APS Elementary Location Working Group 4/12

[Anonymous]

Add this to the list of things that the SB hid from everyone. No one said out loud that all these changes to the option admissions policies were going to cause massive issues for elementary boundaries when they were debating it. No one said out loud that Reed would mean sacrificing a NW elementary school when they were deciding whether to make it option or not. Now we find this out. A year later. How can this not have been part of the debate a year ago?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Add this to the list of things that the SB hid from everyone. No one said out loud that all these changes to the option admissions policies were going to cause massive issues for elementary boundaries when they were debating it. No one said out loud that Reed would mean sacrificing a NW elementary school when they were deciding whether to make it option or not. Now we find this out. A year later. How can this not have been part of the debate a year ago?

Agreed. It’s almost like this was a hidden long-term objective. Probably need to reopen the question of which schools are considered choice schools if it’s going to impact the schools this profoundly in the boundary process.

[Anonymous]

Maybe it’s time to end immersion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe it’s time to end immersion.

As part of the boundary process? Good luck!

[Anonymous]

There was no hidden long-term agenda. The reason why Nottingham is under consideration is that Tuckahoe launched an all-out attack to keep themselves out of consideration. Honestly, by 2021, they will need all the seats in the NW and this exercise is a huge waste of time.

[Anonymous]

So if all the schools stay where they are, is it even possible to fill all of the neighborhood schools using contiguous boundaries and honoring walk zones? I’m not sure how accurate the lines are on this map, but it’s going to be hard to get around the Reed walk zone to pull in kids from the east to Nottingham, Tuckahoe, and Discovery. Ugh.
https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/WZ_Buffer_StuCount_PP.jpg

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe it’s time to end immersion.

I dare you to suggest that at the next school board meeting. I’ll bring popcorn.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So if all the schools stay where they are, is it even possible to fill all of the neighborhood schools using contiguous boundaries and honoring walk zones? I’m not sure how accurate the lines are on this map, but it’s going to be hard to get around the Reed walk zone to pull in kids from the east to Nottingham, Tuckahoe, and Discovery. Ugh.
https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/WZ_Buffer_StuCount_PP.jpg

It's clear that Tuck/Nott & Discovery are too close. Will we need all those seats in 2021? Probably. It makes a lot more sense to remove one of them than a school without overlapping options for students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Add this to the list of things that the SB hid from everyone. No one said out loud that all these changes to the option admissions policies were going to cause massive issues for elementary boundaries when they were debating it. No one said out loud that Reed would mean sacrificing a NW elementary school when they were deciding whether to make it option or not. Now we find this out. A year later. How can this not have been part of the debate a year ago?

This!!!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"In the case of ASFS, that is an unreasonable expectation. You aren't losing your walkable neighborhood school. It has not been a neighborhood school for decades now."


Except that it was a neighborhood school (Page) for many decades before becoming ATS (briefly) and then ASFS. And when ASFS first started, anyone in the neighborhood (and county) could attend. It wasn't until the Orange Line corridor exploded with young families and capacity became an issue that ASFS had to start turning folks away. Most families who can walk have been allowed (until the last few years) to go to ASFS.


So big picture, it was and (arguably has been) a neighborhood school for more years when compared to the years it has been Key's alternative school.

For all those folks who moved close to Key because they were "guaranteed" to go to ASFS, that was a pretty big gamble. Boundaries can change at any time. Your best bet is to have Key move to Nottingham and then make Key a neighborhood school.

Like you said, that was decades ago. No one buying in that neighborhood then has ES-aged children now.

Agree that boundaries can change for anyone at any point.

True but many bought in the neighborhoods surrounding ASFS when the team was a viable, functioning option, which was still the case 3-4 years ago.

Which circles back to the reality everyone is facing that none of us have a guarantee on which school our child attends. We are all fighting for our own schools, but the reality exists for all of us. Our neighborhood school is in our actual planning unit which is about as much of a guarantee as you can get. but has been on the table to turn into an option school. Talk about shock.

Which brings ME back to the point that it is far less disruptive the Arlington community as a whole to take what has not been a neighborhood school, or at least not a neighborhood school for its actual neighbors, and make it an option, especially when there are not that many students in an effective walk zone. This school is ASFS. I know that both current Key and ASFS families don't want to move, but if anyone moves at all, it will be them. So which is the better situation for the majority of Arlington families and students: busting up three school communities, including one that has been a walkable neighborhood school for as long as anyone can remember (whether that is Nottingham, Ashlawn, or McKinley is immaterial), paying to move three sets of staff and any special equipment and/or artwork/or whatever that belongs to the program, OR swap two schools that are not very far apart and who already partner for sports teams, leaving their communities largely intact and not "taking away" a walkable neighborhood school from anyone who had any reasonable expectation of having one?

