APS Sinking Ship

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
I have the same question about whether to stay in Arlington, But frankly I don't see many better options at the public level nearby. I value our quality of life (less traffic, shorter commute, most things nearby, close to DC, more time spent with family, walkable communities) too much to move to MoCo on FFX. We can't afford private, so we are just going to have to stick it out. There are some positives about APS even now, but yes, the situation is getting beyond worrisome.


Falls Church City or Vienna. Arlington is a slow motion train wreck.


Yeah, but NA is fine too. What are FCC and Vienna if not NA without SA? The real problem is that NA insists on imposing their moral vision on SA instead of letting it become like NA.

They are nice communities that have much better schools than NA, and have their own identities. You make it sound like they are NA wannabes, which they are not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
I have the same question about whether to stay in Arlington, But frankly I don't see many better options at the public level nearby. I value our quality of life (less traffic, shorter commute, most things nearby, close to DC, more time spent with family, walkable communities) too much to move to MoCo on FFX. We can't afford private, so we are just going to have to stick it out. There are some positives about APS even now, but yes, the situation is getting beyond worrisome.


Falls Church City or Vienna. Arlington is a slow motion train wreck.


Yeah, but NA is fine too. What are FCC and Vienna if not NA without SA? The real problem is that NA insists on imposing their moral vision on SA instead of letting it become like NA.

They are nice communities that have much better schools than NA, and have their own identities. You make it sound like they are NA wannabes, which they are not.

Of course they are. They’re small, expensive, cloistered communities. You have to have a lot of coin to buy a house in those places so of course the test scores and other metrics of “quality” which correlate to family income are off the charts. Even NA is diverse by comparison.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Arlington will never be Alexandria ized. All Alexandria schools have high percentages of poverty. With the exception of buckingham, north Arlington will never have high or even moderate percentages of poor kids. South Arlington as a result will always be less expensive by far.

Are you joking? Look at the frl stats for south Arlington schools. Most at or above 50 percent, including Wakefield high school.

I think PP means that unlike Alexandria, not all schools in Arlington are high poverty. I think, but correct me if I am wrong, but almost all Alexandria schools have high poverty. So, people live there regardless of schools because they all struggle. Arlington, in contrast, only has poor schools in the south. South Arlington will always be cheaper than North Arlington because you can live in the community and chose to avoid high poverty schools.

And my point was that people live in SA and pay 800k for small houses there despite the schools. The fact that we’re talking past each other only demonstrates the huge difference between North and South. Every year CB and APAH adds hundreds more high poverty families to the system, via units that will supply such students in perpetuity. That means the FRL rates can only ever go up—unless you think somehow several 40 story market rate condos are built that a middle class family would actually choose to live in. The disparity between north and south is getting worse, not better, and school statistics show it. Just wait for the boundary discussion of a 4th high school. It will make everything up to now pale in comparison, but will maybe finally cause a public discussion about the how much subsidized housing SA really needs or should have.

FRL rates in APS have been declining for years.

Maybe in NA. Not in south and not countywide. 31 percent in 2011 and 30 percent in 2018 is not a meaningful “decline.” It’s just noise.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
I have the same question about whether to stay in Arlington, But frankly I don't see many better options at the public level nearby. I value our quality of life (less traffic, shorter commute, most things nearby, close to DC, more time spent with family, walkable communities) too much to move to MoCo on FFX. We can't afford private, so we are just going to have to stick it out. There are some positives about APS even now, but yes, the situation is getting beyond worrisome.


Falls Church City or Vienna. Arlington is a slow motion train wreck.


Yeah, but NA is fine too. What are FCC and Vienna if not NA without SA? The real problem is that NA insists on imposing their moral vision on SA instead of letting it become like NA.

They are nice communities that have much better schools than NA, and have their own identities. You make it sound like they are NA wannabes, which they are not.

Of course they are. They’re small, expensive, cloistered communities. You have to have a lot of coin to buy a house in those places so of course the test scores and other metrics of “quality” which correlate to family income are off the charts. Even NA is diverse by comparison.

Nope. North Arlington is not diverse, and North Arlington north of Lee Highway (the Yorktown HS areas) is the whitest, least diverse part of NoVa.

APS has some highly ranked elementary schools. The middle schools don't shine as brightly, and the performance really falls off at the high school level. It's been that way for years, and certainly did not improve under Murphy.

[Anonymous]

Eventually the middle and upper middle class student boom will level off and the free lunch numbers jump even higher in south Arlington.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^ fake news
The rates are largely the same as they were in the 90’s. About a 1/3 of the students are poor.

