ASFS/Key Swap Off . . .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do we get rid of 60-80% FRL neighborhood schools? I think most folks would love to do this if you know how. Bussing children all over the county is not an option, however.

1) Housing

.....

11) Make Claremont neighborhood.

If anyone can fill in #1-10 with other than "housing" LMK. This is the best I've been able to come up with.

I think that horse has been beaten and yes agree that solves things but APS is not any position to control that and the County doesn't care about school problems. That's long been the case.

APS can control starting at #11 and it should. Option schools only help diversify the option schools. They further segregate the neighborhood schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do we get rid of 60-80% FRL neighborhood schools? I think most folks would love to do this if you know how. Bussing children all over the county is not an option, however.

1) Housing

.....

11) Make Claremont neighborhood.

If anyone can fill in #1-10 with other than "housing" LMK. This is the best I've been able to come up with.

I think that horse has been beaten and yes agree that solves things but APS is not any position to control that and the County doesn't care about school problems. That's long been the case.

APS can control starting at #11 and it should. Option schools only help diversify the option schools. They further segregate the neighborhood schools.

How would #11 work? Wouldn't a Claremont neighborhood school be 60-80 FRL like Barcroft and Carlin Springs? Has anyone run the numbers on this? I'm curious.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do we get rid of 60-80% FRL neighborhood schools? I think most folks would love to do this if you know how. Bussing children all over the county is not an option, however.

1) Housing

.....

11) Make Claremont neighborhood.

If anyone can fill in #1-10 with other than "housing" LMK. This is the best I've been able to come up with.

I think that horse has been beaten and yes agree that solves things but APS is not any position to control that and the County doesn't care about school problems. That's long been the case.

APS can control starting at #11 and it should. Option schools only help diversify the option schools. They further segregate the neighborhood schools.

How would #11 work? Wouldn't a Claremont neighborhood school be 60-80 FRL like Barcroft and Carlin Springs? Has anyone run the numbers on this? I'm curious.

I'm not sure it will work, but I *think* most of the Abingdon zone north of Walter Reed (i.e., what would be Claremont neighborhood) is somewhat balanced with the exception of Columbia Hills and that other CAF that's there. Note: by somewhat balanced, I mean like 50% vs. 70+%. We are still in South Arlington, after all.

And, maybe you could have Ashlawn basically take over the current Carlin Springs zone, in which case the CAFs at the Pike/Mason intersection that are currently only Barcroft and Randolph could be split 3 ways (i.e., Barcroft, Randolph & Claremont) instead of just 2. Lots of upheaval, clearly, but it seems like it probably could be done.

[Anonymous]

APS still not ready to admit that the swap was a bad idea . . . .

https://www.apsva.us/asf-key-school-building-swap/

"Planning for the building swap with ASFS and Key administrators and community members, which was to begin in January 2019, has been paused . . . .[and t]he location for elementary immersion will be reevaluated."

The rationale for the "pause" is that the projections have increased and "[g]iven this projections update and the strong commitment APS has to the dual-language immersion program, the location for elementary immersion will be reevaluated to best meet the needs of our students."

In other words, we never really cared about the needs of the students or had a strong committment to the dual-language immersion program but only a handful of loudmouth ASFS parents who wanted "their" precious school in "their" neighborhood. Now that everyone has called us on our cr*p, we have to go back and finish the process we started a YEAR ago and do it the right way.

Will APS never learn???? If they had just kept with the location review that they started last spring, this would all be over by now. Everyone would have some clarity and we could have skipped all these ASFS threads.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:APS still not ready to admit that the swap was a bad idea . . . .

https://www.apsva.us/asf-key-school-building-swap/

"Planning for the building swap with ASFS and Key administrators and community members, which was to begin in January 2019, has been paused . . . .[and t]he location for elementary immersion will be reevaluated."

The rationale for the "pause" is that the projections have increased and "[g]iven this projections update and the strong commitment APS has to the dual-language immersion program, the location for elementary immersion will be reevaluated to best meet the needs of our students."

