Gotcha, thank you! I’m not sure how I feel about option schools but it’s kind of a shame to shrink an immersion program - and Spanish in particular- if it’s working/wanted. |
Why can’t my neighborhood school shrink it’s K class. That’s a nice trick. |
New poster and I agree. My kids are at Claremont, and we were told the kindergarten classes were shrunk from 6 to 4 due to over crowding. I'm skeptical because its not like immersion programs suddenly become overcrowded. Few kids transfer in because you ahve to be proficient in Spanish to join as years progress. The school had been overcrowded for a long while. What made this current year the year to suddenly drop two whole kindergarten classes? Why move Key to a smaller building? There are long wait lists ever year. This past year I've heard the only kids who got spots were siblings of kids already at the school. Maybe due toe the pandemic neighborhood schools hard more capacity to absorb kids who would have preferred going to immersion this year, but APS hasn't been transparent about it AT ALL. |
#boundarychange |
The people on the waitlists are all native English speakers. If you don’t have the right balance of English and Spanish speakers enrolling, the waitlist is irrelevant. |
They have abandoned ithat model of 50-50, they should accept more people off the waitlist and not just keep it at capacity. Every option school should be at least as crowded as the most overcapacity neighborhood school. |
50-50 refers to the split between Spanish and English instruction during the school day. Not the class demographics. |
^ but I agree with you that option schools should be over capacity if neighborhood schools are over. The option schools should be used to equalize capacity to the extent possible. |
To better help balance, it would seem to make sense to move an option School to the areas where there are under capacity schools with overlapping walk zones. E.g. discovery, tuckahoe, Nottingham |
Because everyone in the neighborhood school boundary is entitled to go there, duh. If people would cooperate with boundary changes, it wouldn't be as big a problem. |
Why would that make sense when it is so far from families in places like the Pentagon City neighborhoods? |
NP. It doesn't. But it is the approach APS will take because they are incapable of exerting leadership by balancing enrollment through other means like boundaries or more avant-garde approaches like ranked choice admissions. |
I love all the...if people would just cooperate with boundary adjustments.
1. Pay attention when they do boundary adjustments that do not directly impact you and speak up and say the things you are saying and advocate for bigger-picture thinking. So few people do this. Which is why... 2. Wait until these changes affect your school. Because somehow in the history of these boundary changes (and I've been hanging around this stuff for too long due to the age of my kids), no school community behaves well. The loudest parents and in particular the PTAs are self-interested, loud, and atrociously obnoxious. |
Well, have your school move to a smaller building and APS will need to adjust the boundaries. It wasn't arbitrary--the size of the building is smaller than the prior building. |
It would be one thing if APS made sensible recommendations. Their proposals often border on nuts. The last round proposed moving Glebe from 110% capacity to 145% capacity while Nottingham and Discovery were below 90%. At Glebe this would have meant classes in hallways and covering the small basketball court with more trailers. It was a ridiculous proposal. If a school community sits quietly by then the have to deal with the consequences of APS not having one shred of common sense. |