APS Elementary Location Working Group 4/12

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To those who don't want immersion, are you the same folks who don't want any Spanish speaking families in your neighborhood and fight any effort to bring affordable housing to higher priced Arlington neighborhoods?

I don’t have an issue with immersion existing. I do have a problem with it being placed in Key zone with no neighborhood preference. At that point you are absolutely saying the option school is more important than the neighborhood’s needs.

That's true of every single neighborhood you might put Key in. There is no where you can put 800 kids without overcrowding the other neighborhood schools. So saying you're good with Key existing as long as it's not in your neighborhood is essentially saying you're fine seeing someone else get screwed as long as it's not you.

McKinley / Ashlawn could handle 800+ with Reed opening up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To those who don't want immersion, are you the same folks who don't want any Spanish speaking families in your neighborhood and fight any effort to bring affordable housing to higher priced Arlington neighborhoods?

I don’t have an issue with immersion existing. I do have a problem with it being placed in Key zone with no neighborhood preference. At that point you are absolutely saying the option school is more important than the neighborhood’s needs.

That's true of every single neighborhood you might put Key in. There is no where you can put 800 kids without overcrowding the other neighborhood schools. So saying you're good with Key existing as long as it's not in your neighborhood is essentially saying you're fine seeing someone else get screwed as long as it's not you.

Not so. Key is the only school site on the eastern side of the county. Nottingham/Discovery/Tuckahoe/Jamestown/McKinley and Reed are all very close to one another. If you make one of them an option, then people still have a school nearby. With Key being an option school, there is no neighborhood school on that side of the county.

[Anonymous]

Can the working group propose that Key’s old admission policy be restored? It seems like an obvious solution.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can the working group propose that Key’s old admission policy be restored? It seems like an obvious solution.

Can Key become a neighborhood school? That is the obvious choice.

[Anonymous]

If Key needs to be neighborhood then let's just make do with one immersion school. Or, keep it immersion but just for neighborhood. Don't foist the problem onto another school community.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can the working group propose that Key’s old admission policy be restored? It seems like an obvious solution.

No.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To those who don't want immersion, are you the same folks who don't want any Spanish speaking families in your neighborhood and fight any effort to bring affordable housing to higher priced Arlington neighborhoods?

I don’t have an issue with immersion existing. I do have a problem with it being placed in Key zone with no neighborhood preference. At that point you are absolutely saying the option school is more important than the neighborhood’s needs.

That's true of every single neighborhood you might put Key in. There is no where you can put 800 kids without overcrowding the other neighborhood schools. So saying you're good with Key existing as long as it's not in your neighborhood is essentially saying you're fine seeing someone else get screwed as long as it's not you.

Not so. Key is the only school site on the eastern side of the county. Nottingham/Discovery/Tuckahoe/Jamestown/McKinley and Reed are all very close to one another. If you make one of them an option, then people still have a school nearby. With Key being an option school, there is no neighborhood school on that side of the county.

Even after Reed opens, there will be no where close to 800 excess seats up there. McKinley is massively overcrowded, Nottingham is over capacity, Tuckahoe is at capacity, Discovery is effectively at capacity (can't add trailers), and Reed is only adding 725. Even under the rosiest of staff projections (which are highly suspect unless you believe 20% of currently enrolled kindergarteners at some schools are going to simply disappear), you have about half as many seats as you need.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To those who don't want immersion, are you the same folks who don't want any Spanish speaking families in your neighborhood and fight any effort to bring affordable housing to higher priced Arlington neighborhoods?

I think programs are nice to haves. Neighborhood schools are need to haves. Taking neighborhood seats away and replacing the. With lottery programs only to say “oh but the lottery program will relieve overcrowding” is dumb. APS today is very different than it was 20yrs ago when kids could easily transfer to any school they wanted because schools at all levels had capacity.

We have ESL support in all schools. ATS pedagogically speaking may be out of touch with current approaches to early education. We are proud to have these lottery programs in our system,but they come at a price of neighborhood seats. It has nothing to do with not welcoming fa,I lies who speak different languages.

What does it matter for capacity whether they are neighborhood or option seats? They are seats, the same number, any way you add them up. If it's a matter of balancing capacity/enrollment, then a neighborhood allocation or priority based on "home" school overcrowding makes more sense than any other proposal put forward here.

