APS: Four options for Ed Center seats: STEAM, Performing Arts, Early College or IB expansion

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone on this listserv says the county will never create another HB Woodlawn. I frankly think after taking the survey that people need to ask that this be considered. What is the point of an expansion of an Ed Center if it ends up underenrolled? We want an option that people want, so that overenrollments in existing comprehensive schools drops. This is not complicated! If 4% of the list gets into HBWoodlawn right now, open up a second school on a progressive education model, and reduce overcrowding with a school that parents want to send their children to.

I could not get into any of the four options listed. If IB continues at WL, how does IB at Ed Center change anything? None of the other options make a lot of sense to me. They smell to me like programs begging to be under-filled, while enrollments surge at the other schools.

+1.

By the fall of 2021, APS projects that Wakefield will have 2,316 students, Yorktown 2,282 students and Washington-Lee a whopping 2,906 students. And this is all assuming that Arlington Tech is a success and 700 students are enrolled. The SB absolutely must come up with a plan for the Ed Center and the additional seats at the career center that will actually attract lots of students who are within the W-L boundaries and eventually the Wakefield boundaries, since those are the two HS projected to be most overcrowded in the next decade.

Meanwhile, in the fall of 2021 HB's high school component is projected to enroll 440 students. And by the fall of 2026 when Wakefield is projected to have 2,947 students, Washington-Lee 3,127 students and Yorktown 2,336 students - well, HB's high school will still be at 440 students. So unless an HB style program at the Ed Center or career center actually enrolls between 700 and 800 high school students, another HB at either location will not reduce overcrowding to the degree needed.

These numbers are huge (and probably underestimate the actual numbers given APS's poor track record). If another HB were to be opened at Arlington Tech and the Ed Center, trust me there would be enough interest. The other types of programs all strike me as blah.

I am not doubting the interest in another HB. I am simply stating that an HBII, based on the model of HBI will not do enough to relieve overcrowding at the three comprehensive high schools.. For one thing, an HBII at either the Ed Center or Career Center should not be accommodating middle school students, and another is that an HBII would need roughly 700-800 high school students rather than the 440 that currently make up HB.

[Anonymous]

Why isn't another HB even an option? I'm sure the SB would give a BDS answer, not a real one, but have they even given that?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why isn't another HB even an option? I'm sure the SB would give a BDS answer, not a real one, but have they even given that?

I thought it was because HB works with a small student population and another HB wouldn't give enough relief to overcrowding down the road.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How is steam different, in practice, from a normal high school that has science/tech and arts classes?

Also, how is it in any way possible that Arlington would have three population for a performing arts high school? I love FAME as much as the next person, but is that practical here?

Why wouldn’t it be practical? Is Arlington devoid of creative people?

Yes. Are you new here?

Yes. To be sure, I have met many humorless people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why isn't another HB even an option? I'm sure the SB would give a BDS answer, not a real one, but have they even given that?

Because if you open a second HB with 600-800 kids then it ruins their ability to say that they're special and should be capped at an extremely small size, and the current HB would have to take in that many more kids. God forbid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why isn't another HB even an option? I'm sure the SB would give a BDS answer, not a real one, but have they even given that?

Because if you open a second HB with 600-800 kids then it ruins their ability to say that they're special and should be capped at an extremely small size, and the current HB would have to take in that many more kids. God forbid.

Exactly!

[Anonymous]

Other than HB2, are there any other options you all are writing in?

[Anonymous]

I am disappointed that the school board has come up with these terrible solutions that will not offer real facilities in time to help the overcrowding for my kid. The answer SHOULD have been a 4th comprehensive, and when we were first discussing the budgets for this two years ago, school board members said a comprehensive high school was possible. Now they have given us this, which is just a slightly prettier and much more expensive version of trailers. Way to NOT SOLVE THE PROBLEM, APS. Keep being you!

[Anonymous]

Whatever it is should be a self-contained program. There are a lot of parents signing their kids up for HB and Arlington Tech not because of the particular programs but because they think their kids need a smaller environment above all. They'll accept a lot of disadvantages (fewer course options, shabby facilities) in order to get that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Whatever it is should be a self-contained program. There are a lot of parents signing their kids up for HB and Arlington Tech not because of the particular programs but because they think their kids need a smaller environment above all. They'll accept a lot of disadvantages (fewer course options, shabby facilities) in order to get that.

And that's a good thing right? That's how free society works. We want more options not less

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Whatever it is should be a self-contained program. There are a lot of parents signing their kids up for HB and Arlington Tech not because of the particular programs but because they think their kids need a smaller environment above all. They'll accept a lot of disadvantages (fewer course options, shabby facilities) in order to get that.