In other words, we never really cared about the needs of the students or had a strong committment to the dual-language immersion program but only a handful of loudmouth ASFS parents who wanted "their" precious school in "their" neighborhood. Now that everyone has called us on our cr*p, we have to go back and finish the process we started a YEAR ago and do it the right way.

Will APS never learn???? If they had just kept with the location review that they started last spring, this would all be over by now. Everyone would have some clarity and we could have skipped all these ASFS threads.

APS should own up to its mistake and just take down the swap link. It's misleading to anyone who is new to public schools and living in that area and trying to figure it out. By saying it's taking a "pause" APS makes it sounds like the swap will go through once there is an un-pause. Or change it over to say "Immersion Location Review" instead. They can keep the background if they want but make it clear that by reevaluating, they are actually evaluating and looking at all the schools immersion could go to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:APS still not ready to admit that the swap was a bad idea . . . .

https://www.apsva.us/asf-key-school-building-swap/

"Planning for the building swap with ASFS and Key administrators and community members, which was to begin in January 2019, has been paused . . . .[and t]he location for elementary immersion will be reevaluated."

The rationale for the "pause" is that the projections have increased and "[g]iven this projections update and the strong commitment APS has to the dual-language immersion program, the location for elementary immersion will be reevaluated to best meet the needs of our students."

In other words, we never really cared about the needs of the students or had a strong committment to the dual-language immersion program but only a handful of loudmouth ASFS parents who wanted "their" precious school in "their" neighborhood. Now that everyone has called us on our cr*p, we have to go back and finish the process we started a YEAR ago and do it the right way.

Will APS never learn???? If they had just kept with the location review that they started last spring, this would all be over by now. Everyone would have some clarity and we could have skipped all these ASFS threads.

APS should own up to its mistake and just take down the swap link. It's misleading to anyone who is new to public schools and living in that area and trying to figure it out. By saying it's taking a "pause" APS makes it sounds like the swap will go through once there is an un-pause. Or change it over to say "Immersion Location Review" instead. They can keep the background if they want but make it clear that by reevaluating, they are actually evaluating and looking at all the schools immersion could go to.

Wait? Location Review -- that's on pause too? https://www.apsva.us/elementary-school-boundary-change-2/location-review/
or is it now un-paused - how do parents keep all this straight? Should be a fun kindergarten information night coming up!!!!

[Anonymous]

Ok I watched the meeting. I was kind of stunned at how few questions the SB asked about the immersion part.

They said this about-face is in response to the community wanting input on it (the horror!) as well as the new information from the projections (which probably deserves its own thread on DCUM due to all the info there). TL;DR there will be no "leveling off" of enrollment like they had been forecasting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do we get rid of 60-80% FRL neighborhood schools? I think most folks would love to do this if you know how. Bussing children all over the county is not an option, however.

1) Housing

.....

11) Make Claremont neighborhood.

If anyone can fill in #1-10 with other than "housing" LMK. This is the best I've been able to come up with.

I think that horse has been beaten and yes agree that solves things but APS is not any position to control that and the County doesn't care about school problems. That's long been the case.

APS can control starting at #11 and it should. Option schools only help diversify the option schools. They further segregate the neighborhood schools.

Not if they put them in neighborhoods that can’t ever have “balanced” demographics due to previously built housing. There is NO WAY they can get balance at some schools, not even if every option school child returned, because the neighborhood zones aren’t balanced. You can’t realistically expect parents to “choose” that. There is always choice for families of more means. Always. Not great, but it’s true. And there aren’t enough of us who make a choice outside of our comfort zone, without some kind of incentive. Either recognize that or prepare to see even more disparate school populations. If diversity is the priority, then move or leave the option programs in the zones that cannot be balanced through common sense boundaries. Shuttering them will not have the result you think.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
APS can control starting at #11 and it should. Option schools only help diversify the option schools. They further segregate the neighborhood schools.

But what if APS took steps to make lottery schools about the program rather than the demographics and the size of the school? I know people who picked ATS because they didn't want to send their (white, UMC) kid to their (predominantly nonwhite, ED) neighborhood school. But if ATS had been bigger than their neighborhood school, they'd have been less interested. Ditto HB transfers. I think making W-L significantly larger than the other HSs is likely to reduce demand for transfers to the IB program among families that just want their kids NOT to be at their neighborhood school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ok I watched the meeting. I was kind of stunned at how few questions the SB asked about the immersion part.

