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Exactly, right now they can hide it if there is one school. And they benefit from it. There are a lot of solutions and a lottery would make a lot of sense. |
Even if there was the political will to begin building more high schools now (it does not exist now) it would take a long time to complete the process. I am interested in seeing what steps can be taken to alleviate the congestion at the Bradlee Shopping Center.
With so many students, I think ACHS needs to move to staggered arrival times and staggered dismissal times. Additionally, there needs to be multiple staggered lunch periods and students should not be allowed to leave the premises but eat in hallways or wherever they choose on campus. There should not be a 74-minute lunch period where students can come and go as they please. And APD and the shopping center security need to patrol around the clock during lunch and dismissal times. |
So no data? And your response to the segregation is "it sucks"? |
Each year brings one new big, terrible idea. Last year it was the totally mismanaged 4x4 schedule, in which AP classes, math, world languages, and more were crammed into 4 months. Stupid on its face, but it also meant some kids went the better part of an entire calendar year without continuity in their subject. This year, it was "Lunch and Learn" whatever the F that means. |
Greatschools captures this quite well - https://www.greatschools.org/virginia/alexandria/80-T.C.-Williams-High-School/#Race_ethnicity*Advanced_coursework*Percentage_AP_enrolled_grades_9-12 |
+1 to all this. Where there's a will there's a way and it needs to be done. Enough with the excuses.
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I think staggered schedules may need to be considered if they continue insisting on one high school only as enrollment grows. I think I’ve heard of some large school districts even having a.m. and p.m. split schedules, which might help students who need jobs to support their families. That might require a longer school year to get enough instructional hours, and there are some benefits to that as well. But, a better long-term solution really would be a second high school and different programming options (STEM, arts, trade school) with a lottery system. |
Because progressives in Alexandria believe it's impossible to build more high schools without creating segregated schools. Therefore, anyone advocating for more high schools is a racist and you have to cancel racists. |
All the while benefitting from the current 4,000 person high school that is segregated. |
By that logic, we should also have one elementary school and one middle school. How about a single k-12 for 15,000? Such nonsense. Should there also be only one fire station? One public park? |
That's not what people mean when they talk about segregation within schools. They mean that poor, POC students are under represented in honors classes, AP classes, etc. More affluent, white kids are getting a different school experience with less disruptive students in their classes, lots of activities that look good on a college application, etc. But that is a problem that starts long before 9th grade and is very apparent when you look at elementary and middle school SOL pass rates by race and income level. It's not like you can take a kid who has been struggling through math since they were 5 and drop them in AP Calculus their senior year and claim victory. |
This ^^ |
One of the missed discussions in class segregation is the make up of standard courses. The school system has worked to get more diversity into AP and honors courses, but that is where the work ends. Walk into a standard course and you will see NO white students. It is not like that in other districts such as Arlington. This needs to be a bigger discussion. |
Any student can sign up for honors or AP classes. They can't be forced out of the class either. There are POC students in those classes. If the school demanded that every student take one of the classes, then that would bring outcries of being unfair and militant. There is only so much the school do. Even if they recommend the student take the class, beg the student to take the class, the student doesn't have to do it. And before you start spewing the progressive rhetoric, please use common sense. Alexandria has many students coming in each year who are recently arrived immigrants or have arrived only a few years earlier. If a student arrives at high school age, the first focus in school is to help them learn English, which they would need to succeed in other courses. Learning English as a teen isn't easy and then to learn complex subjects in a language you barely understand is even more difficult. So you have to accept that there are going to be a large portion of students who just need to learn the basics not because they are being railroaded, not because of their ethnicity, not because no one thinks their smart, but because they have to learn the basics and get up to speed BEFORE they can tackle tougher course and that takes time. Hispanic students make up the majority of POC students btw. |