Barcroft elementary/ south Arlington crisis

[Anonymous]

This was posted over on the real estate forum. Anyone with significant knowledge of the exisiting zones and demographics want to weight in?




I agree that the only thing keeping many parts of south Arlington from thriving are the schools. I have a solution.

Turn claremont into a neighborhood school. Change the boundaries to take some abingdon students, and abingdon can take some oak ridge. Then, have claremont take all the kids on the south side of the pike. That would free up space at both randolf and barcroft. And help even out some of the demographics.

Build s new Spanish immersion, perhaps at TJ, that is accessible to everyone in the boundary.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
This was posted over on the real estate forum. Anyone with significant knowledge of the exisiting zones and demographics want to weight in?




I agree that the only thing keeping many parts of south Arlington from thriving are the schools. I have a solution.

Turn claremont into a neighborhood school. Change the boundaries to take some abingdon students, and abingdon can take some oak ridge. Then, have claremont take all the kids on the south side of the pike. That would free up space at both randolf and barcroft. And help even out some of the demographics.

Build s new Spanish immersion, perhaps at TJ, that is accessible to everyone in the boundary.

Follow up question - which neighborhoods would feed int claremont under your proposal?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
This was posted over on the real estate forum. Anyone with significant knowledge of the exisiting zones and demographics want to weight in?




I agree that the only thing keeping many parts of south Arlington from thriving are the schools. I have a solution.

Turn claremont into a neighborhood school. Change the boundaries to take some abingdon students, and abingdon can take some oak ridge. Then, have claremont take all the kids on the south side of the pike. That would free up space at both randolf and barcroft. And help even out some of the demographics.

Build s new Spanish immersion, perhaps at TJ, that is accessible to everyone in the boundary.

Follow up question - which neighborhoods would feed int claremont under your proposal?

Also, not sure if this has been posted - http://www.apsva.us/cms/lib2/VA01000586/Centricity/Domain/110/040715_SB_Retreat_Presentation%20-Final.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
This was posted over on the real estate forum. Anyone with significant knowledge of the exisiting zones and demographics want to weight in?




I agree that the only thing keeping many parts of south Arlington from thriving are the schools. I have a solution.

Turn claremont into a neighborhood school. Change the boundaries to take some abingdon students, and abingdon can take some oak ridge. Then, have claremont take all the kids on the south side of the pike. That would free up space at both randolf and barcroft. And help even out some of the demographics.

Build s new Spanish immersion, perhaps at TJ, that is accessible to everyone in the boundary.

Follow up question - which neighborhoods would feed int claremont under your proposal?

Hey- I'm the pp, and pasted this from another thread. I can't say where exactly they are talking about for specifics. Sorry about that, but maybe you could ask them over in real estate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
This was posted over on the real estate forum. Anyone with significant knowledge of the exisiting zones and demographics want to weight in?




I agree that the only thing keeping many parts of south Arlington from thriving are the schools. I have a solution.

Turn claremont into a neighborhood school. Change the boundaries to take some abingdon students, and abingdon can take some oak ridge. Then, have claremont take all the kids on the south side of the pike. That would free up space at both randolf and barcroft. And help even out some of the demographics.

Build s new Spanish immersion, perhaps at TJ, that is accessible to everyone in the boundary.

Follow up question - which neighborhoods would feed int claremont under your proposal?

Hey- I'm the pp, and pasted this from another thread. I can't say where exactly they are talking about for specifics. Sorry about that, but maybe you could ask them over in real estate.

Thanks. I will check out that thread.

[Anonymous]

PP here that posted about turning claremont into a neighbirhood school on the RE thread. As I said there, and sorry if I wasn't clear, claremont could accept a lot of the kids currently at abingdon, all the way up to columbia pike. That would allow Barcroft to get a little smaller. Abingdon would get a lot smaller and could take some kids from the westen edge of oak ridge and other schools too. All the boundaries could do some shifting. And perhaps it could help even out the demographics a little too.

[Anonymous]

I am on one of the South Arlington listervs and am interested in these meetings, though my kid isn't close to school age yet.

In our house, we were wondering why we can't get a choice school like the STEM one in the North? Though the overcrowding is a more serious issue. I will try to make it to one of these meetings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am on one of the South Arlington listervs and am interested in these meetings, though my kid isn't close to school age yet.

In our house, we were wondering why we can't get a choice school like the STEM one in the North? Though the overcrowding is a more serious issue. I will try to make it to one of these meetings.

Even worse - there are actually 2 schools in the North that are supposed to be STEM choice options -- Science Focus for the "team" schools and Barrett for the other N. Arlington schools. None of them actually function as choice schools since they are overcapacity with just their boundary kids. It would make a lot of sense for any new S. Arlington school to be a STEM school to balance out the available options (if they could actually become options again!)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am on one of the South Arlington listervs and am interested in these meetings, though my kid isn't close to school age yet.

In our house, we were wondering why we can't get a choice school like the STEM one in the North? Though the overcrowding is a more serious issue. I will try to make it to one of these meetings.

Even worse - there are actually 2 schools in the North that are supposed to be STEM choice options -- Science Focus for the "team" schools and Barrett for the other N. Arlington schools. None of them actually function as choice schools since they are overcapacity with just their boundary kids. It would make a lot of sense for any new S. Arlington school to be a STEM school to balance out the available options (if they could actually become options again!)

These are great points!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am on one of the South Arlington listervs and am interested in these meetings, though my kid isn't close to school age yet.

In our house, we were wondering why we can't get a choice school like the STEM one in the North? Though the overcrowding is a more serious issue. I will try to make it to one of these meetings.

Isn't Hoffman-Boston a STEM school? Not sure how choice option works.

[Anonymous]

It is a stem school, but not a choice school. It's a neighborhood school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It is a stem school, but not a choice school. It's a neighborhood school.

but the school is so under enrolled you can just transfer there without even doing a lottery!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is a stem school, but not a choice school. It's a neighborhood school.

but the school is so under enrolled you can just transfer there without even doing a lottery!

Really? I had not heard that. We are zoned Randolph, and I just got an earful from a neighbor this morning about that school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is a stem school, but not a choice school. It's a neighborhood school.

but the school is so under enrolled you can just transfer there without even doing a lottery!

Really? I had not heard that. We are zoned Randolph, and I just got an earful from a neighbor this morning about that school.

Do tell. Randolph is the option if you don't want the year round program at Barcroft. I'm interested in hearing more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is a stem school, but not a choice school. It's a neighborhood school.

but the school is so under enrolled you can just transfer there without even doing a lottery!

Really? I had not heard that. We are zoned Randolph, and I just got an earful from a neighbor this morning about that school.

Do tell. Randolph is the option if you don't want the year round program at Barcroft. I'm interested in hearing more.

Ok, grain of salt here. He didn't go into enough specifics for my liking. This was the point of view from someone working in the office. Felt the school was overwhelmed, and the principal's style of management was destructive toward the staff. Getting details about this school has been few and far between. I can only infer that people aren't sending their kids there, and that begs more questions.
I have been watching the school with interest since we bought in the neighborhood. We are now expecting, and starting to look and plan for the future. Obviously, we have a ton of undetermined factors, however I am not going to be caught off guard.
I believe Randolph has higher Farm rates than Barcroft. That doesn't necessarily scare me off, as long as the school is equipped to handle it. I'm concerned that county isn't looking into the future, and planning for the problems they are creating.