They said this about-face is in response to the community wanting input on it (the horror!) as well as the new information from the projections (which probably deserves its own thread on DCUM due to all the info there). TL;DR there will be no "leveling off" of enrollment like they had been forecasting.

I'm fairly certain they knew about it and had asked their questions ahead of time. Most of their comments were just reiterating that this means that the location was back up in the air. Many people on the many threads about this said that the swap was a placeholder for moving immersion... somewhere. The numbers just don't work to keep it in Key or ASFS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do we get rid of 60-80% FRL neighborhood schools? I think most folks would love to do this if you know how. Bussing children all over the county is not an option, however.

1) Housing

.....

11) Make Claremont neighborhood.

If anyone can fill in #1-10 with other than "housing" LMK. This is the best I've been able to come up with.

I think that horse has been beaten and yes agree that solves things but APS is not any position to control that and the County doesn't care about school problems. That's long been the case.

APS can control starting at #11 and it should. Option schools only help diversify the option schools. They further segregate the neighborhood schools.

Not if they put them in neighborhoods that can’t ever have “balanced” demographics due to previously built housing. There is NO WAY they can get balance at some schools, not even if every option school child returned, because the neighborhood zones aren’t balanced. You can’t realistically expect parents to “choose” that. There is always choice for families of more means. Always. Not great, but it’s true. And there aren’t enough of us who make a choice outside of our comfort zone, without some kind of incentive. Either recognize that or prepare to see even more disparate school populations. If diversity is the priority, then move or leave the option programs in the zones that cannot be balanced through common sense boundaries. Shuttering them will not have the result you think.

Options in the unbalanced neighborhoods condemn the remaining children to 80+% low income, like Carlin Springs (option to Campbell or Claremont) and like Drew was/is projected to be (option to Montessori or Hoffman-Boston). It's not acceptable for a public school system to do that on purpose. You can't make UMC parents stick with their neighborhood school, I agree, but you can avoid giving them an out that comes on the backs of the other children in the same school zone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do we get rid of 60-80% FRL neighborhood schools? I think most folks would love to do this if you know how. Bussing children all over the county is not an option, however.

1) Housing

.....

11) Make Claremont neighborhood.

If anyone can fill in #1-10 with other than "housing" LMK. This is the best I've been able to come up with.

I think that horse has been beaten and yes agree that solves things but APS is not any position to control that and the County doesn't care about school problems. That's long been the case.

APS can control starting at #11 and it should. Option schools only help diversify the option schools. They further segregate the neighborhood schools.

Not if they put them in neighborhoods that can’t ever have “balanced” demographics due to previously built housing. There is NO WAY they can get balance at some schools, not even if every option school child returned, because the neighborhood zones aren’t balanced. You can’t realistically expect parents to “choose” that. There is always choice for families of more means. Always. Not great, but it’s true. And there aren’t enough of us who make a choice outside of our comfort zone, without some kind of incentive. Either recognize that or prepare to see even more disparate school populations. If diversity is the priority, then move or leave the option programs in the zones that cannot be balanced through common sense boundaries. Shuttering them will not have the result you think.

Options in the unbalanced neighborhoods condemn the remaining children to 80+% low income, like Carlin Springs (option to Campbell or Claremont) and like Drew was/is projected to be (option to Montessori or Hoffman-Boston). It's not acceptable for a public school system to do that on purpose. You can't make UMC parents stick with their neighborhood school, I agree, but you can avoid giving them an out that comes on the backs of the other children in the same school zone.

Do you know how many non-low income kids live in the zones you mentioned? Not enough to make a dent. The only MC neighborhood assigned to Carlin Springs is tiny, and doesn’t have that many kids. From the walk zone review I think there were 50, K-5. You think sending just those 50 kids will make for a balanced school? Let’s wait and see what the demographics of Drew wind up being. I am not encouraged.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do we get rid of 60-80% FRL neighborhood schools? I think most folks would love to do this if you know how. Bussing children all over the county is not an option, however.

