APS Middle School Boundaries?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I bet they delay it for another year or two. People in pretty much every middle school were furious about having to move, and that eventually is inevitable. But it's easier to just kick the can for a few years.

I haven't heard that much furor. The loudest are a few Taylor parents who don't think their kids should have to move to WMS, but that will likely be ignored as ridiculous. And two Ashlawn PUs that don't want to be carved off the rest of the elementary school, but I think that can pretty easily be fixed. No one else has posted a significant number of comments.

I agree with this. It's really not that big of a deal. The Hamm people are just nuts.

Sure you can call us names, but delaying won’t end end the outrage. The angriest people are those with little kids at Taylor who bought a home walking distance to an elementary and middle school, usually two working parent households where having walkable and independent students is a huge time savings.

We will be angry in two years, angry in 5 years, and likely will STILL campaign against the stupid “bus half the walkzone away” decision in perpetuity.

Kids will waste so much time waiting for and riding a bus needlessly. So this fight will only be over in December if the school board does the right thing, and moves Immersion to the school with the greatest capacity and uses the plan that minimizes bus costs and staffing. That is probably moving it to WMS, but math whizs are welcome to prove otherwise.

The tone of this whole post is so completely weird. Who are you threatening exactly with your talk of a fight that won't end for at least 5 years? You'll be campaigning to who exactly in perpetuity? Sincerely, you need to grow up.

PP was calling us nuts, I’m not calling anyone names and not “threatening”. I’m just saying that this isn’t a short term issue for some parents who don’t want to change schools midstream. This is an untenable situation for a neighborhood that existed before Hamm was even a school, Hamm corrected it, and that is now being undone and will trigger a return to constant campaign to correct it.

People can be more civil and stop calling Hamm and Taylor parents nuts or crazy. We aren’t attacking people, we are advocating an approach that minimizes the buses needed and the bus routes for neighborhood kids across Arlington. Which is the right priority.

If attending Hamm was so important to you why did you all reject the option to build Hamm larger?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I bet they delay it for another year or two. People in pretty much every middle school were furious about having to move, and that eventually is inevitable. But it's easier to just kick the can for a few years.

I haven't heard that much furor. The loudest are a few Taylor parents who don't think their kids should have to move to WMS, but that will likely be ignored as ridiculous. And two Ashlawn PUs that don't want to be carved off the rest of the elementary school, but I think that can pretty easily be fixed. No one else has posted a significant number of comments.

I agree with this. It's really not that big of a deal. The Hamm people are just nuts.

Sure you can call us names, but delaying won’t end end the outrage. The angriest people are those with little kids at Taylor who bought a home walking distance to an elementary and middle school, usually two working parent households where having walkable and independent students is a huge time savings.

We will be angry in two years, angry in 5 years, and likely will STILL campaign against the stupid “bus half the walkzone away” decision in perpetuity.

Kids will waste so much time waiting for and riding a bus needlessly. So this fight will only be over in December if the school board does the right thing, and moves Immersion to the school with the greatest capacity and uses the plan that minimizes bus costs and staffing. That is probably moving it to WMS, but math whizs are welcome to prove otherwise.

Haven't you read your own posts? It doesn't matter how far away MS is located because parents NEVER have to go there and MS students are 100% fine taking the bus by themselves. Transportation isn't an issue by MS, right? That's what Taylor parents are posting. :roll:

APS changes boundaries roughly every year. If anyone bought not knowing that, then they should have done more research. It's not exactly a secret.

It’s about independence and wasting time on a longer than necessary bus ride. Taylor students are almost universally ridiculously close to Hamm, and busing to WMS takes a circuitous route through neighborhoods.

It’s okay for option because that is part of the deal which you can always walk away from, to coin a phrase.

People who chose neighborhood prioritized proximity and short commutes to school. They don’t have a fallback.

And boundaries shouldn’t be changing every year, if they would just invest appropriately in facilities rather than blowing the budget on slides and award winning urban schools.

If your issue is that kids should be able to walk, you're far more likely to get traction by proposing moving Hamm bus riders to WMS. They're already getting on a bus and many were previously zoned to WMS.