And that's a good thing right? That's how free society works. We want more options not less

It certainly simplifies planning if you can make it clear that families need to figure out what they most want because they aren't going to get everything they'd like. Small? Sure! Also kind of a dump! Shiny! Got that, but it's huge! Go for it!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Whatever it is should be a self-contained program. There are a lot of parents signing their kids up for HB and Arlington Tech not because of the particular programs but because they think their kids need a smaller environment above all. They'll accept a lot of disadvantages (fewer course options, shabby facilities) in order to get that.

And that's a good thing right? That's how free society works. We want more options not less

It certainly simplifies planning if you can make it clear that families need to figure out what they most want because they aren't going to get everything they'd like. Small? Sure! Also kind of a dump! Shiny! Got that, but it's huge! Go for it!

This is important. Self contained means you get what you get. HB doesn't have football. Want to play? Too bad. ArlTech doesn't have a marching band. Want to play the saxophone? Not happening. Right now the "programs" are not "schools", which means the kids have the option to reach back and do still potentially require resources from the comprehensive high schools. If the school system wants to set up multiple 500-800 seat mini-schools as a way to alleviate overcrowding at the three big ones, then the families need to be all-in.

I'd also advocate that kids who transfer to W-L but drop out of the IB program must go back to their home HS. W-L is bearing the brunt of this.
Signed,
Yorktown-zoned parent

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Whatever it is should be a self-contained program. There are a lot of parents signing their kids up for HB and Arlington Tech not because of the particular programs but because they think their kids need a smaller environment above all. They'll accept a lot of disadvantages (fewer course options, shabby facilities) in order to get that.

And that's a good thing right? That's how free society works. We want more options not less

It certainly simplifies planning if you can make it clear that families need to figure out what they most want because they aren't going to get everything they'd like. Small? Sure! Also kind of a dump! Shiny! Got that, but it's huge! Go for it!

This is important. Self contained means you get what you get. HB doesn't have football. Want to play? Too bad. ArlTech doesn't have a marching band. Want to play the saxophone? Not happening. Right now the "programs" are not "schools", which means the kids have the option to reach back and do still potentially require resources from the comprehensive high schools. If the school system wants to set up multiple 500-800 seat mini-schools as a way to alleviate overcrowding at the three big ones, then the families need to be all-in.

I'd also advocate that kids who transfer to W-L but drop out of the IB program must go back to their home HS. W-L is bearing the brunt of this.
Signed,
Yorktown-zoned parent

They do that now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Whatever it is should be a self-contained program. There are a lot of parents signing their kids up for HB and Arlington Tech not because of the particular programs but because they think their kids need a smaller environment above all. They'll accept a lot of disadvantages (fewer course options, shabby facilities) in order to get that.

And that's a good thing right? That's how free society works. We want more options not less

It certainly simplifies planning if you can make it clear that families need to figure out what they most want because they aren't going to get everything they'd like. Small? Sure! Also kind of a dump! Shiny! Got that, but it's huge! Go for it!

This is important. Self contained means you get what you get. HB doesn't have football. Want to play? Too bad. ArlTech doesn't have a marching band. Want to play the saxophone? Not happening. Right now the "programs" are not "schools", which means the kids have the option to reach back and do still potentially require resources from the comprehensive high schools. If the school system wants to set up multiple 500-800 seat mini-schools as a way to alleviate overcrowding at the three big ones, then the families need to be all-in.

I'd also advocate that kids who transfer to W-L but drop out of the IB program must go back to their home HS. W-L is bearing the brunt of this.
Signed,
Yorktown-zoned parent

Your H-B/ArlTech example doesn't make sense though. If the kids who don't play sports or do marching band are the only ones who go to H-B or ArlTech, then the kids who do do those things will stay at their home schools. The same number of kids will be at H-B and ArlTech and the same number of kids will be at the home schools doing the activities--there's no "resource" difference overall, just the mix of which students end up in which buildings. The only difference will be three activity bus routes, which is pretty marginal (it doesn't mean three fewer buses, just three routes will be redirected).

[Anonymous]

But your example doesn't really make sense with an increasing high school population. If you had 2,000 kids in 2017 and 2025, and 15% of them want to do band, and so 300 kids are at W-L playing band in 2017 and then in 2025 another 300 kids decide to stay at W-L instead of go to ed center or career center so they could do band, your example would make sense.

But actually in 2025 it will be more like 2500 or 3000 kids split between W-L and the Ed Center and Career Center, so if you assume the same level of interest you get more like 400 or 450 kids instead of 300. That puts a huge burden on W-L to find room in the band program for all those kids, or the ones at the fringes have to drop band because it's too competitive to get a spot. The numbers don't just magically work out when you burden the comprehensive high school with more kids in the same facilities. Someone gets screwed.