New Budget Recommendations -- eliminate AAP busing and centers

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

If you'd truly read this entire thread, you would have seen the multiple posts by people trying to label AAP a special needs program. I'm not "looking for an easy gotcha" at all. But I will absolutely correct those who insist on making AAP out to be something it's not. As for you - you're exhausting.

Just doing my part to clear out some of clutter. If you're still responding to something someone said pages back it's no wonder you're exhausted. And if you want to continue, do us a favor and indicate to whom you are responding, otherwise you look like a crazy person talking to yourself.

Pg. 20, 9:29

And 10:34

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^^If student capacity increases, buses may very well need to be added to existing routes!

+1

The buses are already full now.

Not in our neighborhood. Plenty of room for the center kids to return to their own base school.

Good for you! Hardly any room on the buses now in our neighborhood.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^^If student capacity increases, buses may very well need to be added to existing routes!

+1

The buses are already full now.

Not in our neighborhood. Plenty of room for the center kids to return to their own base school.

Good for you! Hardly any room on the buses now in our neighborhood.

but don't forget, many kids returning to their base schools no longer need buses. they're close enough to walk -- which again speaks to the absurdity of bloated centers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^^If student capacity increases, buses may very well need to be added to existing routes!

+1

The buses are already full now.

Not in our neighborhood. Plenty of room for the center kids to return to their own base school.

Good for you! Hardly any room on the buses now in our neighborhood.

but don't forget, many kids returning to their base schools no longer need buses. they're close enough to walk -- which again speaks to the absurdity of bloated centers.

Precisely. So many absurdities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^^If student capacity increases, buses may very well need to be added to existing routes!

+1

The buses are already full now.

Not in our neighborhood. Plenty of room for the center kids to return to their own base school.

Good for you! Hardly any room on the buses now in our neighborhood.

Then they will take a bus from the AAP center to yours duh

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:but don't forget, many kids returning to their base schools no longer need buses. they're close enough to walk -- which again speaks to the absurdity of bloated centers.

But don't forget, many kids returning to their base school will need buses... mine would. Our school has been deemed "unwalkable" because of the busy street outside, so everybody gets a bus, and bringing the Center kids back would mean another bus, because ours are full. You can't generalize. There will be costs to eliminating Centers.

FCAG has told its members that the "savings" from eliminating busing & Centers did not include the costs of transporting Center kids to their base schools, nor did it take into account the additional training that would be needed to eliminate Centers entirely and give every school a LLIV program. So those numbers on the Budget Task Force "tool" are inflated. We can argue about how inflated... but they're inflated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:but don't forget, many kids returning to their base schools no longer need buses. they're close enough to walk -- which again speaks to the absurdity of bloated centers.

But don't forget, many kids returning to their base school will need buses... mine would. Our school has been deemed "unwalkable" because of the busy street outside, so everybody gets a bus, and bringing the Center kids back would mean another bus, because ours are full. You can't generalize. There will be costs to eliminating Centers.

FCAG has told its members that the "savings" from eliminating busing & Centers did not include the costs of transporting Center kids to their base schools, nor did it take into account the additional training that would be needed to eliminate Centers entirely and give every school a LLIV program. So those numbers on the Budget Task Force "tool" are inflated. We can argue about how inflated... but they're inflated.

Of course FCAG has fed its members this B.S. Sorry, but these are all ridiculous stalling tactics, at best. The kids who currently attend centers all have base schools assigned to them, including buses that already transport their neighbors to said base school. Eliminating centers would then free up the buses that have been used to transport these kids many miles past their base schools to the centers; these buses could then be put back to use transporting all kids to base schools. It's far simpler than the current wasteful and convoluted routes used to carry a handful of center kids on each bus to the center.

As for center teachers if centers are eliminated, they could then be plugged into the base schools for LLIV. No additional training needed. Honestly, it's as if you people and your hot housed kids can't possibly adapt to life in the real world.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:but don't forget, many kids returning to their base schools no longer need buses. they're close enough to walk -- which again speaks to the absurdity of bloated centers.

But don't forget, many kids returning to their base school will need buses... mine would. Our school has been deemed "unwalkable" because of the busy street outside, so everybody gets a bus, and bringing the Center kids back would mean another bus, because ours are full. You can't generalize. There will be costs to eliminating Centers.

FCAG has told its members that the "savings" from eliminating busing & Centers did not include the costs of transporting Center kids to their base schools, nor did it take into account the additional training that would be needed to eliminate Centers entirely and give every school a LLIV program. So those numbers on the Budget Task Force "tool" are inflated. We can argue about how inflated... but they're inflated.

Of course FCAG has fed its members this B.S. Sorry, but these are all ridiculous stalling tactics, at best. The kids who currently attend centers all have base schools assigned to them, including buses that already transport their neighbors to said base school. Eliminating centers would then free up the buses that have been used to transport these kids many miles past their base schools to the centers; these buses could then be put back to use transporting all kids to base schools. It's far simpler than the current wasteful and convoluted routes used to carry a handful of center kids on each bus to the center.