There's no way that APS is going to move Immersion to WMS given the feeder patterns, logistics, and equity issues. You can keep beating us over the head with the idea, but that isn't going to change those issues. I'd pivot to a different proposal if you want any chance of staying a walker.

It’s nice you make up “feeder patterns, logistics, and equity issues” as if they are actually a thing.

Option kids can be buses anywhere, and WMS requires the least buses through the system.

As for equity, moving Immersion to the majority Hispanic school sure looks like segregation, but I guess adding diversity to WMS hurts equity? You sure think funny.

STOP with this argument. First, EL is under the immersion department meaning APS has deemed immersion to have the most and appropriate resources to support EL students. Immersion schools support hispanic families by going above and beyond to support hispanic culture and teach about hispanic cultural figures that aren't necessarily taught in other APS schools. The immersion schools also celebrate hispanic cultural holidays..so you can call it racism but other might call it brining the righr support to where students need it.

If the goal is to better support Spanish-speaking EL kids then you need to enroll more of them in ES. They can’t just join the program in MS. If you want to know why the long term outcomes of the Hispanic kids in Immersion might be better perhaps you also need to compare the economic status and education level of the parents at the option schools vs. the neighborhood schools. Latinx parents who are new immigrants and have low levels of literacy are more likely to enroll at their neighborhood ES, and a flyer they can’t read won’t help them much. If the goal is better outcomes for EL Latinx kids, then you need to figure out how to get more of them into Immersion ES. Location of the MS program doesn’t matter because you’re not going to capture those students in MS, they are already shut out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I bet they delay it for another year or two. People in pretty much every middle school were furious about having to move, and that eventually is inevitable. But it's easier to just kick the can for a few years.

I haven't heard that much furor. The loudest are a few Taylor parents who don't think their kids should have to move to WMS, but that will likely be ignored as ridiculous. And two Ashlawn PUs that don't want to be carved off the rest of the elementary school, but I think that can pretty easily be fixed. No one else has posted a significant number of comments.

I agree with this. It's really not that big of a deal. The Hamm people are just nuts.

Sure you can call us names, but delaying won’t end end the outrage. The angriest people are those with little kids at Taylor who bought a home walking distance to an elementary and middle school, usually two working parent households where having walkable and independent students is a huge time savings.

We will be angry in two years, angry in 5 years, and likely will STILL campaign against the stupid “bus half the walkzone away” decision in perpetuity.

Kids will waste so much time waiting for and riding a bus needlessly. So this fight will only be over in December if the school board does the right thing, and moves Immersion to the school with the greatest capacity and uses the plan that minimizes bus costs and staffing. That is probably moving it to WMS, but math whizs are welcome to prove otherwise.

Haven't you read your own posts? It doesn't matter how far away MS is located because parents NEVER have to go there and MS students are 100% fine taking the bus by themselves. Transportation isn't an issue by MS, right? That's what Taylor parents are posting.

APS changes boundaries roughly every year. If anyone bought not knowing that, then they should have done more research. It's not exactly a secret.

It’s about independence and wasting time on a longer than necessary bus ride. Taylor students are almost universally ridiculously close to Hamm, and busing to WMS takes a circuitous route through neighborhoods.

It’s okay for option because that is part of the deal which you can always walk away from, to coin a phrase.

People who chose neighborhood prioritized proximity and short commutes to school. They don’t have a fallback.

And boundaries shouldn’t be changing every year, if they would just invest appropriately in facilities rather than blowing the budget on slides and award winning urban schools.

Boundaries don’t change every year. And boundaries changing this time has zero to do with past buildings having amenities you don’t approve of.

Doesn’t even make any sense.

DHMS opened in 2019, 4 years later we are RADICALLY redrawing boundaries. Maybe not “yearly” but incompetence and misguided investment. They should have made HBW bigger when they blew $100M, or maybe enlarged the other middle schools and built them a standard building for $50M.

OMG! There WAS an option to build Hamm larger to accommodate 1300 students instead of 1000. The neighbhorhood around Hamm rejected it and the board listened and voted it down. Now this same neighbhorhood doesnt' want to be moved away because, wait for it, Hamm is too small. So there you are, you are living with the consequences of your OWN actions.

