Please explain how Henry parent position on CC makes sense

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Well, I guess that is the disconnect then. I mean, they certainly strung us along by asking for private meetings, forming the working group (which in hindsight was totally unnecessary), and telling us privately that there was space for everything except baseball/softball diamonds. They certainly got a lot of us supporting them and trying to get the neighborhood behind it. And believe me, it's much easier to get a group of people to oppose something, rather than support something.

I also hear the Wakefield thing quite a lot, and it makes me sad. My kids aren't old enough yet, but the neighborhood kids who go there love it. Again, another reason to have been a NIMBY all along. And most of you won't believe me anyway.

It's never too late to go full NIMBY! Just think of the possibilities: use permits, environmental impact assessments, zoning changes. Some people are even threatening Title VII! Why, the right lawyer could drag this process out for YEARS. [/sarcasm]

Okay. If you were in my place, WWYD?

Oh, probably exactly what you're doing. Just trying to bring a little levity to the discussion

[Anonymous]

how about we put trailers on baseball/softball fields for all HSs then all is equal again.

[Anonymous]

I’m 15:02 and the “cynic” who made the Wakefield suggestion. For the record, my family is zoned Wakefield and enthusiastic about the prospect. I’ve just seen enough Wakefield bashers here and in person to be concerned that could be a motivation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m 15:02 and the “cynic” who made the Wakefield suggestion. For the record, my family is zoned Wakefield and enthusiastic about the prospect. I’ve just seen enough Wakefield bashers here and in person to be concerned that could be a motivation.

Does it really matter people's Motivation?
We need a comprehensive 4th high school because we will have an entire high school’s worth of kids added to the system. Here we have ( HAD) a neighborhood willing to step up and take on a full high school.
The county should be thanking them and looking for ways to make this happen.

But now I’m firmly NIMBY on this. Fight every step of the way Arlington Heights.

Make ‘em feel the pain.

[Anonymous]

Don't forget there's a CIP work session tonight at 7 pm, you can watch it live on the APS website. I believe it will be here: https://www.apsva.us/school-board-meetings/school-board-work-sessions-meetings/

[Anonymous]

Well, I guess that is the disconnect then. I mean, they certainly strung us along by asking for private meetings, forming the working group (which in hindsight was totally unnecessary), and telling us privately that there was space for everything except baseball/softball diamonds. They certainly got a lot of us supporting them and trying to get the neighborhood behind it. And believe me, it's much easier to get a group of people to oppose something, rather than support something.

I also hear the Wakefield thing quite a lot, and it makes me sad. My kids aren't old enough yet, but the neighborhood kids who go there love it. Again, another reason to have been a NIMBY all along. And most of you won't believe me anyway.


THIS! I live in Penrose. I'm sure none of you who are remembering things a certain way didn't go to the private meeting that Reid and Barbara had with the Columbia Pike neighborhoods to discuss our Career Center options. (NVD and Monique also unofficially attended). Well, it was a doozy. Words were thrown out like "Crown Jewel of Columbia Pike", and "urban high school". A lot of talk was about phasing and how we can make that work. Buying the ECDC building or using their parking was also discussed. It made me excited for the students who would be able to go there.

Fast forward a year and we are basically are being asked to accept a substandard school.

No thanks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well, I guess that is the disconnect then. I mean, they certainly strung us along by asking for private meetings, forming the working group (which in hindsight was totally unnecessary), and telling us privately that there was space for everything except baseball/softball diamonds. They certainly got a lot of us supporting them and trying to get the neighborhood behind it. And believe me, it's much easier to get a group of people to oppose something, rather than support something.

I also hear the Wakefield thing quite a lot, and it makes me sad. My kids aren't old enough yet, but the neighborhood kids who go there love it. Again, another reason to have been a NIMBY all along. And most of you won't believe me anyway.


THIS! I live in Penrose. I'm sure none of you who are remembering things a certain way didn't go to the private meeting that Reid and Barbara had with the Columbia Pike neighborhoods to discuss our Career Center options. (NVD and Monique also unofficially attended). Well, it was a doozy. Words were thrown out like "Crown Jewel of Columbia Pike", and "urban high school". A lot of talk was about phasing and how we can make that work. Buying the ECDC building or using their parking was also discussed. It made me excited for the students who would be able to go there.

Fast forward a year and we are basically are being asked to accept a substandard school.

No thanks.