How many times does it have to be said on this thread: Swapping ASFS and Key does absolutely nothing to address overcrowding in that part of Arlington while creating horrible boundaries and more bus riders. How is that a solution? If it takes disrupting 3 ES schools, and I hope it does not, to solve the problem for Arlington as a whole then that's what it takes, especially if there are too many seats in NW compared to the rest of the county.

None of this is being done to address capacity. To address capacity, they have to build more and bigger schools, and adjust boundaries more frequently. This exercise is not about capacity, and whether you are at ASFS, Taylor, Key, Long Branch, or anywhere, your school is going to be over capacity. Unless your neighbors complain that it will ruin their kids' lives, and then the SB will make a decision that will leave one school at 110% capacity and another at 90%. But that's not because of the location of an option school.

[Anonymous]

Put the schools where the kids are. Period. If there aren’t at least 40-50% within a mile, consider it for option.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We don't need option schools to alleviate overcrowding. We could simply eliminate them and redistribute the kids to all neighborhood elementaries. I get so tired of people saying we need these schools. We don't. They screw up capacity issues, enrollment, projections. For what? Maybe I see the value of immersion, assuming that a high percentage of them go on to continue with spanish immersion in middle and high. But how many do that? Option schools are a luxury an overenrolled school system can't afford.

You know that the kids in option schools will still exist and will have to go to school somewhere, right? Push them back to their neighborhood schools and that just leaves those schools even more overcrowded. They won't just disappear. The ES option schools aren't like HB. They aren't being built smaller on purpose even though there's a seat shortage. Two of the option schools are just as big as the largest ES we have, and the other three have been growing, too, over the last five years as countywide enrollment has surged. They are on pace to be bigger than many of the neighborhood schools and won't likely shrink back ever, even if neighborhood school population levels off. They happen to be in smaller buildings, which they have maxed out and they have trailers, even if it's not the max preferred. They aren't demanding more consideration than a neighborhood school.

The problem is that we have more kids than seats. That's not because of option schools; option schools are being made into a scapegoat. I know you're mad about possibly being moved. I am, too, but it's not because of the option schools. It's because they built another neighborhood school right in the middle of a bunch of other neighborhood schools. No matter what, whether your school becomes an option program or not, if you live in this quadrant of the county, your current school probably won't be your school come 2021. And that is not the fault of option schools. In fact, the original plan was for Reed to be an option school to avoid having to redo ALL the surrounding boundaries. But the feedback during the last boundary change made them take that idea off the table, because we said that wanted a neighborhood school here. The numbers, if they are accurate, and that's a big IF, don't bear out having this many neighborhood schools all in one area.

[Anonymous]

Make Key neighborhood.
Make Carlin Springs immersion.

Make Campbell neighborhood.
Make Tuckahoe or Nottingham expeditionary (Campbell) - the nature element would tie nicely at Tuckahoe.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We don't need option schools to alleviate overcrowding. We could simply eliminate them and redistribute the kids to all neighborhood elementaries. I get so tired of people saying we need these schools. We don't. They screw up capacity issues, enrollment, projections. For what? Maybe I see the value of immersion, assuming that a high percentage of them go on to continue with spanish immersion in middle and high. But how many do that? Option schools are a luxury an overenrolled school system can't afford.

You know that the kids in option schools will still exist and will have to go to school somewhere, right? Push them back to their neighborhood schools and that just leaves those schools even more overcrowded. They won't just disappear. The ES option schools aren't like HB. They aren't being built smaller on purpose even though there's a seat shortage. Two of the option schools are just as big as the largest ES we have, and the other three have been growing, too, over the last five years as countywide enrollment has surged. They are on pace to be bigger than many of the neighborhood schools and won't likely shrink back ever, even if neighborhood school population levels off. They happen to be in smaller buildings, which they have maxed out and they have trailers, even if it's not the max preferred. They aren't demanding more consideration than a neighborhood school.

The problem is that we have more kids than seats. That's not because of option schools; option schools are being made into a scapegoat. I know you're mad about possibly being moved. I am, too, but it's not because of the option schools. It's because they built another neighborhood school right in the middle of a bunch of other neighborhood schools. No matter what, whether your school becomes an option program or not, if you live in this quadrant of the county, your current school probably won't be your school come 2021. And that is not the fault of option schools. In fact, the original plan was for Reed to be an option school to avoid having to redo ALL the surrounding boundaries. But the feedback during the last boundary change made them take that idea off the table, because we said that wanted a neighborhood school here. The numbers, if they are accurate, and that's a big IF, don't bear out having this many neighborhood schools all in one area.

Option schools aren’t the source of the problem but they make the problem a lot harder to manage.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe it’s time to end immersion.

I dare you to suggest that at the next school board meeting. I’ll bring popcorn.

With FLES and ESL in place, it should be open for debate. Or perhaps there should be one immersion school. Two immersion schools in a small county seems excessive.