As for center teachers if centers are eliminated, they could then be plugged into the base schools for LLIV. No additional training needed. Honestly, it's as if you people and your hot housed kids can't possibly adapt to life in the real world.

you would need MANY MANY more AAP teachers if you put it in all the base schools b/c you will have many more classes (they will be made up of 10 AAP-qualified kids and 15-20 non-AAP qualified kids).

Instead of having one AAP teacher for 25 AAP-qualified kids, those 25 kids will be spread among 3 schools (at least).... that means they need three AAP teachers instead of one b/c they will now be adding a lot of non-AAP kids to fill out all those faux level 4 classes.

[Anonymous]

Take for example our center school. Has 4 aap teachers in 5th grade. There are 6 schools that feed into the center. If the aap kids are sent back to the base schools, how many additional teachers do you need? Also, the center school will need to retain a teacher.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
As for center teachers if centers are eliminated, they could then be plugged into the base schools for LLIV. No additional training needed.

Correct.

In addition, there are MANY AAP/gifted education-endorsed teachers who do not teach AAP, so the "pool" of qualified teachers is adequate. For example, at my school, we had approximately half a dozen AAP/GT-endorsed teachers before we even had AAP in our school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
As for center teachers if centers are eliminated, they could then be plugged into the base schools for LLIV. No additional training needed.

Correct.

In addition, there are MANY AAP/gifted education-endorsed teachers who do not teach AAP, so the "pool" of qualified teachers is adequate. For example, at my school, we had approximately half a dozen AAP/GT-endorsed teachers before we even had AAP in our school.

+1. Some AAP parents make it sound like training teachers to educate their snowflakes is more rigorous than a NASA training program. It really is not that big a deal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
As for center teachers if centers are eliminated, they could then be plugged into the base schools for LLIV. No additional training needed.

Correct.

In addition, there are MANY AAP/gifted education-endorsed teachers who do not teach AAP, so the "pool" of qualified teachers is adequate. For example, at my school, we had approximately half a dozen AAP/GT-endorsed teachers before we even had AAP in our school.

+1. Some AAP parents make it sound like training teachers to educate their snowflakes is more rigorous than a NASA training program. It really is not that big a deal.

But, this isn't the same. We have a great base school and absolutely love it. However, most of the teachers are not adequately trained to recognize and appropriately teach highly gifted kids, particularly those that aren't high achievers in a traditional classroom. In 1st grade, the teacher told us our DC couldn't handle the work. This teacher is AAP certified. When we pushed back and said we think DC won't do the work, not that DC can't do the work, she argued with us. Meanwhile, the NNAT score came back perfect. Even then the teacher didn't know how to give her the level of work our DC needed to keep interested and perform. Our DC basically was allowed to read all day.

The center school has AAP teachers that all have master's degrees in spec ed. They have been amazing with our DC and DC has more peers and friends that have similar academic interests. If they move the whole program back to the base schools, it would be difficult on kids like my DC.

Now, some kids who are gifted/highly gifted are also high achievers and they function well in a traditional school. Our other DC is gifted (IQ not as high as sibling, but still well in the gifted range) and the base school works well DC. This DC is not in 3rd grade yet, but with the scores we've seen and the teacher's feedback I have no doubt DC will qualify for AAP. We have discussed keeping this DC at the base school because DC performs well and is happy there.

I'm in the camp that I feel most kids can handle a version of AAP, but there are still a few AAP kids that are in the spec needs category that would highly benefit from teachers and peers that are more appropriate for them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
As for center teachers if centers are eliminated, they could then be plugged into the base schools for LLIV. No additional training needed.

Correct.

In addition, there are MANY AAP/gifted education-endorsed teachers who do not teach AAP, so the "pool" of qualified teachers is adequate. For example, at my school, we had approximately half a dozen AAP/GT-endorsed teachers before we even had AAP in our school.

+1. Some AAP parents make it sound like training teachers to educate their snowflakes is more rigorous than a NASA training program. It really is not that big a deal.

But it does take 12 graduate hours of credit to get the AAP endorsement, so more than a little effort. BTW-- our ES has a couple more teachers certified in teaching AAP than AAP classes, too. Which the AAP parents really like. Getting assigned to the AAP classes is competitive, so the weaker teachers a stuck with GE. Both DCs have consistently had excellent teachers.

[Anonymous]

^^If you want to make snarky comment about my perception of the needs of my "snowflakes," who you've never met, I might argue that your GE kid is fine with a mediocre teacher who wants AAP but never makes the cut. I have never understood, why GE parents feel entitled to insult, put down and name call AAP ES students (who are aged 8-12, FFS, not adults), while AAP parents have to walk on eggshells to make sure they never suggest that GE kids just aren't that exceptional.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Take for example our center school. Has 4 aap teachers in 5th grade. There are 6 schools that feed into the center. If the aap kids are sent back to the base schools, how many additional teachers do you need? Also, the center school will need to retain a teacher.

Apparently, you would need 7 AAP teachers rather than 4 b/c now you have to have one AAP teacher for each of the 6 feeder schools and the host school.