APS Closing Nottingham

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If I’m Nottingham, I’m all over that. Why close it if they need a place for kids from that huge development. They can send those kids to Tuckahoe easily but not if they close Nottingham and move half of Tuckahoe there.

Of course, students from that development would be bus riders and drop offs, and EVERYONE WILL DIE if there’s more bus riders at Nottingham.

You're a horrible person you know making fun of the people who died, including a mom of three very young kids. Shame on you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If I’m Nottingham, I’m all over that. Why close it if they need a place for kids from that huge development. They can send those kids to Tuckahoe easily but not if they close Nottingham and move half of Tuckahoe there.

Of course, students from that development would be bus riders and drop offs, and EVERYONE WILL DIE if there’s more bus riders at Nottingham.

You're a horrible person you know making fun of the people who died, including a mom of three very young kids. Shame on you.

PP is making fun of the other PP who is being ridiculous.

Exploiting her death in this situation is actually kinda gross.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Try talking to the people who live near ATS. Option schools / swing space result in families who mostly do not live in the neighborhood and seem to drive / park / act as if no one else does either. The ATS parents at the old McKinley building speed, block driveways, make illegal u turns and generally behave in ways that parents did not when it was a neighborhood school. Plenty of complaints have been made - APS and Arlington do not care.

I'm an ATS parent. The PTA and school administration regularly remind parents to drive safely and courteously and the 25 mile an hour speed limit is regularly enforced by ACPD. No doubt there are people who continue to drive like jerks, but I think a lot of parents make an effort to not to endanger the community around their children's school. I also live a few blocks from two large schools which impact neighborhood arteries when they start/finish; I simply avoid them at those time if I'm in a particular hurry. I say all this not to be pedantic, but to share that in my experience none of this is as bad as as some Nottingham parents might be fearing. Kids using the bus for a short ride isn't so bad--they hang out for a little while with their neighbors and leave/arrive home a little earlier/later, which some working parents can appreciate.

So in other words you know nothing about traffic patterns around N'ham. Got it.

You're correct, I live a mile from Nottingham, so I'm definitely not an expert on the traffic patterns there. I do think about the loss of my kids' preschool teacher every time I drive through the intersection where she was killed nearby. I think I'm probably at least as sympathetic as most people the Nottingham community will encounter while advocating that Nottingham, with it's current four-way stops/signage, could not be a safe school for a lot of bus riders. If you want to persuade others to your perspective, you're going to have to grapple with others not finding assertions that Nottingham is uniquely dangerous for bus riders in a way that hasn't been/can't be ameliorated by any means convincing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Try talking to the people who live near ATS. Option schools / swing space result in families who mostly do not live in the neighborhood and seem to drive / park / act as if no one else does either. The ATS parents at the old McKinley building speed, block driveways, make illegal u turns and generally behave in ways that parents did not when it was a neighborhood school. Plenty of complaints have been made - APS and Arlington do not care.

I'm an ATS parent. The PTA and school administration regularly remind parents to drive safely and courteously and the 25 mile an hour speed limit is regularly enforced by ACPD. No doubt there are people who continue to drive like jerks, but I think a lot of parents make an effort to not to endanger the community around their children's school. I also live a few blocks from two large schools which impact neighborhood arteries when they start/finish; I simply avoid them at those time if I'm in a particular hurry. I say all this not to be pedantic, but to share that in my experience none of this is as bad as as some Nottingham parents might be fearing. Kids using the bus for a short ride isn't so bad--they hang out for a little while with their neighbors and leave/arrive home a little earlier/later, which some working parents can appreciate.

So in other words you know nothing about traffic patterns around N'ham. Got it.

You're correct, I live a mile from Nottingham, so I'm definitely not an expert on the traffic patterns there. I do think about the loss of my kids' preschool teacher every time I drive through the intersection where she was killed nearby. I think I'm probably at least as sympathetic as most people the Nottingham community will encounter while advocating that Nottingham, with it's current four-way stops/signage, could not be a safe school for a lot of bus riders. If you want to persuade others to your perspective, you're going to have to grapple with others not finding assertions that Nottingham is uniquely dangerous for bus riders in a way that hasn't been/can't be ameliorated by any means convincing.

There’s this thing people can do to estimate the impacts of increased traffic on a particular intersection, but I can’t for the life of me think of the name. Guess? No, not that. Eff around and find out? Maybe, that’s closer.

Hope and pray? That must be it. Because in the three summer months allotted for this expensive decision with extremely wide ranging impacts, that’s all we’re going to get.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are there actually enough seats at neighboring schools though? Real seats in the building not trailers? I can handle moving but I will be unhappy if they move my kid out of a Nott classroom into a trailer at Tuckahoe.