Don’t be obtuse. Hamm is ALREADY at the LARGEST capacity middle school. They should have expanded the other middle schools, especially HBW, which blew all the money on their award winning building.

The affected families are less than 500 ft from the school, if they made Hamm 1300 seats, they would have moved Immersion there and still kicked out the walkzone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where and when did you hear this?

I’m following and never heard that.

It had been on their website - I'm almost certain of it - but I can't find it now. Either they changed something or I'm going crazy.

Maybe they said that initially before they canceled the immersion round table?

If they don't move the immersion program, then do all the middle school boundaries stay the same?

No I think even more students would need to be moved. Because even more Gunston kids would need to push north.

I know nobody really cares, but this is why it's more important to move the immersion program. Just shuffling the boundaries northward will take away the wealthier neighborhoods from TJ and further exacerbate the economic divide.

People are just throwing anything at the wall that will mean their kid isn't affected at all, which is clearly this bizarro campaign to put immersion at WMS.

PP. Actually, I believe immersion should move to Kenmore.

What other types of blatant racial segregation do you believe in?

Seriously? Moving a program with 50% non-native-Spanish speakers from one school that is already 50% non-white to another similar school is racial segregation? That's hysterical.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why can’t busers be independent? Confusing to me.

Some of you sound like your kids aren’t this age yet. They ride their bikes all over (including to school) and they are willing to walk all over the place. They will easily walk the distance they’re getting bused on the way home. The bus isn’t the big problem you’re making it out to be.

Because WMS is freaking far away, which is why parents were asking for a neighborhood school for a generation.

It’s too far to bike (and very hilly) and long bus ride by the time they are home it’s late. And the late bus was off the charts late, it dropped them off in the pitch dark.

It’s too far to bike. And too hilly. My teen bikes all over this county. That what they do once they want to see friends and go places and can’t drive yet.

You people are embarrassing.

Biking to school with a backpack of books on a timeline is different than hanging out with Larlo at Sbux.

And middle schoolers aren’t teens.

Of course it's ok for recreation and by choice to hang out with friends. But absolutely not ok to force them to do it to get to school.
And, fyi, most middle schoolers are actually teens.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where and when did you hear this?

I’m following and never heard that.

It had been on their website - I'm almost certain of it - but I can't find it now. Either they changed something or I'm going crazy.

Maybe they said that initially before they canceled the immersion round table?

If they don't move the immersion program, then do all the middle school boundaries stay the same?

No I think even more students would need to be moved. Because even more Gunston kids would need to push north.

I know nobody really cares, but this is why it's more important to move the immersion program. Just shuffling the boundaries northward will take away the wealthier neighborhoods from TJ and further exacerbate the economic divide.

People are just throwing anything at the wall that will mean their kid isn't affected at all, which is clearly this bizarro campaign to put immersion at WMS.

PP. Actually, I believe immersion should move to Kenmore.

What other types of blatant racial segregation do you believe in?

Seriously? Moving a program with 50% non-native-Spanish speakers from one school that is already 50% non-white to another similar school is racial segregation? That's hysterical.

Kenmore is the highest percentage Hispanic students even before immersion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why can’t busers be independent? Confusing to me.

Some of you sound like your kids aren’t this age yet. They ride their bikes all over (including to school) and they are willing to walk all over the place. They will easily walk the distance they’re getting bused on the way home. The bus isn’t the big problem you’re making it out to be.

Because WMS is freaking far away, which is why parents were asking for a neighborhood school for a generation.

It’s too far to bike (and very hilly) and long bus ride by the time they are home it’s late. And the late bus was off the charts late, it dropped them off in the pitch dark.

It’s too far to bike. And too hilly. My teen bikes all over this county. That what they do once they want to see friends and go places and can’t drive yet.

You people are embarrassing.

Biking to school with a backpack of books on a timeline is different than hanging out with Larlo at Sbux.

And middle schoolers aren’t teens.

Of course it's ok for recreation and by choice to hang out with friends. But absolutely not ok to force them to do it to get to school.
And, fyi, most middle schoolers are actually teens.

