Arlington Science Focus -- Admissions?
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Anonymous
Why are you screaming at me? I think Key is fantastic. I just am a bit worried about its future. |
Anonymous
We walk to ASF from Lyon Village. Cherrydale and LV shoukd both be ASF. They are right next to it. |
Anonymous
APS runs a bus from ASFS to Lyon Village. Most families don't walk. |
Anonymous
So is Clarendon. They should redraw the boundary so kids that would have gone to Williamsburg middle get bussed to Jamestown-- that part of they key/asfs attendance zone is over a mile away from asfs. Only thing to keep in mind is that some of the walk zone for asfs is actually within a mile of Taylor (don't believe me, look at it on google maps) and is even closer to glebe. If the school board doesn't have key and asfs switch buildings (and they are 0.6 miles away from each other so it wouldn't be a huge inconvenience compared with bussing kids to Jamestown or discovery), they should build an elemtary school in courthouse/rosslyn. Switching buildings is probably objectively the better long term solution, it's just inconvenient and disruptive to the current kids at both schools. |
Anonymous
| My friends who paid inflated prices to buy in the Key district so they could send their kids to ASFS are shaking in their boots right now. I understand their concern, but it never seemed fair to be able to pay to play. |
Anonymous
No one pays a premium for ASFS over say Taylor or Jamestown. It's all about Clarendon and metro access. Granted metro is failing and Clarendon retail is going stale, those are real problems. |
Anonymous
I'll tell my friends that they lied to me, then, when they said they were only house shopping in Key b/c they wanted their kids at ASFS. |
Anonymous
How is picking a house because of its assigned school "pay to play"? ASFS was their neighborhood school -- if you look at real estate listings, that's what it says. If you call aps to confirm school districts, that's where they say your neighborhood school is. |
Anonymous
Yeah - I don't understand this argument either. A few of my friends moved into the Discovery zone because they wanted their kids to go there. One friend loved Tuckohoe and moved there. What's the difference? ASFS was never a "choice" school. |
Anonymous
Huh. That's weird. I live in the Key zone, but we paid for the walkability and short commute to the city. More power to them, I guess. |
Anonymous
you either don't have school age kids that you were planning on sending to a public school or don't actually live in that area. I can't think of anyone with school age kids that wouldn't factor in schools when buying a house. |
Anonymous
I have toddlers, so we absolutely factored in schools. That's why we weren't looking in Alexandria or DC. I just don't think ASFS is any better than Taylor or Long Branch, which are geographically the closest schools after Key and ASFS. We will be fine in any of them, but prefer a neighborhood school. |
Anonymous
Yes, i think that this is where the big disconnect is. People who lived outside of Key/ASFS viewed ASFS and Key as "choice" schools within the team. By that reasoning, Taylor was a "choice" school and so was Jamestown. ASFS was always a neighborhood school (or at least it was for the past five years that I've lived in that zone and had kids there). 80% of the kids that attend there live in the Key/ASFS neighborhood. APS staff always called it our neighborhood school (for example when I was doing early intervention). I've had three kids at that school over the past five years, and I can say without a doubt that there is nothing different about the curriculum other than an extra hour of science a week. They have a couple of extra science activities during the year, like outside the box day, but I don't think its as emphasized as people claim it is here. Its super diverse and very academically rigorous, which is why we chose to live there and send our kids there, but its just a neighborhood school that for some reason sits outside its neighborhood. I would totally support it switching buildings with key (assuming all of the administration and teachers transferred as well) because then it would sit in the neighborhood. |
Anonymous
Yes, i think that this is where the big disconnect is. People who lived outside of Key/ASFS viewed ASFS and Key as "choice" schools within the team. By that reasoning, Taylor was a "choice" school and so was Jamestown. ASFS was always a neighborhood school (or at least it was for the past five years that I've lived in that zone and had kids there). 80% of the kids that attend there live in the Key/ASFS neighborhood. APS staff always called it our neighborhood school (for example when I was doing early intervention). I've had three kids at that school over the past five years, and I can say without a doubt that there is nothing different about the curriculum other than an extra hour of science a week. They have a couple of extra science activities during the year, like outside the box day, but I don't think its as emphasized as people claim it is here. Its super diverse and very academically rigorous, which is why we chose to live there and send our kids there, but its just a neighborhood school that for some reason sits outside its neighborhood. I would totally support it switching buildings with key (assuming all of the administration and teachers transferred as well) because then it would sit in the neighborhood. |
Anonymous
And indeed, they aren't, but that doesn't mean some people don't fixate on ASFS. It doesn't make sense, but it happens, because people are -- brace yourself-- not always logical in their decisionmaking. |