Dr. Duran must go
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Anonymous
Does Hamm? If so, I've never heard about it. |
Anonymous
This is also how I remember it. |
Anonymous
so now the southies won't own up to killing the 4th HS you got what you wanted, just own it |
Anonymous
Right, the cost to build an “equitable” high school was, of course, prohibitive. |
Anonymous
The Southies would not "accept" a 4th neighborhood HS at the CC unless it had a very long list of amenities to make it "equitable." Those included a swimming pool, track, full size gymnasium and auxiliary gymnasium, multi-sport rectangular field with bleachers, at least one additional dedicated field on-site or within walking distance, theater, and library/media center, etc. They said if we don't get all these amenities, which were very obviously not feasible at the CC site, then don't build a neighborhood HS. And APS caved to them. |
Anonymous
+1 |
Anonymous
DP. You have a bad memory. That wasn't just people from South Arlington; that was the general consensus. |
Anonymous
No. That was NOT the general consensus. SOME southies argued against an "inequitable" hs without the minimum basic on-site amenities (including a pool because the other 3 have pools). OTHER southies were fine with off-site amenities. I honestly don't recall much input from the north either way....cause it wasn't going to be their high school and therefore didn't matter. Neither the County nor the SB were ok with the cost of the project which was too expensive regardless of "inequitable" or "equitable" plan options.That's why the whole plan got scrapped, and a second effort to plan a redevelopment to expand Arlington Tech and increase the capacity of the Career Center - and move Arl Community HS and accommodate MPSA - for less cost was initiated. The SB never really embraced the need for a 4th high school, kept denying the need for a 4th comprehensive HS, and has ever since continued to insist that capacity can be met with the 600 seats from repurposing the Ed Center and the expansion of Arl Tech. It really had nothing to do with the PORTION of the southies arguing against anything "less than" the other 3 high schools. |
Anonymous
We WANTED a 4th high school. We did not get it. SOME did NOT want one without the minimum amenities the others have. I guess they ultimately are getting that. But the rest of us who just believed Arlington needed a 4th comprehensive high school did NOT get what we wanted. The southies that the SB continually caves to is Glencarlyn who protest about anything being done at the Kenmore site. Traffic. (Sound familiar?) But let's be honest, a HS there would also mean Glencarlyn no longer goes to WL.... hmmm.... (sound familiar?) |
Anonymous
No, not at all. We saw design plans that were for a full 4th High School at the site, (including all of what you call “amenities” - in reality; requirements to have the full high school designation instead of “program”). It was decided, that there was no money for it. The cost was the end of those plans. |
Anonymous
Nope, sorry. No one but the Southies were pushing this. They had quite the lobbying effort going. I remember it well. |
Anonymous
Yes it was really a smart strategy: 1. Make sky high demands for amenities that you simply must have 2. Insist APS give you the amenities because Equity 3. Tell them if you don't give us a high school with all our required amenities, we won't stand for it (there was even a protest outside of a board meeting!) 4. Oh you can't afford to build a high school with all our required amenities? And the plans will be shelved? Not our decision! |
Anonymous
If the demands were so sky high, why do they line up exactly with all three of the other comprehensive high schools? |
Anonymous
This is not at all how it went down. The whole conversation was tied up with the expansion of the career center discussion. APS said it wanted a greater number of new seats at the sitthan they originally said. They said some would be for the expansion of Arlington Tech, but a huge number were basically uncommitted. APS refused to say whether these would end up being neighborhood seats or choice seats. They clearly wanted to keep their options open. The 4th high school debate first got going a few years before, when the VHC/Kenmore site were to top options. Doing the split between expanding Arlington Tech and adding seats at W-L was a compromise to avoid building the 4th HS. So when APS started making noises that a lot of these seats at the CC site might be neighborhood, a lot of southwest quite reasonably said fine, but if you want to build neighborhood seats, own up to it and build them to the same standard you’ve already established for the other neighborhood schools. Rather than just commit to keeping all the new seats as choice seats, APS got weirdly inflexible (Reid Goldstein was involved and that explains a lot of it). APS said it wouldn’t weigh in on choice vs. Neighborhood, but it would price out what it took to build it to the same standard as Wakefield or Yorktown. That came in way over budget. Ultimately it doesn’t matter because even when they stripped out the stuff like the pool and secondary field they still didn’t have the money for the original concept. The original concept failed because the demo costs on the career center were too high, as was the cost of underground parking. They also couldn’t get the phasing right with respect to when or if they’d knock down the building containing the Montessori program. The whole thing was a hash and APS admitted they had to go back to the drawing board. That was around late 2019/early 2020. When APS came back to process of figuring out what to do the first thing they admitted was their plan was to build a choice school. So complain all you want about southies; we just wanted what everyone else going to a neighborhood already had (including southies who were currently zoned for attending Wakefield). But in the end that whole conversation wasn’t what did the initial plan in. It was much more mundane factors regarding the budget, the massing, and the phasing. |
Anonymous
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That’s a looooong rehashing of all your arguments. It comes down to the fact that the southies killed plans to build a new neighborhood hs at the cc site. Southies also killed discussions to build it on the Kenmore site.
Good to remember when southies accuse APS of not investing and not relieving overcrowding in the south. And when southies accuse northies of not caring. Our kids are in super sized WL but you are your own worst enemies. |