LAST APS meeting on new high school and countywide rezoning (4/4, 7 pm Yorktown)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not surprised to hear this from an ATS parent. This is not about the parental experience or engagement. Choice programs should serve the entire community, not just those in the know enough to seek it out and enter the lottery. The super lottery is a great way of making the options concrete and encouraging families to learn about the opportunties and consider enrolling. Of course ATS parents oppose this. I bet HB parents oppose it too. It will require those countywide schools to do more to serve the entire county. Imagine that.

Wow - that's incredibly condescending to families who you believe don't "know enough".

Np- ummm.. no. It wasn't. It's exactly how things work and it's exactly what ATS and HB parents count on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So glad we saw this sh** storm coming and moved to McLean. Can anyone honestly say they are happy with any of these options?

I'm happy with the ES and MS options. HS is still an issue, but not terrible. We will figure it out. The good news though is that we don't have to go through life as a smug tw@t. So there's that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not surprised to hear this from an ATS parent. This is not about the parental experience or engagement. Choice programs should serve the entire community, not just those in the know enough to seek it out and enter the lottery. The super lottery is a great way of making the options concrete and encouraging families to learn about the opportunties and consider enrolling. Of course ATS parents oppose this. I bet HB parents oppose it too. It will require those countywide schools to do more to serve the entire county. Imagine that.

Wow - that's incredibly condescending to families who you believe don't "know enough".

Np- ummm.. no. It wasn't. It's exactly how things work and it's exactly what ATS and HB parents count on.

You have no idea what hundreds of parents "count on." Get over yourself.

-neither an ATS nor an HB parent

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not surprised to hear this from an ATS parent. This is not about the parental experience or engagement. Choice programs should serve the entire community, not just those in the know enough to seek it out and enter the lottery. The super lottery is a great way of making the options concrete and encouraging families to learn about the opportunties and consider enrolling. Of course ATS parents oppose this. I bet HB parents oppose it too. It will require those countywide schools to do more to serve the entire county. Imagine that.

Wow - that's incredibly condescending to families who you believe don't "know enough".

Np- ummm.. no. It wasn't. It's exactly how things work and it's exactly what ATS and HB parents count on.

You have no idea what hundreds of parents "count on." Get over yourself.

-neither an ATS nor an HB parent

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not surprised to hear this from an ATS parent. This is not about the parental experience or engagement. Choice programs should serve the entire community, not just those in the know enough to seek it out and enter the lottery. The super lottery is a great way of making the options concrete and encouraging families to learn about the opportunties and consider enrolling. Of course ATS parents oppose this. I bet HB parents oppose it too. It will require those countywide schools to do more to serve the entire county. Imagine that.

Wow - that's incredibly condescending to families who you believe don't "know enough".

Np- ummm.. no. It wasn't. It's exactly how things work and it's exactly what ATS and HB parents count on.

You have no idea what hundreds of parents "count on." Get over yourself.

-neither an ATS nor an HB parent

Uh huh...but they are concerned on a anonymous message board that disinterred families might invade their school. Quit being daft.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Sure, but it impacts the overall profile of the schools available for our neighborhood and therefore our home value.

The job of APS is to provide a quality education to every student, not to provide maximum profit to certain homeowners.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Families with "no interest" will not enroll in these programs.

I think this is why it is an admin nightmare. Let's take this example.

For argument's sake lets make this a bit less complicated and assume both parents are in the West Zone.

Parent A's native Spanish speaking K child gets a lottery spot in immersion. Parent A has no interest and opts out.
Parent B's native Spanish speaking K child is on the immersion wait list. Parent B really wants immersion but by the time Parent A, who was NEVER interested in immersion, gets around to opting out, Parent B who was interested has already decided they'll just go with a guaranteed spot in their neighborhood STEAM school. So now you have a parent who was interested losing interest b/c they lost a lottery spot to someone who didn't want immersion to begin with.

BTW native language is important b/c the suggestion is to have two lotteries, Spanish speaking and non Spanish speaking. Which actually raises another question. If you are going to auto enter all the K kids into the immersion lottery you need to know which children are native speakers so you know which lottery to enter them into. So again, more unnecessary admin burden. If you are taking the time to collect the native language of each child, why not take that same time to inform all parents about option schools so they can enter, or not enter whichever lottery they think is right for their family.

I am hoping if they do this there will be a lottery for each option and that winning in one lottery doesn't impact the other lotteries. For example if you get a lottery spot in IB but you want immersion, being selected in the IB lottery should not mean you loose your chance to get a spot in the program you actually want for your child.