The thing I don’t understand is how we needed cardinal to be built (the school opened two years ago) but now have such an excess of seats that we can close a school. Cardinal’s location was picked because there was a need for seats in that area. Why wasn’t there just an addition built at Nottingham or tuckahoe?
My eldest is in highschool so I was paying attention to all the meetings. I know they had slides showing why you needed a whole new school. I just don’t get why they were so wrong.
Similarly with Hamm— I was actually very involved/paying attention during the boundary discussion then and the site placement discussion. They were so wrong about the projected kids there. So many additional groups wanted to go to hamm, but there “wasn’t space”. Then the school open at 85% capacity! Same with innovation— there “wasn’t space” when they set up the boundary— and it opened at 70%? I think they only had 2 kindergarten classes the year they opened. The projections are so wrong, and the county is making huge monetary decisions based off of them. It’s fiscal irresponsibility!

+1 Heavens this. No one wants to ask the hard questions here. APS is planning by the seat of their pants and continually kicking the can down the road. Every year the bad decisions just keep multiplying and getting more expensive and complicated to solve.

This particular can started getting kicked in the low enrollment years and apparently won’t stop getting kicked until the reputation of APS schools is back to what it was then.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If I’m Nottingham, I’m all over that. Why close it if they need a place for kids from that huge development. They can send those kids to Tuckahoe easily but not if they close Nottingham and move half of Tuckahoe there.

Of course, students from that development would be bus riders and drop offs, and EVERYONE WILL DIE if there’s more bus riders at Nottingham.

You're a horrible person you know making fun of the people who died, including a mom of three very young kids. Shame on you.

PP is making fun of the other PP who is being ridiculous.

Exploiting her death in this situation is actually kinda gross.

You've got to be kidding me. I guess you are ok with just letting more mothers die? Sit down and STFU.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Try talking to the people who live near ATS. Option schools / swing space result in families who mostly do not live in the neighborhood and seem to drive / park / act as if no one else does either. The ATS parents at the old McKinley building speed, block driveways, make illegal u turns and generally behave in ways that parents did not when it was a neighborhood school. Plenty of complaints have been made - APS and Arlington do not care.

I'm an ATS parent. The PTA and school administration regularly remind parents to drive safely and courteously and the 25 mile an hour speed limit is regularly enforced by ACPD. No doubt there are people who continue to drive like jerks, but I think a lot of parents make an effort to not to endanger the community around their children's school. I also live a few blocks from two large schools which impact neighborhood arteries when they start/finish; I simply avoid them at those time if I'm in a particular hurry. I say all this not to be pedantic, but to share that in my experience none of this is as bad as as some Nottingham parents might be fearing. Kids using the bus for a short ride isn't so bad--they hang out for a little while with their neighbors and leave/arrive home a little earlier/later, which some working parents can appreciate.

So in other words you know nothing about traffic patterns around N'ham. Got it.

You're correct, I live a mile from Nottingham, so I'm definitely not an expert on the traffic patterns there. I do think about the loss of my kids' preschool teacher every time I drive through the intersection where she was killed nearby. I think I'm probably at least as sympathetic as most people the Nottingham community will encounter while advocating that Nottingham, with it's current four-way stops/signage, could not be a safe school for a lot of bus riders. If you want to persuade others to your perspective, you're going to have to grapple with others not finding assertions that Nottingham is uniquely dangerous for bus riders in a way that hasn't been/can't be ameliorated by any means convincing.

There’s this thing people can do to estimate the impacts of increased traffic on a particular intersection, but I can’t for the life of me think of the name. Guess? No, not that. Eff around and find out? Maybe, that’s closer.

Hope and pray? That must be it. Because in the three summer months allotted for this expensive decision with extremely wide ranging impacts, that’s all we’re going to get.

I really don't think you get it. It's not the kids on buses I'm worried about. It's the kids and people walking in the neighborhood - remember the kids who used to go to N'ham but now will walk to Tuck and Discovery while there are so many more cars and buses brought into the neighborhood.

I'm glad you can be so snide about this whole thing. Some of us are not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Try talking to the people who live near ATS. Option schools / swing space result in families who mostly do not live in the neighborhood and seem to drive / park / act as if no one else does either. The ATS parents at the old McKinley building speed, block driveways, make illegal u turns and generally behave in ways that parents did not when it was a neighborhood school. Plenty of complaints have been made - APS and Arlington do not care.

I'm an ATS parent. The PTA and school administration regularly remind parents to drive safely and courteously and the 25 mile an hour speed limit is regularly enforced by ACPD. No doubt there are people who continue to drive like jerks, but I think a lot of parents make an effort to not to endanger the community around their children's school. I also live a few blocks from two large schools which impact neighborhood arteries when they start/finish; I simply avoid them at those time if I'm in a particular hurry. I say all this not to be pedantic, but to share that in my experience none of this is as bad as as some Nottingham parents might be fearing. Kids using the bus for a short ride isn't so bad--they hang out for a little while with their neighbors and leave/arrive home a little earlier/later, which some working parents can appreciate.