School ages:

K 5
1 6
2 7
3 8
4 9
5 10
6 11
7 12
8 13

So unless your have a middle school that is over 50% teens, most kids at a middle school aren’t teens.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why can’t busers be independent? Confusing to me.

Some of you sound like your kids aren’t this age yet. They ride their bikes all over (including to school) and they are willing to walk all over the place. They will easily walk the distance they’re getting bused on the way home. The bus isn’t the big problem you’re making it out to be.

Because WMS is freaking far away, which is why parents were asking for a neighborhood school for a generation.

It’s too far to bike (and very hilly) and long bus ride by the time they are home it’s late. And the late bus was off the charts late, it dropped them off in the pitch dark.

It’s too far to bike. And too hilly. My teen bikes all over this county. That what they do once they want to see friends and go places and can’t drive yet.

You people are embarrassing.

Biking to school with a backpack of books on a timeline is different than hanging out with Larlo at Sbux.

And middle schoolers aren’t teens.

Of course it's ok for recreation and by choice to hang out with friends. But absolutely not ok to force them to do it to get to school.
And, fyi, most middle schoolers are actually teens.

School ages:

K 5
1 6
2 7
3 8
4 9
5 10
6 11
7 12
8 13

So unless your have a middle school that is over 50% teens, most kids at a middle school aren’t teens.

Sorry, over 50% 8th graders

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I bet they delay it for another year or two. People in pretty much every middle school were furious about having to move, and that eventually is inevitable. But it's easier to just kick the can for a few years.

I haven't heard that much furor. The loudest are a few Taylor parents who don't think their kids should have to move to WMS, but that will likely be ignored as ridiculous. And two Ashlawn PUs that don't want to be carved off the rest of the elementary school, but I think that can pretty easily be fixed. No one else has posted a significant number of comments.

I agree with this. It's really not that big of a deal. The Hamm people are just nuts.

Sure you can call us names, but delaying won’t end end the outrage. The angriest people are those with little kids at Taylor who bought a home walking distance to an elementary and middle school, usually two working parent households where having walkable and independent students is a huge time savings.

We will be angry in two years, angry in 5 years, and likely will STILL campaign against the stupid “bus half the walkzone away” decision in perpetuity.

Kids will waste so much time waiting for and riding a bus needlessly. So this fight will only be over in December if the school board does the right thing, and moves Immersion to the school with the greatest capacity and uses the plan that minimizes bus costs and staffing. That is probably moving it to WMS, but math whizs are welcome to prove otherwise.

Haven't you read your own posts? It doesn't matter how far away MS is located because parents NEVER have to go there and MS students are 100% fine taking the bus by themselves. Transportation isn't an issue by MS, right? That's what Taylor parents are posting.

APS changes boundaries roughly every year. If anyone bought not knowing that, then they should have done more research. It's not exactly a secret.

It’s about independence and wasting time on a longer than necessary bus ride. Taylor students are almost universally ridiculously close to Hamm, and busing to WMS takes a circuitous route through neighborhoods.

It’s okay for option because that is part of the deal which you can always walk away from, to coin a phrase.

People who chose neighborhood prioritized proximity and short commutes to school. They don’t have a fallback.

And boundaries shouldn’t be changing every year, if they would just invest appropriately in facilities rather than blowing the budget on slides and award winning urban schools.

Boundaries don’t change every year. And boundaries changing this time has zero to do with past buildings having amenities you don’t approve of.

Doesn’t even make any sense.

DHMS opened in 2019, 4 years later we are RADICALLY redrawing boundaries. Maybe not “yearly” but incompetence and misguided investment. They should have made HBW bigger when they blew $100M, or maybe enlarged the other middle schools and built them a standard building for $50M.

OMG! There WAS an option to build Hamm larger to accommodate 1300 students instead of 1000. The neighbhorhood around Hamm rejected it and the board listened and voted it down. Now this same neighbhorhood doesnt' want to be moved away because, wait for it, Hamm is too small. So there you are, you are living with the consequences of your OWN actions.