So while I understand the problem I am not sure the plan can easily be executed without causing widespread issues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

MS
- Immersion: New program at Williamsburg for West, Gunston for East
- IB: New program at Swanson for West, Jefferson for East
- STEAM - New program at Kenmore for West, new program at Stratford for East

Um, nobody is fooled by the "West-East" thing. Why bother doing this? All this does is further lock in the North-South divide. At least right now, anyone who really wants immersion goes to Gunston, and anyone who really wants IB goes to Jefferson. All this will do is cause further segregation...as if it's not bad enough right now.

Because this is anonymous, I will admit that I don't like the fact that the East specialty schools will primarily be located in South Arlington. We've invested a lot of money to live on the East side of North Arlington close to the river.

Have you looked at the split? Not too much changes for you, except you have additional options. If you're NE, then you currently have the option to go to Key for immersion, Drew for Montessori, or ATS. In the new scenario, you have all those same options, plus Campbell (it's technically an option for you now, but given the current lottery preferences, all of North Arlington is shut out), plus IB at Randolph. So you're keeping what you have (but Montessori will move a little further north to the current Henry site), plus gaining some new options. Are you upset that your IB school would be Randolph rather than Reed? Because I can't really see how E/W split is much different for you in the future scenario. I don't get it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you, OP, for the very good summary. I honestly am okay with most of the proposed changes except don't want a 3500-4000 student high school.

+1

That's crazy.

Ditto. Ridiculous. Parents really need to raise a stink about this, because from school board comments it sure seems like this is what they want to do. I get the sense that the district employees are sincere about wanting feedback but that the board has made up their minds. Easier for them to cram 3500 kids on one campus rather than go through the drama of redistricting into 4 school zones. But I don't want my kids in a grade with 800-900 kids.

some WL parents raised stink over the proposed move to Wakefield. any future similar proposal will face the same reaction and end up with the same result. so 4K HS it is (though i'm not sure why it's that much worse then a 3K HS).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What's going to become of ASFS?

Neighborhood school, no more team.

Will the ES boundaries be redrawn under this proposal? It makes absolutely no sense for ASFS to become a neighborhood school if the boundaries are not redrawn considering it sits in the middle of Taylor boundaries and most of the students in the Key/ASFS boundaries take a school bus to ASFS.

[Anonymous]

Also, did we ever hear more about the incorrect growth projections at Yorktown? What became of that?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What's going to become of ASFS?

Neighborhood school, no more team.

Will the ES boundaries be redrawn under this proposal? It makes absolutely no sense for ASFS to become a neighborhood school if the boundaries are not redrawn considering it sits in the middle of Taylor boundaries and most of the students in the Key/ASFS boundaries take a school bus to ASFS.

We're zoned for Key, and I agree. I think APS should flip things so the current Key /ASFS zone gets bused to Taylor (they're going to get bused somewhere; what's an extra 10 minutes?), and the kids currently bused to Taylor even though they could walk to ASFS (given a safe way to cross Kirkland) get to walk to ASFS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you, OP, for the very good summary. I honestly am okay with most of the proposed changes except don't want a 3500-4000 student high school.

+1

That's crazy.

Ditto. Ridiculous. Parents really need to raise a stink about this, because from school board comments it sure seems like this is what they want to do. I get the sense that the district employees are sincere about wanting feedback but that the board has made up their minds. Easier for them to cram 3500 kids on one campus rather than go through the drama of redistricting into 4 school zones. But I don't want my kids in a grade with 800-900 kids.

some WL parents raised stink over the proposed move to Wakefield. any future similar proposal will face the same reaction and end up with the same result. so 4K HS it is (though i'm not sure why it's that much worse then a 3K HS).

This, to me, is a really silly statement. We are talking about increasing the number of students at W-L by one-third. You don't think that will be noticeable? Do you have high schoolers?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you, OP, for the very good summary. I honestly am okay with most of the proposed changes except don't want a 3500-4000 student high school.

+1

That's crazy.

Ditto. Ridiculous. Parents really need to raise a stink about this, because from school board comments it sure seems like this is what they want to do. I get the sense that the district employees are sincere about wanting feedback but that the board has made up their minds. Easier for them to cram 3500 kids on one campus rather than go through the drama of redistricting into 4 school zones. But I don't want my kids in a grade with 800-900 kids.

some WL parents raised stink over the proposed move to Wakefield. any future similar proposal will face the same reaction and end up with the same result. so 4K HS it is (though i'm not sure why it's that much worse then a 3K HS).

I said it then (here and in-person to several school board members) and I'll say it again: It was a mistake to knuckle under to that crowd. The SB clearly demonstrated that one small faction, if loud and impassioned enough, can derail an initiative, no matter how many people support it (or don't care). It's just going to be harder the next time they have to make a difficult decision.

[Anonymous]

The be-shirted AF parents were awful, but let's decisions based on what would be best for APS students as a whole rather than based on how awful a group of parents is.

Even if they're INCREDIBLY awful.