So in other words you know nothing about traffic patterns around N'ham. Got it.

You're correct, I live a mile from Nottingham, so I'm definitely not an expert on the traffic patterns there. I do think about the loss of my kids' preschool teacher every time I drive through the intersection where she was killed nearby. I think I'm probably at least as sympathetic as most people the Nottingham community will encounter while advocating that Nottingham, with it's current four-way stops/signage, could not be a safe school for a lot of bus riders. If you want to persuade others to your perspective, you're going to have to grapple with others not finding assertions that Nottingham is uniquely dangerous for bus riders in a way that hasn't been/can't be ameliorated by any means convincing.

There’s this thing people can do to estimate the impacts of increased traffic on a particular intersection, but I can’t for the life of me think of the name. Guess? No, not that. Eff around and find out? Maybe, that’s closer.

Hope and pray? That must be it. Because in the three summer months allotted for this expensive decision with extremely wide ranging impacts, that’s all we’re going to get.

I really don't think you get it. It's not the kids on buses I'm worried about. It's the kids and people walking in the neighborhood - remember the kids who used to go to N'ham but now will walk to Tuck and Discovery while there are so many more cars and buses brought into the neighborhood.

I'm glad you can be so snide about this whole thing. Some of us are not.

I’m the “hope and pray” poster- my comment got combined with the one I was responding to.

I’m very disappointed that’s all we’re going to get, in lieu of a proper study. Nottingham family.

[Anonymous]

I’m very disappointed that’s all we’re going to get, in lieu of a proper study. Nottingham family.

As if there haven't been ANY recent studies of this issue across the county that they couldn't use instead of starting yet another study. In your world, Arlington taxpayers should have to pay yet again for studies because entitled parents like you can't handle it when you don't get your way. Do you realize this money could be used instead for more staff and resources across the county?

The other ESes in your area are perfectly good schools. Get over this or go private.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I’m very disappointed that’s all we’re going to get, in lieu of a proper study. Nottingham family.

As if there haven't been ANY recent studies of this issue across the county that they couldn't use instead of starting yet another study. In your world, Arlington taxpayers should have to pay yet again for studies because entitled parents like you can't handle it when you don't get your way. Do you realize this money could be used instead for more staff and resources across the county?

The other ESes in your area are perfectly good schools. Get over this or go private.

There have been transportation studies to study the impact on this particular deadly road? Really? Point me to them. I’m not even convinced APS got the demographics right with their half-baked methodology.

“Suck it up Buttercup” is not a model of good governance, even if it feels good to say.

“Go private” is also a crap thing to say, unless you want parents lobbying hard for charters and vouchers - which our current Governor and House is more than willing to provide.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Try talking to the people who live near ATS. Option schools / swing space result in families who mostly do not live in the neighborhood and seem to drive / park / act as if no one else does either. The ATS parents at the old McKinley building speed, block driveways, make illegal u turns and generally behave in ways that parents did not when it was a neighborhood school. Plenty of complaints have been made - APS and Arlington do not care.

I'm at ATS parent who was at McK when it was there. There are more ATS parents, that's for sure, but their a$$hole level is generally lower. A lot lower. I did pickup aftercare both schools and really, the McK ppl were far more aggressive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Try talking to the people who live near ATS. Option schools / swing space result in families who mostly do not live in the neighborhood and seem to drive / park / act as if no one else does either. The ATS parents at the old McKinley building speed, block driveways, make illegal u turns and generally behave in ways that parents did not when it was a neighborhood school. Plenty of complaints have been made - APS and Arlington do not care.

I'm an ATS parent. The PTA and school administration regularly remind parents to drive safely and courteously and the 25 mile an hour speed limit is regularly enforced by ACPD. No doubt there are people who continue to drive like jerks, but I think a lot of parents make an effort to not to endanger the community around their children's school. I also live a few blocks from two large schools which impact neighborhood arteries when they start/finish; I simply avoid them at those time if I'm in a particular hurry. I say all this not to be pedantic, but to share that in my experience none of this is as bad as as some Nottingham parents might be fearing. Kids using the bus for a short ride isn't so bad--they hang out for a little while with their neighbors and leave/arrive home a little earlier/later, which some working parents can appreciate.

So in other words you know nothing about traffic patterns around N'ham. Got it.

You're correct, I live a mile from Nottingham, so I'm definitely not an expert on the traffic patterns there. I do think about the loss of my kids' preschool teacher every time I drive through the intersection where she was killed nearby. I think I'm probably at least as sympathetic as most people the Nottingham community will encounter while advocating that Nottingham, with it's current four-way stops/signage, could not be a safe school for a lot of bus riders. If you want to persuade others to your perspective, you're going to have to grapple with others not finding assertions that Nottingham is uniquely dangerous for bus riders in a way that hasn't been/can't be ameliorated by any means convincing.