Don’t be obtuse. Hamm is ALREADY at the LARGEST capacity middle school. They should have expanded the other middle schools, especially HBW, which blew all the money on their award winning building.

The affected families are less than 500 ft from the school, if they made Hamm 1300 seats, they would have moved Immersion there and still kicked out the walkzone.

How exactly am I being obtuse? There was the option to build Hamm at 1300 at the time of the renovation. Your neighbhohood lobbied against it and won. Sorry you don't like the consequences.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why can’t busers be independent? Confusing to me.

Some of you sound like your kids aren’t this age yet. They ride their bikes all over (including to school) and they are willing to walk all over the place. They will easily walk the distance they’re getting bused on the way home. The bus isn’t the big problem you’re making it out to be.

Because WMS is freaking far away, which is why parents were asking for a neighborhood school for a generation.

It’s too far to bike (and very hilly) and long bus ride by the time they are home it’s late. And the late bus was off the charts late, it dropped them off in the pitch dark.

It’s too far to bike. And too hilly. My teen bikes all over this county. That what they do once they want to see friends and go places and can’t drive yet.

You people are embarrassing.

Biking to school with a backpack of books on a timeline is different than hanging out with Larlo at Sbux.

And middle schoolers aren’t teens.

Of course it's ok for recreation and by choice to hang out with friends. But absolutely not ok to force them to do it to get to school.
And, fyi, most middle schoolers are actually teens.

School ages:

K 5
1 6
2 7
3 8
4 9
5 10
6 11
7 12
8 13

So unless your have a middle school that is over 50% teens, most kids at a middle school aren’t teens.

So most of them turn 13 during 7th grade. During. My kids turned 13 in November so was 13 most of 7th grade. The only kids not 13 at some point during 7th grade to recap would be July, August, and September birthdays. So at some points during the school year, sure the school is majority teens.

Stupid thing to argue about but since you very confidently listed the ages for all the grades incorrectly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I bet they delay it for another year or two. People in pretty much every middle school were furious about having to move, and that eventually is inevitable. But it's easier to just kick the can for a few years.

I haven't heard that much furor. The loudest are a few Taylor parents who don't think their kids should have to move to WMS, but that will likely be ignored as ridiculous. And two Ashlawn PUs that don't want to be carved off the rest of the elementary school, but I think that can pretty easily be fixed. No one else has posted a significant number of comments.

I agree with this. It's really not that big of a deal. The Hamm people are just nuts.

Sure you can call us names, but delaying won’t end end the outrage. The angriest people are those with little kids at Taylor who bought a home walking distance to an elementary and middle school, usually two working parent households where having walkable and independent students is a huge time savings.

We will be angry in two years, angry in 5 years, and likely will STILL campaign against the stupid “bus half the walkzone away” decision in perpetuity.

Kids will waste so much time waiting for and riding a bus needlessly. So this fight will only be over in December if the school board does the right thing, and moves Immersion to the school with the greatest capacity and uses the plan that minimizes bus costs and staffing. That is probably moving it to WMS, but math whizs are welcome to prove otherwise.

The tone of this whole post is so completely weird. Who are you threatening exactly with your talk of a fight that won't end for at least 5 years? You'll be campaigning to who exactly in perpetuity? Sincerely, you need to grow up.

PP was calling us nuts, I’m not calling anyone names and not “threatening”. I’m just saying that this isn’t a short term issue for some parents who don’t want to change schools midstream. This is an untenable situation for a neighborhood that existed before Hamm was even a school, Hamm corrected it, and that is now being undone and will trigger a return to constant campaign to correct it.

People can be more civil and stop calling Hamm and Taylor parents nuts or crazy. We aren’t attacking people, we are advocating an approach that minimizes the buses needed and the bus routes for neighborhood kids across Arlington. Which is the right priority.

Maybe not crazy, just extremely entitled. We walked to Taylor and we were moved to Jamestown in a boundary shift. So I KNOW all about the bus ride to WMS from this area. You are being extremely disingenuous trying to make out that Taylor kids are going to have a long ride to WMS. It’s 3 miles from school to school. All across APS, families have been asked to move. You aren’t that special. Feel free to continue “a constant campaign to correct it” LOL. No one cares about your entitled whining.