Yup, but somehow, we’ve lost ALL our market rate units and MUST replace all of them with subsidized family units (in SA of course) for the next 70 years, minimum. North Arlington’s class guilt gets really tiresome.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
I have the same question about whether to stay in Arlington, But frankly I don't see many better options at the public level nearby. I value our quality of life (less traffic, shorter commute, most things nearby, close to DC, more time spent with family, walkable communities) too much to move to MoCo on FFX. We can't afford private, so we are just going to have to stick it out. There are some positives about APS even now, but yes, the situation is getting beyond worrisome.


Falls Church City or Vienna. Arlington is a slow motion train wreck.


Yeah, but NA is fine too. What are FCC and Vienna if not NA without SA? The real problem is that NA insists on imposing their moral vision on SA instead of letting it become like NA.

They are nice communities that have much better schools than NA, and have their own identities. You make it sound like they are NA wannabes, which they are not.

Of course they are. They’re small, expensive, cloistered communities. You have to have a lot of coin to buy a house in those places so of course the test scores and other metrics of “quality” which correlate to family income are off the charts. Even NA is diverse by comparison.

Nope. North Arlington is not diverse, and North Arlington north of Lee Highway (the Yorktown HS areas) is the whitest, least diverse part of NoVa.

APS has some highly ranked elementary schools. The middle schools don't shine as brightly, and the performance really falls off at the high school level. It's been that way for years, and certainly did not improve under Murphy.

NA is diverse compared to FCC or Vienna.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^ fake news
The rates are largely the same as they were in the 90’s. About a 1/3 of the students are poor.

Yup, but somehow, we’ve lost ALL our market rate units and MUST replace all of them with subsidized family units (in SA of course) for the next 70 years, minimum. North Arlington’s class guilt gets really tiresome.

I got tired of looking into it, but I think they move the classification of units back and forth to make their ( AH developers etc) argument.
For example sometimes Barcroft apts are considered market rate affordable when they are talking about the number of caf’s. Then they will be classified as Caf’s when they discuss the number of market rate affordable units lost. It seems they disappear 1,000’s of until depending on the conversation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

So how bad are things going to get? It’s clear all the rats are fleeing.

We have massive overcrowding, CB refuses to increase budget, and simply no new land to build

Further, our tale of two counties means we have $2M homes sending kids to private and more and more AH pouring high need and service students into public schools.

Our commute will suck but should we look at FCPS or MCPS. FCC is too expensive for us.

Yes, some of them are rats, but if entitled APS parents keep wanting their way about every little thing, it will get alot worse. They could convert Kenmore into an HS without a swimming pool, for instance....not every HS needs a swimming pool. They could convert HB Woodlawn into a typical school, but parents would jump up and down about that. Some tough decisions need to be made, and parents are going to have to go along with them.

Not every HS needs a stadium either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

So how bad are things going to get? It’s clear all the rats are fleeing.

We have massive overcrowding, CB refuses to increase budget, and simply no new land to build

Further, our tale of two counties means we have $2M homes sending kids to private and more and more AH pouring high need and service students into public schools.

Our commute will suck but should we look at FCPS or MCPS. FCC is too expensive for us.

Yes, some of them are rats, but if entitled APS parents keep wanting their way about every little thing, it will get alot worse. They could convert Kenmore into an HS without a swimming pool, for instance....not every HS needs a swimming pool. They could convert HB Woodlawn into a typical school, but parents would jump up and down about that. Some tough decisions need to be made, and parents are going to have to go along with them.

Not every HS needs a stadium either.

I grew up in a district with four high schools. 2 had pools, 2 had stadiums. It was not an issue and we shared the facilities

[Anonymous]

NP here - totally agree that the building of more affordable units in SA has and is creating a real problem. Part of the problem, however, is that there are a lot of people in SA that like it that way.

Yes, people will spend 800k, or even a million for a house in SA. However, that money gets you a lot more than in NA, a heck of a lot more. And, those parents are not sending those kids to neighborhood schools. There are sever new builds and families in my SA neigborhood and none of those kids go to neighborhood. Every single one is at Claremont, Campbell or parochial. They are there long term or they move out before kids go to school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

So how bad are things going to get? It’s clear all the rats are fleeing.

We have massive overcrowding, CB refuses to increase budget, and simply no new land to build

Further, our tale of two counties means we have $2M homes sending kids to private and more and more AH pouring high need and service students into public schools.

Our commute will suck but should we look at FCPS or MCPS. FCC is too expensive for us.