Actually, I was at that meeting. I don’t live in either neighborhood but I did show up to that one. I definitely am not as good at reading btwn the lines, having only lived in this area for 5 yrs or so, but I didn’t interpret that meeting as full steam ahead for a 4th HS. That said, I remember those quotes and that messaging, and certainly some community members were excited about some of the amenities discussed (POOL). This process seems to be a bit of a Rorschach test for ppl.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP. I’ve been following relatively closely but am confused by one thing. When the SB announced the hybrid solution — which I agree 100% was/is stupid, poorly thought out, and poorly articulated, and that Kenmore was/is the right choice for a 4th comprehensive HS — I read it entirely as choice seats for the CC site. I recall the presentation saying something about needing to settle on the educational focus, or whatever the lingo, for those seats. Fast forward 9 months or so, the neighborhoods in question are now rejecting inferior neighborhood seats (fair) *but also* rejecting additional choice seats. So how are we to read this as anything other than the neighborhoods making a grab for their own 4th comprehensive HS (which was basically already rejected as an option by the SB last year) and then throwing a hissy fit when they’re told that isn’t going to happen? Am I misremembering how we got here? Again, I completely and totally agree that this sucks and is stupid, but I don’t see how these neighborhoods truly expected some other outcome. Arl Heights poster and others in the know, what’s the answer?

And please, I’m on the 22204 list serve and am by now familiar with the talking points. Yes, it’s unfair to have inferior neighborhood seats. Yes, no other site has so many choice seats. I’m trying to figure out if I’m really missing information, or if the advocates have just wholly bought into their own spin.

Here is my memory for how it went down (Arl Heights poster). Henry community wanted Henry to be expanded. APS said no, that property is off the table. Okay, so we thought all along, there was a master plan to make the Career Center site a 4th High School. I understand that the County Board told the school board that it would never give a use permit to build on Kenmore because there are so many problems with traffic in that area and Fairfax will never give Arlington egress out the other side of the property. There are not very many (if any) decent sized lots at that time already owned by APS.

So, we went to the SB and said, Kenmore says no, we'll say yes. Build your 4th high school here. School board went with the hybrid plan so that they could get HS seats online faster, but then the high school projections were way higher than the 1400 that they were building for. So, SB created the Career Center working group for figuring out how to create a 4th high school by a phasing in process. Again, from the very beginning (and before the school board voted on the hybrid), we had a resolution saying that we opposed inequitable HS seats. But, we were okay with starting with 800 neighborhood seats (so long as the facilities were in place or walking distance) and then building up to a true urban high school 2400+ students.

So, in a nutshell, we never read the hybrid option as entirely choice seats--and we don't think there was ever a serious plan for those to be option seats. If that were necessarily true, we could have built onto Henry, and there would have been no need for the working group at all. We could have went straight to building level planning, a la how they are adding 600 seats at the ed. center. And to your question about "expecting another outcome"--I guess I never expected APS to propose the seats they are proposing now. Like I said, in hindsight, I would have encouraged NIMBY-ism.

Another thing is, I guess I don't get all the hate for supporting (or "making a grab") for a 4th high school here. Kenmore gets its fair share of hate because it blocks a 4th high school, and we get our fair share because we supported one.

I hope this answers your question.

Thanks. I guess the disconnect is while you guys never seriously read hybrid as choice, I (and potentially others) never read hybrid as a back door into 4th HS. In fact, I read it as a specific repudiation of 4th HS, basically closing the door on all the advocacy at the time for a 4th.

Anyway, thanks for engaging. There’s a cynical part of me that thinks the effort for a CC HS is to opt those neighborhoods out of Wakefield, and the emphasis on the critical need for a pool is a bit tired, but FWIW I get where you guys are coming from. I didn’t mean to pile on with use of “making a grab for” — hell, most of the APS parents focused on this issue probably wish someone, anyone would grab for a 4th HS just to make it actually happen. I just don’t think it’s in the cards at this point.

Why would you think people are trying to opt out of Wakefield? When I bought my house I knew exactly what it was zoned for, just like you did. I’d be much happier over at the comprehensive Wakefield building than some half-assed neighborhood high school, and we’re right down the street from that site.

I also think this is coming right at the same time that many current/future Henry families realize they’re likely getting moved to MUCH lower-performing elementary schools (my neighborhood will be screwed twice, for example, being zoned from Fleet and to the CC). That’s why they’re so “upset.”