+1000

The fact that these parents even say this crap out loud is astonishing to me. It's untenable for your neighborhood to take the long, arduous journey to Williamsburg? What the actual F. It genuinely does not pass the laugh test.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I bet they delay it for another year or two. People in pretty much every middle school were furious about having to move, and that eventually is inevitable. But it's easier to just kick the can for a few years.

I haven't heard that much furor. The loudest are a few Taylor parents who don't think their kids should have to move to WMS, but that will likely be ignored as ridiculous. And two Ashlawn PUs that don't want to be carved off the rest of the elementary school, but I think that can pretty easily be fixed. No one else has posted a significant number of comments.

I agree with this. It's really not that big of a deal. The Hamm people are just nuts.

Sure you can call us names, but delaying won’t end end the outrage. The angriest people are those with little kids at Taylor who bought a home walking distance to an elementary and middle school, usually two working parent households where having walkable and independent students is a huge time savings.

We will be angry in two years, angry in 5 years, and likely will STILL campaign against the stupid “bus half the walkzone away” decision in perpetuity.

Kids will waste so much time waiting for and riding a bus needlessly. So this fight will only be over in December if the school board does the right thing, and moves Immersion to the school with the greatest capacity and uses the plan that minimizes bus costs and staffing. That is probably moving it to WMS, but math whizs are welcome to prove otherwise.

Haven't you read your own posts? It doesn't matter how far away MS is located because parents NEVER have to go there and MS students are 100% fine taking the bus by themselves. Transportation isn't an issue by MS, right? That's what Taylor parents are posting.

APS changes boundaries roughly every year. If anyone bought not knowing that, then they should have done more research. It's not exactly a secret.

It’s about independence and wasting time on a longer than necessary bus ride. Taylor students are almost universally ridiculously close to Hamm, and busing to WMS takes a circuitous route through neighborhoods.

It’s okay for option because that is part of the deal which you can always walk away from, to coin a phrase.

People who chose neighborhood prioritized proximity and short commutes to school. They don’t have a fallback.

And boundaries shouldn’t be changing every year, if they would just invest appropriately in facilities rather than blowing the budget on slides and award winning urban schools.

Boundaries don’t change every year. And boundaries changing this time has zero to do with past buildings having amenities you don’t approve of.

Doesn’t even make any sense.

DHMS opened in 2019, 4 years later we are RADICALLY redrawing boundaries. Maybe not “yearly” but incompetence and misguided investment. They should have made HBW bigger when they blew $100M, or maybe enlarged the other middle schools and built them a standard building for $50M.

OMG! There WAS an option to build Hamm larger to accommodate 1300 students instead of 1000. The neighbhorhood around Hamm rejected it and the board listened and voted it down. Now this same neighbhorhood doesnt' want to be moved away because, wait for it, Hamm is too small. So there you are, you are living with the consequences of your OWN actions.

Don’t be obtuse. Hamm is ALREADY at the LARGEST capacity middle school. They should have expanded the other middle schools, especially HBW, which blew all the money on their award winning building.

The affected families are less than 500 ft from the school, if they made Hamm 1300 seats, they would have moved Immersion there and still kicked out the walkzone.

How exactly am I being obtuse? There was the option to build Hamm at 1300 at the time of the renovation. Your neighbhohood lobbied against it and won. Sorry you don't like the consequences.

Because you see they are important people so the school should be not too big and not too small and not too fancy but just nice enough and not too crowded either and it's for THEIR kids. Not any other kids. They bought their house and this was the understanding that came with the house.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I bet they delay it for another year or two. People in pretty much every middle school were furious about having to move, and that eventually is inevitable. But it's easier to just kick the can for a few years.

I haven't heard that much furor. The loudest are a few Taylor parents who don't think their kids should have to move to WMS, but that will likely be ignored as ridiculous. And two Ashlawn PUs that don't want to be carved off the rest of the elementary school, but I think that can pretty easily be fixed. No one else has posted a significant number of comments.

I agree with this. It's really not that big of a deal. The Hamm people are just nuts.