Yes, some of them are rats, but if entitled APS parents keep wanting their way about every little thing, it will get alot worse. They could convert Kenmore into an HS without a swimming pool, for instance....not every HS needs a swimming pool. They could convert HB Woodlawn into a typical school, but parents would jump up and down about that. Some tough decisions need to be made, and parents are going to have to go along with them.

Not every HS needs a stadium either.

I grew up in a district with four high schools. 2 had pools, 2 had stadiums. It was not an issue and we shared the facilities

We don’t have a system like that. No one wants the 1 less than school out of 4.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:NP here - totally agree that the building of more affordable units in SA has and is creating a real problem. Part of the problem, however, is that there are a lot of people in SA that like it that way.

Yes, people will spend 800k, or even a million for a house in SA. However, that money gets you a lot more than in NA, a heck of a lot more. And, those parents are not sending those kids to neighborhood schools. There are sever new builds and families in my SA neigborhood and none of those kids go to neighborhood. Every single one is at Claremont, Campbell or parochial. They are there long term or they move out before kids go to school.

It does not get you a “heck of a lot more”. There is approximately 150k difference in comps between north and south.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
I have the same question about whether to stay in Arlington, But frankly I don't see many better options at the public level nearby. I value our quality of life (less traffic, shorter commute, most things nearby, close to DC, more time spent with family, walkable communities) too much to move to MoCo on FFX. We can't afford private, so we are just going to have to stick it out. There are some positives about APS even now, but yes, the situation is getting beyond worrisome.


Falls Church City or Vienna. Arlington is a slow motion train wreck.


Yeah, but NA is fine too. What are FCC and Vienna if not NA without SA? The real problem is that NA insists on imposing their moral vision on SA instead of letting it become like NA.

They are nice communities that have much better schools than NA, and have their own identities. You make it sound like they are NA wannabes, which they are not.

Of course they are. They’re small, expensive, cloistered communities. You have to have a lot of coin to buy a house in those places so of course the test scores and other metrics of “quality” which correlate to family income are off the charts. Even NA is diverse by comparison.

Nope. North Arlington is not diverse, and North Arlington north of Lee Highway (the Yorktown HS areas) is the whitest, least diverse part of NoVa.

APS has some highly ranked elementary schools. The middle schools don't shine as brightly, and the performance really falls off at the high school level. It's been that way for years, and certainly did not improve under Murphy.

BS. Yorktown, Madison, and George Mason are all about 65% white (Madison 66%). YT has 15% Hispanic (highest of the 3), and fewer Asian by about 3%.

So racial demographics are pretty identical.

Economically, Madison has 10% FARMS, Yorktown 13%, George Mason doesn’t report (or has 0% — anyone know the real deal)?

So no NA is not the whitest enclave.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
I have the same question about whether to stay in Arlington, But frankly I don't see many better options at the public level nearby. I value our quality of life (less traffic, shorter commute, most things nearby, close to DC, more time spent with family, walkable communities) too much to move to MoCo on FFX. We can't afford private, so we are just going to have to stick it out. There are some positives about APS even now, but yes, the situation is getting beyond worrisome.


Falls Church City or Vienna. Arlington is a slow motion train wreck.


Yeah, but NA is fine too. What are FCC and Vienna if not NA without SA? The real problem is that NA insists on imposing their moral vision on SA instead of letting it become like NA.

They are nice communities that have much better schools than NA, and have their own identities. You make it sound like they are NA wannabes, which they are not.

Of course they are. They’re small, expensive, cloistered communities. You have to have a lot of coin to buy a house in those places so of course the test scores and other metrics of “quality” which correlate to family income are off the charts. Even NA is diverse by comparison.

Nope. North Arlington is not diverse, and North Arlington north of Lee Highway (the Yorktown HS areas) is the whitest, least diverse part of NoVa.

APS has some highly ranked elementary schools. The middle schools don't shine as brightly, and the performance really falls off at the high school level. It's been that way for years, and certainly did not improve under Murphy.

BS. Yorktown, Madison, and George Mason are all about 65% white (Madison 66%). YT has 15% Hispanic (highest of the 3), and fewer Asian by about 3%.

So racial demographics are pretty identical.

Economically, Madison has 10% FARMS, Yorktown 13%, George Mason doesn’t report (or has 0% — anyone know the real deal)?

So no NA is not the whitest enclave.

Look at the elementary schools north of Lee Highway. Discovery = 72% white. Jamestown = 82% white. Nottingham = 75% white. Taylor = 76% white. Tuckahoe = 81% white. You just don't find that in other places. North NA is indeed the whitest enclave.

In fact, it may be part of the reason why Yorktown can't keep up with the top schools, as much as you'd like to pin that on the Hispanic population.