The demise of McKinley ES (APS)
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Anonymous
You can’t blame a school for the school board not having a backbone. There was a plan to fill Jamestown when Discovery opened and a significant percentage of Jamestown students were redistricted there. School Board caved to Taylor families. That is why Taylor is over 100% now. |
Anonymous
ATS (or Montessori) to Jamestown is the right thing to do. Jamestown has the ability to have trailers and hold 837 students. ATS would love the 10 trailers. With the growth in Arlington we just can't leave schools empty. |
Anonymous
If you actually cared about equity, you would know that would be a poor choice. When APS moved Montessori classrooms to Jamestown, they lost many low income families who could not get there due to lack of transportation options. And that was just for kids who were coming from the Key area. Terrible idea to move an option school to such a low density corner of Arlington with so few bud options from the rest of the county. |
Anonymous
| Bus |
Anonymous
If APS actually cared about equity we wouldn't have schools that are over 80% FARMs (and under 3%). Where is the 'equity' in that? |
Anonymous
All APS schools are equal, but some are more equal than others. |
Anonymous
Oh and option schools can be *anywhere* yeah right. |
Anonymous
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Where are the FRL rates? Is APS holding them back- they should’ve been put by now.
APS will continue to make bad decisions that hurt SA and cave to the loudest NA parents. Stay tuned for ATS to McKinnley, Key and ASFS neighborhood, Campbell basically dismantled despite scoring as higher if not higher than many NA schools, immersion to move but set to be underenrolled on the Spanish speaking side. Drew to be high poverty and over 1/2 empty. Carlin Springs and Campbell neighbored to be the same. Fairlington over capacity and barely title 1. Gilliam Place which opens today will fill Fleet. Ashlawn and Barrett will just have to fight it out. |
Anonymous
What do you want?! When option school locations in S Arlington are proposed they are taking away neighborhood seats. When option school locations are proposed in N Arlington they are inaccessible to S Arlington families. Honestly, I think Key to ATS and ATS to Drew should be on the table, but that's not politically viable. |
Anonymous
DP but I always thought that the people who were posting about making Options Seats more accessible for South Arlington were bleeding hearts from NA who were talking about making it easier for poorer families to apply and go there. Not about making Option Schools more accessible for the MC/UMC SA families who actually do go there. I think most of the MC/UMC families in SA using options to escape their neighborhood schools are not going to fight too much or too loudly about driving to McKinley vs. ATS even if it is a little longer. It still beats the alternative. If it were me and I had to choose between Barcroft or driving my kid to Jamestown it would not be a difficult choice (let alone the proposals currently on the table). But it really depends on the situation in your neighborhood school. I was thinking of applying to Key for the immersion program but I probably won't if they move to Carlin Springs. Its too far away in the wrong direction and my neighborhood school is not so problematic that I feel its worth the extra travel. If my neighborhood school was one of the low performing ones I would still apply. |
Anonymous
You mean Abingdon not Fairlington correct? I know it’s “barely title 1” but it’s still a title 1. I know the immediate Fairlington area is how most people see Abingdon based on the last year’s boundaries but the majority of the school is still very much low income. |
Anonymous
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41 pages about the demise of McKinley...
Is it dead yet? |
Anonymous
This is simply not a factual statement. Most ATS kids are from North Arlington, despite it being a countywide lottery. The highest number of transfers are from Ashlawn and McKinley. Up until two years ago, every other option school had an element of neighborhood preference. Since three of them were in South Arlington, it makes sense that they’d have more SA residents, including MC. In particular, Claremont’s preference was to areas that don’t include much low income housing, so that’s why the school really doesn’t represent the economic diversity of other SA schools. Under the countywide lottery, Campbell has a lower percentage of low income students than it did when it was only open to SA. In general, the historic data implies that option schools, even the countywide ones with no geographic preferences, draw from their immediate neighborhoods more than the farthest away neighborhoods. This should be a consideration, if we care about making sure that lower income families, particularly those with limited means of transportation, continue to have access to option schools. And I don’t know that two immersion schools to choose between in a two miles radius is really offering them choices. |
Anonymous
No, but the Mckinley that existed before is becoming a thing of the past. I have neighbors who are starting to say things in public with the intention of getting Aps employees in serious trouble. They don’t like what the decisions that Aps are making, so they are sinking very low to try to change things. I can’t really look at the people involved in the safe Mckinley group the same anymore. Publicly accusing people of being shady and going into their personal lives is not what I want my school known for. Some are spreading rumors about APS employees. Some are spreading lies about SB members. Some are talking retaining legal counsel. Some claim they have more of a right to walk that others in their own school. It’s so gross. |
Anonymous
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I have seen some of these accusations about APS employees from McKinley parents on our listserve. It's really pretty awful.
You raise a great point about option schools drawing disproportionately from their surrounding schools. Should really be the response to these "Save McKinley" types who claim there aren't going to be enough empty seats at Ashlawn and Reed to make sure they never have to experience overcrowding (a very selfish argument, if you ask me--since much of the county is past that point). But I digress. The point is, won't putting ATS there mean that Reed neighborhood families may be more likely to enroll in ATS than before. And therefore, there will be enough empty seats to satisfy them? |