Sure you can call us names, but delaying won’t end end the outrage. The angriest people are those with little kids at Taylor who bought a home walking distance to an elementary and middle school, usually two working parent households where having walkable and independent students is a huge time savings.

We will be angry in two years, angry in 5 years, and likely will STILL campaign against the stupid “bus half the walkzone away” decision in perpetuity.

Kids will waste so much time waiting for and riding a bus needlessly. So this fight will only be over in December if the school board does the right thing, and moves Immersion to the school with the greatest capacity and uses the plan that minimizes bus costs and staffing. That is probably moving it to WMS, but math whizs are welcome to prove otherwise.

Haven't you read your own posts? It doesn't matter how far away MS is located because parents NEVER have to go there and MS students are 100% fine taking the bus by themselves. Transportation isn't an issue by MS, right? That's what Taylor parents are posting. :roll:

APS changes boundaries roughly every year. If anyone bought not knowing that, then they should have done more research. It's not exactly a secret.

It’s about independence and wasting time on a longer than necessary bus ride. Taylor students are almost universally ridiculously close to Hamm, and busing to WMS takes a circuitous route through neighborhoods.

It’s okay for option because that is part of the deal which you can always walk away from, to coin a phrase.

People who chose neighborhood prioritized proximity and short commutes to school. They don’t have a fallback.

And boundaries shouldn’t be changing every year, if they would just invest appropriately in facilities rather than blowing the budget on slides and award winning urban schools.

If your issue is that kids should be able to walk, you're far more likely to get traction by proposing moving Hamm bus riders to WMS. They're already getting on a bus and many were previously zoned to WMS.

There's no way that APS is going to move Immersion to WMS given the feeder patterns, logistics, and equity issues. You can keep beating us over the head with the idea, but that isn't going to change those issues. I'd pivot to a different proposal if you want any chance of staying a walker.

It’s nice you make up “feeder patterns, logistics, and equity issues” as if they are actually a thing.

Option kids can be buses anywhere, and WMS requires the least buses through the system.

As for equity, moving Immersion to the majority Hispanic school sure looks like segregation, but I guess adding diversity to WMS hurts equity? You sure think funny.

STOP with this argument. First, EL is under the immersion department meaning APS has deemed immersion to have the most and appropriate resources to support EL students. Immersion schools support hispanic families by going above and beyond to support hispanic culture and teach about hispanic cultural figures that aren't necessarily taught in other APS schools. The immersion schools also celebrate hispanic cultural holidays..so you can call it racism but other might call it brining the righr support to where students need it.

If the goal is to better support Spanish-speaking EL kids then you need to enroll more of them in ES. They can’t just join the program in MS. If you want to know why the long term outcomes of the Hispanic kids in Immersion might be better perhaps you also need to compare the economic status and education level of the parents at the option schools vs. the neighborhood schools. Latinx parents who are new immigrants and have low levels of literacy are more likely to enroll at their neighborhood ES, and a flyer they can’t read won’t help them much. If the goal is better outcomes for EL Latinx kids, then you need to figure out how to get more of them into Immersion ES. Location of the MS program doesn’t matter because you’re not going to capture those students in MS, they are already shut out.

Well the advocay isn't to get them into MS it is to inform them about the ES program..we don't just hand them a flyer and send people on their way. People talk to them in Spanish about the program.

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Anonymous wrote:Why can’t busers be independent? Confusing to me.

Some of you sound like your kids aren’t this age yet. They ride their bikes all over (including to school) and they are willing to walk all over the place. They will easily walk the distance they’re getting bused on the way home. The bus isn’t the big problem you’re making it out to be.

Because WMS is freaking far away, which is why parents were asking for a neighborhood school for a generation.

It’s too far to bike (and very hilly) and long bus ride by the time they are home it’s late. And the late bus was off the charts late, it dropped them off in the pitch dark.

It’s too far to bike. And too hilly. My teen bikes all over this county. That what they do once they want to see friends and go places and can’t drive yet.

You people are embarrassing.

Biking to school with a backpack of books on a timeline is different than hanging out with Larlo at Sbux.

And middle schoolers aren’t teens.