1) Housing

.....

11) Make Claremont neighborhood.

If anyone can fill in #1-10 with other than "housing" LMK. This is the best I've been able to come up with.

I think that horse has been beaten and yes agree that solves things but APS is not any position to control that and the County doesn't care about school problems. That's long been the case.

APS can control starting at #11 and it should. Option schools only help diversify the option schools. They further segregate the neighborhood schools.

Not if they put them in neighborhoods that can’t ever have “balanced” demographics due to previously built housing. There is NO WAY they can get balance at some schools, not even if every option school child returned, because the neighborhood zones aren’t balanced. You can’t realistically expect parents to “choose” that. There is always choice for families of more means. Always. Not great, but it’s true. And there aren’t enough of us who make a choice outside of our comfort zone, without some kind of incentive. Either recognize that or prepare to see even more disparate school populations. If diversity is the priority, then move or leave the option programs in the zones that cannot be balanced through common sense boundaries. Shuttering them will not have the result you think.

Options in the unbalanced neighborhoods condemn the remaining children to 80+% low income, like Carlin Springs (option to Campbell or Claremont) and like Drew was/is projected to be (option to Montessori or Hoffman-Boston). It's not acceptable for a public school system to do that on purpose. You can't make UMC parents stick with their neighborhood school, I agree, but you can avoid giving them an out that comes on the backs of the other children in the same school zone.

That’s due to a bad boundary. Carlin Springs could’ve pulled across 50 and would have been a balanced school. Guess who fought that when the school was built? That’s the real story.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do we get rid of 60-80% FRL neighborhood schools? I think most folks would love to do this if you know how. Bussing children all over the county is not an option, however.

1) Housing

.....

11) Make Claremont neighborhood.

If anyone can fill in #1-10 with other than "housing" LMK. This is the best I've been able to come up with.

I think that horse has been beaten and yes agree that solves things but APS is not any position to control that and the County doesn't care about school problems. That's long been the case.

APS can control starting at #11 and it should. Option schools only help diversify the option schools. They further segregate the neighborhood schools.

Not if they put them in neighborhoods that can’t ever have “balanced” demographics due to previously built housing. There is NO WAY they can get balance at some schools, not even if every option school child returned, because the neighborhood zones aren’t balanced. You can’t realistically expect parents to “choose” that. There is always choice for families of more means. Always. Not great, but it’s true. And there aren’t enough of us who make a choice outside of our comfort zone, without some kind of incentive. Either recognize that or prepare to see even more disparate school populations. If diversity is the priority, then move or leave the option programs in the zones that cannot be balanced through common sense boundaries. Shuttering them will not have the result you think.

Options in the unbalanced neighborhoods condemn the remaining children to 80+% low income, like Carlin Springs (option to Campbell or Claremont) and like Drew was/is projected to be (option to Montessori or Hoffman-Boston). It's not acceptable for a public school system to do that on purpose. You can't make UMC parents stick with their neighborhood school, I agree, but you can avoid giving them an out that comes on the backs of the other children in the same school zone.

Do you know how many non-low income kids live in the zones you mentioned? Not enough to make a dent. The only MC neighborhood assigned to Carlin Springs is tiny, and doesn’t have that many kids. From the walk zone review I think there were 50, K-5. You think sending just those 50 kids will make for a balanced school? Let’s wait and see what the demographics of Drew wind up being. I am not encouraged.

I live in one of those zones so, yes, I know. These demographics don't have to be set in stone. If the enrollment projections from last night are encouraging for any reason, it's the idea that kids are moving in. They literally can't all cram into the neighborhoods with "good" schools and it's hard to turn down that short South Arlington commute. It's too late for my kids to attend a balanced elementary school, but it isn't too late for a future K-5 generation to come along behind them.

Your point above is also another reason to make Carlin Springs option, btw.

[Anonymous]

So now there will only be immersion in the western part of Arlington? If we commute into DC from courthouse I will have to go past Carlin Springs or at least George Mason to get to school events?