There’s this thing people can do to estimate the impacts of increased traffic on a particular intersection, but I can’t for the life of me think of the name. Guess? No, not that. Eff around and find out? Maybe, that’s closer.

Hope and pray? That must be it. Because in the three summer months allotted for this expensive decision with extremely wide ranging impacts, that’s all we’re going to get.

I really don't think you get it. It's not the kids on buses I'm worried about. It's the kids and people walking in the neighborhood - remember the kids who used to go to N'ham but now will walk to Tuck and Discovery while there are so many more cars and buses brought into the neighborhood.

I'm glad you can be so snide about this whole thing. Some of us are not.

I'm the poster you quoted at the top of your message - I'm not sure you were referring to me, but I wasn't aiming to be snide but rather to share the perspective of a sympathetic person who has no grudges against your community. The same observation applies, you need to make the case that new Tuckahoe/Discovery walkers would be endangered in a way that can't be addressed (more new stops, signage, lower enforced speed limits, crossing guards). Just making the assertion is unconvincing because it's such a common situation. Pointing to the pedestrian fatalities does not end the discussion the way you seem to think it should, rather it begs for the deficiencies that contributed to the fatalities to continue to be addressed if the additional 4 ways stops and signage are inadequate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:County projecting in 5 years we will have a surplus of over 1,000 elementary seats. That sounds...optimistic.

Based on what I wonder. There has been a lot of turnover and lots of new kids in the neighborhood. Pandemic dip was a blip driven by desperate parents who could afford alternatives. We’re coming back.

There’s absolutely no facts/data to support this one way or the other. It’s 1,000 kids going to private school and APS doesn’t know or care to know if they are ever coming back. And if they leave for good, what does that mean for other families in the neighborhood when it’s normal to send your kids to private schools?

I have zero confidence in APS planning/projections. I understand that as a member of the public school community we need to every once in a while deal with these adjustments. APS has convinced me that they are totally incompetent at predicting seats so why should we all run around like crazy people on an annual basis trying to fill seats that APS couldn’t accurately predict?

They need better, outside data before I believe that these moves actually need to be made. They have wasted our money long enough on poor planning and annual neighborhood fights over boundaries.

South Arl poster, our neighborhood has kids divided everywhere, especially private. The effect on the neighborhood has been ...just fine. We just had a real July 4th parade you probably have heard of and a neighborhood picnic at the community house. Having your young kids dispersed doesn't not kill your neighborhood, that is blatantly untrue and known by many county residents apparently outside of your neighborhood.
As for no confidence in APS planning, sure, you do your opinion. My opinion is APS is never allowed to make good strategic decisions because of having to give too much deference to neighborhood feedback. I just don't understand how a 26-square mile system allows itself to be handcuffed by a group of maybe a dozen streets at every decision.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I’m very disappointed that’s all we’re going to get, in lieu of a proper study. Nottingham family.

As if there haven't been ANY recent studies of this issue across the county that they couldn't use instead of starting yet another study. In your world, Arlington taxpayers should have to pay yet again for studies because entitled parents like you can't handle it when you don't get your way. Do you realize this money could be used instead for more staff and resources across the county?

The other ESes in your area are perfectly good schools. Get over this or go private.

There have been transportation studies to study the impact on this particular deadly road? Really? Point me to them. I’m not even convinced APS got the demographics right with their half-baked methodology.

“Suck it up Buttercup” is not a model of good governance, even if it feels good to say.

“Go private” is also a crap thing to say, unless you want parents lobbying hard for charters and vouchers - which our current Governor and House is more than willing to provide.

Yes, of course. There were neighborhood meetings as well. That's how we got the new stop signs.

https://www.arlingtonva.us/Government/Programs/Transportation/Vision-Zero/County-Response-Update-Little-Falls-Road

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I’m very disappointed that’s all we’re going to get, in lieu of a proper study. Nottingham family.

As if there haven't been ANY recent studies of this issue across the county that they couldn't use instead of starting yet another study. In your world, Arlington taxpayers should have to pay yet again for studies because entitled parents like you can't handle it when you don't get your way. Do you realize this money could be used instead for more staff and resources across the county?

The other ESes in your area are perfectly good schools. Get over this or go private.

There have been transportation studies to study the impact on this particular deadly road? Really? Point me to them. I’m not even convinced APS got the demographics right with their half-baked methodology.

“Suck it up Buttercup” is not a model of good governance, even if it feels good to say.

“Go private” is also a crap thing to say, unless you want parents lobbying hard for charters and vouchers - which our current Governor and House is more than willing to provide.

https://www.arlingtonva.us/files/content/public/government/programs/transportation/vision-zero/county-response-update-little-falls-road/vision-zero-nov-17-2022-meeting.pdf