South Arlington elementary school boundary adjustments 2019
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Anonymous
Percentages matter. Over 60 percent of a school population struggling to make ends meet starts to really effect performance. |
Anonymous
DP here. I understand and tend to agree with you on benefits of CAFs. However, I don't understand the need for concentrated CAFs (or for concentrating it all in South Arl, but that's an issue apparently way beyond any of us to solve). What about mixed buildings? Seems to me that the strain on infrastructure, particularly schools, and the potential to ghettoize is worse when you set it up this way. Plus, if the whole idea is that our community is economically diverse, shouldn't we try to rub elbows from time to time rather than basically setting up parallel communities? We used to live in a mixed income building in NYC, so that's more my frame of reference. What am I missing? |
Anonymous
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Dp- at this point we can’t even handle mixed income buildings west of Glebe. We need high end 100% market rate buildings. If and when the day comes, that complexes like Barcroft Apartments see a wrecking ball ( not holding my breath), that’s when we should be talking about mixed income. I think we all need to truly start embracing some gentrification. It’s not a dirty word and we desperately need it in 22204. I understand that there is an entrenched immigrant community in place, but I can’t help but bristle when posters get a little sanctimonious about how long the communities have been in place. It’s come in waves, and back the 80-90’s they were different groups. It’s been evolving over time. Certainly though it didn’t cost middle class homeowners 750k to move into Alcova Heights in 1994...
So can we get real and just say we’ve invested too much for crappy schools? North Arlington has no problem saying that, even in the more diverse sections. I’m just not certain what the county is expecting from the middle class in south Arlington zoned to these poor performing schools. Other than shut up and defer to the largest number of “stake holders” (spoiler alert: not anyone reading this) and just assume your kid’ll “be fine”- which they totally might. Hopefully your kid doesn’t need extra attention, because they likely won’t receive it. OR go private/move. 20 plus years ago we had one of our current school board members try one of these schools. Eventually they pulled their children out. The kids were falling through the cracks, because the school was overwhelmed with larger concerns. It’s 2 decades later and not much has changed. Wait, something has changed. There is no room to transfer your child out to a better school. |
Anonymous
You are missing a fundamental truth that is as old as shelter and schooling themselves: people do not want to live near or have their kids go to school with the poors. The poors themselves don't want to be around other poors. The poors have "poor" habits- they are prone to violence and criminality and lack intellectual curiosity. No amount of social engineering can change this. |
Anonymous
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Ref AH - thanks for posting the links, very good data that frankly corrected what I previously believed.
Part of the problem with AH in Arlington is how it is sold. Time and time again the county and advocates present AH as a way to keep county employees (teachers, public safety, etc) housed in the county they work. However this is patently false and exposed as such every time they present it. That kind of misrepresentation really poisons the well for any future AH arguments. Additionally, while I now appreciate that ~66% of committed affordable housing residents had previous ties to the county, I am not thrilled with the remaining third. I would much rather see a retrenchment in AH spending and focus those resources on existing Arlington residents that need more assistance |
Anonymous
Just how much affordable housing can you cram into the same area? Don't understand the reasoning behind this. Every major city in the country has been dismantling its massive public housing projects, because time & again research shows clustering large numbers of economically disadvantaged families together REDUCES their chances of improvement. It drags everyone down. The County Board seems hell bent on ignoring 30 years of research and examples. How about investing some of that money in improving the lives of people already living here in AH? |
Anonymous
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affordable housing by itself isn’t a problem, but saying that CAF’s are just so wonderful because the kids aren’t being moved around...
Ok... sure. That’s all well and good as long as there is still less than 60% poverty in a school. Randolph Drew Barcroft Carlin Springs Abingdon They all need to be at under 60% poverty. Really doesn’t matter if those kids come from CAF’s or market rate. So how do we make that happen? |
Anonymous
Hopefully there's some equitable way to balance the demographics then, to bring schools like Barcroft & Randolph more in line with Hoffman-Boston and Claremont. But it doesn't sound as if the Board even cares |
Anonymous
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What is the percentage of disadvantaged students in south Arlington?
All of APS is something like 36%. What is the percentage south of 50? |
Anonymous
South Abingdon 47% Barcroft 60% Campbell 54% Henry 32% Hoffman Boston 49% Carlin Springs 83% Oakridge 25% Randolph 74% North Ashlawn 19% Barrett 62% Discovery 4% Long Branch 35% Glebe 18% Jamestown 4% McKinley 9% Key 41% Nottingham 3% Taylor 4% Tuckahoe 2% Choice Claremont 62% Drew 52% ATS 26% Science Focus 23% |
Anonymous
Corrected |
Anonymous
Campbell is a choice school. |
Anonymous
| I’d like to know what is happening at Hoffman Boston, that isn’t happening at Abingdon? |
Anonymous
My kids go to Hoffman Boston. The principal is really positive, strong, and amazing - I think she runs a tight ship and it trickles down. The teachers put in a lot of extra effort to help the kids, many of whom are learning English as a foreign language and come from low-income backgrounds. I was initially wary buying into the neighborhood, but I've been really impressed. Don't know anything about Abingdon. |
Anonymous
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Before the current Hoffman Boston principal was hired there was a temporary “turn-around” principal there for two years. I believe she put a lot of processes in place and was involved in hiring the next principal. She is currently interim principal at Randolph. I know people with kids at Abington who are happy but I don’t have any other information on the school.
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