class action against APS what are our options?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I went to very ordinary public school and was able to get Master's in a specialized field. The way I see it, poor people, rich people, not so poor people, all have been provided access to a school, what you do with your life from there is up to you and your parents. To demand that now the low performing students should be placed in high performing schools is the height of entitlement. If you as a family care amount education, then your kids will do fine anywhere. Stop whining and start working.

I am tired of gazillion demands of super rich and poor alike, folks like us in the middle can't catch a break.

What break do you think you’re entitled to?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

So now that everyone must be able to walk to their closest school, the neighborhoods that are zoned in such a way that their schools aren't as likely to become overcrowded due to lower density of housing/higher housing costs are just going to be able to remain under capacity in perpetuity. Sounds equitable to me.

Proximity has always been a primary factor in school assignments. That isn’t new.

And planning for a program at WB to draw students from across the county is no more harebrained than gerrymandering boundaries or extensive busing schemes. There’s no “in perpetuity” here.

That's the problem their is one group that can walk and is being forced elsewhere.

Where? In Option A? No, there's not.

I'm really sick of hearing about some people being "forced" elsewhere. Yeah, that's what happens in a boundary reassignment. And sometimes, it will be you and other times not. And because we didn't build the schools in perfect locations, you may have to be moved to a school that isn't the exact closest one, in order to balance enrollment and other community concerns.

I think pp is referring to kids who are going to Kenmore in this map and are outside of the official walk zone for Swanson, but can cut down the bike path and it's feasible to walk so their parents want them zoned for Swanson instead. Nevermind that APS would still need to send a bus through its full route in those neighborhoods.

But there aren't any kids N of 50 going to Kenmore in Option A who aren't already zoned Kenmore. Instead of sending some Swanson PU's to Kenmore, they're sending one or two to Williamsburg, which doesn't really accomplish anything other than sending a few kids to a school farther away, turning them from walkers to bus rides while doing nothing for diversity.

Again, this isn't going to work out perfectly and some kids are going to have to be moved to schools further away unless we're just not going to bother to balance capacity at all. At least when they do send kids to schools further away, it should be in furtherance of an additional goal. There are schools being split to 3 different MS in South Arlington, and PU's being sent to schools that are further away then their current ones. Where's the outrage over that?

You mean the Madison Manor folks west of Sycamore/Roosevelt who technically are within the walk zone for Swanson? I suspect that was an alignment decision. If they moved those PUs south of 29 to Swanson, then the Tuckahoe kids north of 29 would end up going to middle school with only a handful of their elementary school peers; at that point you might as well move all of Tuckahoe to Swanson, but then that makes the Williamsburg capacity disparity even worse. You can't fix the capacity issue on the eastern side without slicing off a small piece of the Taylor and separating them from their elementary peers (like we would have just rejected doing to Tuckahoe); to the south, the Glebe folks have already rejected slicing off some of them for Williamsburg. The best place to take some planning units is to take the half of Tuckahoe that is just at the boundaries of the walk zone to Swanson and where plenty of families would prefer a bus for safety reasons (even if they're not the ones shouting otherwise on DCUM) and send the other half to Swanson.

[Anonymous]

We wouldnt be wasting our time with this if adults simply acted responsibily so that they were not poor. And what rational place attempts to keep their least productive, most dangerous citizens? Imagine a company that did everything it could to retain the bottom 10% of its work force.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We wouldnt be wasting our time with this if adults simply acted responsibily so that they were not poor. And what rational place attempts to keep their least productive, most dangerous citizens? Imagine a company that did everything it could to retain the bottom 10% of its work force.

Have you heard of affirmative action?

[Anonymous]

Let's just dial back on County support to affordable housing. That is the main driver of these "segregation" concerns.

[Anonymous]

A push to redevelop the huge market rate affordable complexes into mixed income would solve most of these issues.

Barcroft
Green briar
Buckingham
Filmore gardens.

They are all too closely situated. Barcroft is the worst of the list and makes balancing 3 different elementary schools almost impossible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We wouldnt be wasting our time with this if adults simply acted responsibily so that they were not poor. And what rational place attempts to keep their least productive, most dangerous citizens? Imagine a company that did everything it could to retain the bottom 10% of its work force.

Have you heard of affirmative action?

Both of you can GTH.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We wouldnt be wasting our time with this if adults simply acted responsibily so that they were not poor. And what rational place attempts to keep their least productive, most dangerous citizens? Imagine a company that did everything it could to retain the bottom 10% of its work force.

Have you heard of affirmative action?

Both of you can GTH.

It gets even better

Street Car would have redeveloped south county increased property values and driven out the poors

Who killed the streetcar North County

You can't make this stuff up lolz

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We wouldnt be wasting our time with this if adults simply acted responsibily so that they were not poor. And what rational place attempts to keep their least productive, most dangerous citizens? Imagine a company that did everything it could to retain the bottom 10% of its work force.

Have you heard of affirmative action?

Both of you can GTH.

It gets even better

Street Car would have redeveloped south county increased property values and driven out the poors

Who killed the streetcar North County

You can't make this stuff up lolz

Tell me again why they could do a street car but BRT was impossible?

[Anonymous]

The only people complaining about the concentration of low income housing and the effects on schools are those white families who moved to south arlington and now realize the schools are focused on educating the poor kids and no one else, the school buildings are dilapidated and ugly, landscaping is a wild mess, teachers lack nice classrooms and cool things and the PTA cannot afford huge parties.

Lower income families could care less, they are just happy to have a free education and a roof over their heads.

A white south arlington parent

[Anonymous]

That is the truth. And don't forget the non-parent community in S. Arl. They are happy to enable the the Arlington affordable housing agenda to concentrate it all in their school boundaries and feel smug about their progressive values while knowing that their children left APS 20 years ago and they won't have to deal with the consequences.

[Anonymous]

Oh, but rest assured, S. Arl. parent, that most of the schools in N. Arl are delapidated and ugly. See: Taylor, Tuckahoe, Williamsburg, Swanson.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Isn't your real beef against the county, for continuing to put affordable housing in areas where there is already a lot of low-market-rate housing? Because I think that's the real problem here.

If enough middle class families are moved as a block to a "lower achieving" school, in theory it should become a higher performing school, right?

Totally agree. The real problem is at the County Board level. How they can continue to pile on affordable housing into the same areas is mind boggling. It's like as long as they get the buildings built it doesn't matter what happens to those kids in school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The only people complaining about the concentration of low income housing and the effects on schools are those white families who moved to south arlington and now realize the schools are focused on educating the poor kids and no one else, the school buildings are dilapidated and ugly, landscaping is a wild mess, teachers lack nice classrooms and cool things and the PTA cannot afford huge parties.

Lower income families could care less, they are just happy to have a free education and a roof over their heads.

A white south arlington parent

We know. That’s why we want you all to stfu. A white NA parent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The only people complaining about the concentration of low income housing and the effects on schools are those white families who moved to south arlington and now realize the schools are focused on educating the poor kids and no one else, the school buildings are dilapidated and ugly, landscaping is a wild mess, teachers lack nice classrooms and cool things and the PTA cannot afford huge parties.

Lower income families could care less, they are just happy to have a free education and a roof over their heads.

A white south arlington parent

We know. That’s why we want you all to stfu. A white NA parent.

We're not all white and we don't all live in south Arlington.