 50% FARMS high school.

Hard to quantify, agree. Across SA elementary population as a whole, the farms rate is 50%. That's the same as Wakefield, which they all feed into. So it's reasonable to imagine that Wakefield draws roughly proportionately from SA elementaries. Obviously Henry and Oakridge are the biggest sources of Wakefield's non-farms, since they aren't title 1 schools. So it follows that other schools that aren't title 1 are also sources, and that means option schools. Wakefields nonfarms students must come from somewhere.

That's not a necessary conclusion, in fact that data suggests an alternative explanation that a significant number of non-ED students families may continue to transfer out of their neighborhood schools through high school are are partially off-set by non-ED transfers into Wakefield. Looking again at the 2016-17 transfer data, of the 357 students who transferred out of Wakefield to other Arlington high schools, at bare minimum 139 of them (39% of transfers) were non-ED. More likely the number is closer to 216 (61% of transfers), if not higher.* Wherever the number falls between 139 or 216 (or more), though, it was definitely more than the 118 non-ED students who transferred into Wakefield that year.

* The 139 was calculated by looking at the number of students who transferred from Wakefield to each school and assumed that as many of them as possible were ED given the number of ED students who transferred to each high school. The 216 was calculated by assuming that ED transfers into each school came proportionally from each of the sending schools. So in the case of HB Woodlawn, which draws from all three schools, assume 48% of the ED transfers to HB came from Wakefield, because Wakefield's zone had roughly 48% of the ED population across the three schools at that point. When looking at transfers to W-L, assume transfers from Wakefield accounted for 79% of the ED transfers into W-L, because when looking at just Wakefield and Yorktown, Wakefield has about 79% of the total ED population.

Yes, some non-ed students transfer out of SA/Wakefield, and others (a smaller number) from NA transfer in. But we're taking about a net of well under 200. There are about 1,000 non-ed students at Wakefield. The churn you describe simply isn't big enough to account for where most of those non-ED students came from. Perhaps some portion moved here after going to middle school a different school district. But the simplest explanation is that they came from SA elementary and then middle schools.

None of this means elementary option programs are keeping UMC families in Wakefield. You haven’t shown us anything to support that claim.

It's just not the perfect data for it, but I've supplied evidence that makes it a reasonable conclusion. Why do you think we even have option schools? THe first one, Key, was established to promote integration - that was its stated goal and APS own website says so.

What evidence did you provide? All we've established is that even at the high school level, UMC students in SA are transferring out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

So UMC folks in the Randolph zone will pay for private school or move if they can't get out of Randolph via an option school, but they won't take a transfer to a NA school?

The arguments are falling apart here.

well quite frankly, going to an option school vs transferring to a different neighborhood school are totally different choices- and I would say that for the vast majority of people, the option is going to be much more appealing.

1. An option school means that you get transportation vs. having to provide your own transportation. This is a huge difference.
2. An option school means that your child's classmates are from all over the county vs all from a different neighborhood that you don't live in.

I would say that private is also a fairly different animal- I have no experience with private but I know friends in private are constantly doing carpooling-- and the schools help facilitate this. That's hard to make work to a public neighborhood school that is not your neighborhood.

Also, the massively overcrowded area is going to be in Clarendon/Courthouse/Rosslyn. As a person living in this area who works in DC, I can assure you that I have no interest in driving to Tuckahoe or Nottingham twice a day. It has to be a program with transportation to get people to sign up.

Then we're good, you'd rather keep your child at Randolph. Problem solved!

[Anonymous]

So to dig more into this theory that option programs keep UMC kids in Wakefield, I decided to look at the transfer numbers a bit more closely. On their face, it seems like the argument may have merit. Comparing Wakefield to its feeder elementary schools, Wakefield has a transfer rate of 22%, while its Title I feeder schools have significantly higher transfer rates:

Abingdon - 41%
Barcroft - 47%
Drew - 41%
Hoffman Boston - 28%
Randolph - 32%
Weighted average - 39%

The weighted average transfer rate of all elementary schools feeding mostly/entirely into Wakefield, which also include Henry (17%) and Oakrigde (23%) is 33%.