Everyone in SA knows that if a 4th HS is built, it'll probably siphon off all the UMC from Wakefield. It's not that current residents don't like the Wakefield that exists right now. Its a good facility and a mostly integrated school. But what will happen to it if a new school is plopped down north of the pike? That's a no brainer.

[Anonymous]

Work session presentation with new scenario B1 posted: https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Work-Session-4-CIP-Presentation-for-website.pdf

B1 is basically the same as scenario B from last time, but the parking/additional field would come on in 2031 instead of 2026, making the bonding picture slightly better but still outside what the county has authorized.

[Anonymous]

Everyone in SA knows that if a 4th HS is built, it'll probably siphon off all the UMC from Wakefield. It's not that current residents don't like the Wakefield that exists right now. Its a good facility and a mostly integrated school. But what will happen to it if a new school is plopped down north of the pike? That's a no brainer.

This is just not true. If you look at the stats for TJ and Kenmore they are almost equal demographically after the last rezone. There is enough low income housing south of the pike to split between 2 high schools almost evenly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Everyone in SA knows that if a 4th HS is built, it'll probably siphon off all the UMC from Wakefield. It's not that current residents don't like the Wakefield that exists right now. Its a good facility and a mostly integrated school. But what will happen to it if a new school is plopped down north of the pike? That's a no brainer.

This is just not true. If you look at the stats for TJ and Kenmore they are almost equal demographically after the last rezone. There is enough low income housing south of the pike to split between 2 high schools almost evenly.

I think the most affluent neighborhoods of Kenmore are actually zoned to Yorktown and W-L. A high school at the career center would likely pull from Lyon village, Lyon Park and Ashton heights north of 50 and the pike corridor out to the Barcroft Apartments or so, and probably south to Nauck and 395

[Anonymous]

Can someone help me make sense of their position. If you look at the 10 year projections, the school that will bear the disproportionate burden of the overcrowding in the next 10 years is Wakefield. This position of “if you don’t build us a full high school at the cost of $250 million, then build nothing” seems like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Wakefield will be 1000 students over capacity. The students least likely to be able to opt out for private school. This whole campaign seems ill-advised to me.

At the time the discussion began the options were:

1. overcrowded Wakefield,

2. terrible traffic in your neighborhood, no parking on your streets ever again, and eventually being forced to send your kid to a crap school with no amenities when no one else choices into the crap school with no amenities (and the writing was already on the wall regarding Arlington Tech at this point)

3. Neighborhood school (so alleviate parking and traffic issues) with equal opportunities for your kids - what would you advocate for? Be honest? There is only one right answer there.

Now it appears the options are:

1. overcrowded Wakefield,

2. terrible traffic in your neighborhood, no parking on your streets ever again, and eventually being forced to send your kid to a crap school with no amenities when no one else choices into the crap school with no amenities

3. Neighborhood school with no parking (so no parking on your streets every again) and your kids sits in a refurbished elementary school and may not even have the option of taking any arts electives in high school (band, choir, theatre and art require specialty rooms that may not be built), may not get to be on a sports team, be in a band or in the school play, and your kid loses instruction time sitting on a bus to go for a mandatory swim at Long Branch. And the program's unproven so you don't even know if your kids will have a fair shot at good colleges, not that they would have been competitive with their complete lack of extracurriculars anyway.

Again. What would you choose? Again there is only one right answer. Every move the neighborhood made was rational given the options available at the time.

So here's the thing about successful choice schools - you have to know the focus of the school, then design the space around it. By saying that they were just going to slap a story on top of a dilapidated building to build some generic classrooms and then figure out a choice specialty later APS tipped their hand that it was never really gonna be a choice school. Cause a performing arts choice school requires very specific room set-ups. And they weren't talking about building theaters and rehearsal rooms. A really good STEM school requires science labs and robotics labs. They weren't talking about building those either. APS signaled in the very beginning that they were going to try to build the cheapest most undesirable thing they could get away with so the neighborhood fought for what they could get. You'd do the same

[Anonymous]

Talento just said she doesn’t support a neighborhood school at the Career Center because it wouldn’t be equitable.

[Anonymous]

Goldstein also seems to be leaning against neighborhood high school because of the prolonged construction period involved.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Goldstein also seems to be leaning against neighborhood high school because of the prolonged construction period involved.

Goldstein was against it once it was clear it would suck.
He was like, “ just stick a bunch of trailers everywhere, because I’m tired of being the only one who looks ahead and gives a FVck.