[Anonymous]

Because general option lotteries make predicting individual school enrollment near impossible. Scrap them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To those who don't want immersion, are you the same folks who don't want any Spanish speaking families in your neighborhood and fight any effort to bring affordable housing to higher priced Arlington neighborhoods?

I don’t have an issue with immersion existing. I do have a problem with it being placed in Key zone with no neighborhood preference. At that point you are absolutely saying the option school is more important than the neighborhood’s needs.

So, every option school should have neighborhood preference? And be based on the neighborhood's needs? Option schools go somewhere, so it's always somebody's neighborhood. I'm so sick of everyone insisting "we NEED" this and "we MUST HAVE" that. But screw everyone else. That's saying "we" are "absolutely more important" than anyone or anything else: the school system's needs, or the County's needs, or some other neighborhood's needs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To those who don't want immersion, are you the same folks who don't want any Spanish speaking families in your neighborhood and fight any effort to bring affordable housing to higher priced Arlington neighborhoods?

I don’t have an issue with immersion existing. I do have a problem with it being placed in Key zone with no neighborhood preference. At that point you are absolutely saying the option school is more important than the neighborhood’s needs.

So, every option school should have neighborhood preference? And be based on the neighborhood's needs? Option schools go somewhere, so it's always somebody's neighborhood. I'm so sick of everyone insisting "we NEED" this and "we MUST HAVE" that. But screw everyone else. That's saying "we" are "absolutely more important" than anyone or anything else: the school system's needs, or the County's needs, or some other neighborhood's needs.

I think that telling people in Rosslyn who otherwise lead car free lifestyles that their neighborhood school is 3 miles away at Taylor is more of a burden than having someone in the Nottingham zone go less than a mile to Tuckahoe or Discovery. But if we really can’t do that then yes, let’s get rid of option schools.

[Anonymous]

Sorry, but people in Rosslyn have known about the distance of their assigned school since they moved there. Same thing with Westover people. The sense of entitlement to "my school' is baffling to me. When you make a decision to move into a neighborhood, you take into account the school options. Those factors are some of the most important reasons people move where they move - and it has a huge impact on home values. Right now we have people trying to game the system they bought into.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sorry, but people in Rosslyn have known about the distance of their assigned school since they moved there. Same thing with Westover people. The sense of entitlement to "my school' is baffling to me. When you make a decision to move into a neighborhood, you take into account the school options. Those factors are some of the most important reasons people move where they move - and it has a huge impact on home values. Right now we have people trying to game the system they bought into.

Until a year ago, Key zone had guaranteed admission to Key. If a non-immersion school was desired, they were also guaranteed admission to ASFS. If they leave Key as is and redraw the boundaries for ASFS the eastern side of the zone will be kicked out, so yeah, it’s not the same distance as when we moved in. I’m not saying the previous set up was fair or perfect, but it’s not true to say that the situation hasn’t changed significantly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sorry, but people in Rosslyn have known about the distance of their assigned school since they moved there. Same thing with Westover people. The sense of entitlement to "my school' is baffling to me. When you make a decision to move into a neighborhood, you take into account the school options. Those factors are some of the most important reasons people move where they move - and it has a huge impact on home values. Right now we have people trying to game the system they bought into.

Not so. When people moved to Rosslyn, they had two neighborhood schools— 1 within a mile walk (Key) and another further away but still metro accessible if they couldn’t do immersion. Their school was first turned option (in the case of key) and then usurped in the case of asfs. Rosslyn got screwed. Clarendon/Courthouse also got screwed. Colonial village got screwed. The only one that didn’t get screwed in Lyon village— I wonder how that happened (insert sarcastic pause).

[Anonymous]

Key is moving. Given the density surrounding it, APS has come to realize it must have a neighborhood school in that building.

It sucks for the kids there now, but that area has too many kids to not have a neighborhood school.

Look out for the immersion east/West divide to disappear. That is another arbitrary constraint that doesn’t need to exist and should limit where the immersion program are located.

There are schools in S Arlington like Barcroft that have a huge number of transfers. Could easily see that becoming an option school.