But something interesting happens if you dig into where people are transferring to. A lot of the transfers from those Title I elementary schools are to *other* Title I schools, suggestings these transfers are not to avoid poverty/Title I status, but rather are for other reasons suggest as programmatic differences and logistics. If you back out the transfers between Title I schools and look only at the transfers between Title I and non-Title I schools, here are the revised transfer rates for those schools:

Abingdon - 32%
Barcroft - 29%
Drew - 19%
Hoffman Boston - 17%
Randolph - 19%
Weighted average - 25%

This change also brings down the weighted average for all of the elementary schools feeding mostly/entirely into Wakefield to 23%, only a point off from the Wakefield transfer rate. This difference in the transfer rates tends to undermine the idea that the ability to transfer out of a Title I elementary school keeps UMC kids in the area to eventually attend Wakefield in significant numbers (sure, I'm sure there are some for which this holds true, but it doesn't appear to be a substantial effect). It is, however, consistent with the theory that UMC families who transfer out of their Title I elementary schools to non-Title I schools tend to continue to transfer out of their Title I-equivalent high school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
You can do that for middle and high school option programs but the original point the pp made was that elementary option schools help keep the UMC in south Arlington into middle and high school. The transfer reports don't really speak to that phenomenon.

PP will need to provide some evidentiary support for that, because otherwise I'm not terribly convinced that someone who will fight tooth and nail to get their kid out of a 70% FARMS elementary school is going to be totally cool with a 50% FARMS high school.

Hard to quantify, agree. Across SA elementary population as a whole, the farms rate is 50%. That's the same as Wakefield, which they all feed into. So it's reasonable to imagine that Wakefield draws roughly proportionately from SA elementaries. Obviously Henry and Oakridge are the biggest sources of Wakefield's non-farms, since they aren't title 1 schools. So it follows that other schools that aren't title 1 are also sources, and that means option schools. Wakefields nonfarms students must come from somewhere.

That's not a necessary conclusion, in fact that data suggests an alternative explanation that a significant number of non-ED students families may continue to transfer out of their neighborhood schools through high school are are partially off-set by non-ED transfers into Wakefield. Looking again at the 2016-17 transfer data, of the 357 students who transferred out of Wakefield to other Arlington high schools, at bare minimum 139 of them (39% of transfers) were non-ED. More likely the number is closer to 216 (61% of transfers), if not higher.* Wherever the number falls between 139 or 216 (or more), though, it was definitely more than the 118 non-ED students who transferred into Wakefield that year.

* The 139 was calculated by looking at the number of students who transferred from Wakefield to each school and assumed that as many of them as possible were ED given the number of ED students who transferred to each high school. The 216 was calculated by assuming that ED transfers into each school came proportionally from each of the sending schools. So in the case of HB Woodlawn, which draws from all three schools, assume 48% of the ED transfers to HB came from Wakefield, because Wakefield's zone had roughly 48% of the ED population across the three schools at that point. When looking at transfers to W-L, assume transfers from Wakefield accounted for 79% of the ED transfers into W-L, because when looking at just Wakefield and Yorktown, Wakefield has about 79% of the total ED population.

Yes, some non-ed students transfer out of SA/Wakefield, and others (a smaller number) from NA transfer in. But we're taking about a net of well under 200. There are about 1,000 non-ed students at Wakefield. The churn you describe simply isn't big enough to account for where most of those non-ED students came from. Perhaps some portion moved here after going to middle school a different school district. But the simplest explanation is that they came from SA elementary and then middle schools.

None of this means elementary option programs are keeping UMC families in Wakefield. You haven’t shown us anything to support that claim.

It's just not the perfect data for it, but I've supplied evidence that makes it a reasonable conclusion. Why do you think we even have option schools? THe first one, Key, was established to promote integration - that was its stated goal and APS own website says so.

What evidence did you provide? All we've established is that even at the high school level, UMC students in SA are transferring out.

We've established that a couple hundred non ed students transfer out, a somewhat smaller number, less than 200, transfer in. There are 1000 non ed students at Wakefield. That means something like 800 non ed kids are zoned for Wakefield and go there. We don't know their personal educational histories, so we can't for sure say where they were living or where they were going to school before this point, so on those narrow terms, no, I can't prove it. but it's reasonable to think that most non ed students at Wakefield went to Oakridge, Henry, and the option schools because non-ed students are a minority at most other SA neighborhood schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We've established that a couple hundred non ed students transfer out, a somewhat smaller number, less than 200, transfer in. There are 1000 non ed students at Wakefield. That means something like 800 non ed kids are zoned for Wakefield and go there. We don't know their personal educational histories, so we can't for sure say where they were living or where they were going to school before this point, so on those narrow terms, no, I can't prove it. but it's reasonable to think that most non ed students at Wakefield went to Oakridge, Henry, and the option schools because non-ed students are a minority at most other SA neighborhood schools.

What's your response to the poster at 11:40?