Of course it's ok for recreation and by choice to hang out with friends. But absolutely not ok to force them to do it to get to school.
And, fyi, most middle schoolers are actually teens.

School ages:

K 5
1 6
2 7
3 8
4 9
5 10
6 11
7 12
8 13

So unless your have a middle school that is over 50% teens, most kids at a middle school aren’t teens.

So most of them turn 13 during 7th grade. During. My kids turned 13 in November so was 13 most of 7th grade. The only kids not 13 at some point during 7th grade to recap would be July, August, and September birthdays. So at some points during the school year, sure the school is majority teens.

Stupid thing to argue about but since you very confidently listed the ages for all the grades incorrectly.

You enter kinder when you are 5, how is my list wrong? My point is middle
school are not teens so comparing to high school students as PP was is inane.

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Anonymous wrote:I bet they delay it for another year or two. People in pretty much every middle school were furious about having to move, and that eventually is inevitable. But it's easier to just kick the can for a few years.

I haven't heard that much furor. The loudest are a few Taylor parents who don't think their kids should have to move to WMS, but that will likely be ignored as ridiculous. And two Ashlawn PUs that don't want to be carved off the rest of the elementary school, but I think that can pretty easily be fixed. No one else has posted a significant number of comments.

I agree with this. It's really not that big of a deal. The Hamm people are just nuts.

Sure you can call us names, but delaying won’t end end the outrage. The angriest people are those with little kids at Taylor who bought a home walking distance to an elementary and middle school, usually two working parent households where having walkable and independent students is a huge time savings.

We will be angry in two years, angry in 5 years, and likely will STILL campaign against the stupid “bus half the walkzone away” decision in perpetuity.

Kids will waste so much time waiting for and riding a bus needlessly. So this fight will only be over in December if the school board does the right thing, and moves Immersion to the school with the greatest capacity and uses the plan that minimizes bus costs and staffing. That is probably moving it to WMS, but math whizs are welcome to prove otherwise.

Haven't you read your own posts? It doesn't matter how far away MS is located because parents NEVER have to go there and MS students are 100% fine taking the bus by themselves. Transportation isn't an issue by MS, right? That's what Taylor parents are posting.

APS changes boundaries roughly every year. If anyone bought not knowing that, then they should have done more research. It's not exactly a secret.

It’s about independence and wasting time on a longer than necessary bus ride. Taylor students are almost universally ridiculously close to Hamm, and busing to WMS takes a circuitous route through neighborhoods.

It’s okay for option because that is part of the deal which you can always walk away from, to coin a phrase.

People who chose neighborhood prioritized proximity and short commutes to school. They don’t have a fallback.

And boundaries shouldn’t be changing every year, if they would just invest appropriately in facilities rather than blowing the budget on slides and award winning urban schools.

Boundaries don’t change every year. And boundaries changing this time has zero to do with past buildings having amenities you don’t approve of.

Doesn’t even make any sense.

DHMS opened in 2019, 4 years later we are RADICALLY redrawing boundaries. Maybe not “yearly” but incompetence and misguided investment. They should have made HBW bigger when they blew $100M, or maybe enlarged the other middle schools and built them a standard building for $50M.

OMG! There WAS an option to build Hamm larger to accommodate 1300 students instead of 1000. The neighbhorhood around Hamm rejected it and the board listened and voted it down. Now this same neighbhorhood doesnt' want to be moved away because, wait for it, Hamm is too small. So there you are, you are living with the consequences of your OWN actions.

Don’t be obtuse. Hamm is ALREADY at the LARGEST capacity middle school. They should have expanded the other middle schools, especially HBW, which blew all the money on their award winning building.

The affected families are less than 500 ft from the school, if they made Hamm 1300 seats, they would have moved Immersion there and still kicked out the walkzone.

How exactly am I being obtuse? There was the option to build Hamm at 1300 at the time of the renovation. Your neighbhohood lobbied against it and won. Sorry you don't like the consequences.

Why should just Hamm be 30% larger than ALL other middle schools while HBW complains it can’t enlarge a smidgen because of its “philosophy”. So because Hamm advocated to be in line with other middle schools, it gets penalized by nuking its walkzone?