APS Elementary Planning Mtg at Swanson - Option 1 in, Option 2 out, McKinley Moms out of contro

[Anonymous]

+1 ATS parent here ok with the move - it's truly not that far away.
I don't view this as worth the fight that others do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:+1 ATS parent here ok with the move - it's truly not that far away.
I don't view this as worth the fight that others do.

Of course ATS doesn’t mind the move. They are getting a newly renovated building and didn’t have to live through the construction or fundraiser for the playground and items in the building that work with the exemplar program.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:+1 ATS parent here ok with the move - it's truly not that far away.
I don't view this as worth the fight that others do.

Of course ATS doesn’t mind the move. They are getting a newly renovated building and didn’t have to live through the construction or fundraiser for the playground and items in the building that work with the exemplar program.

Do you honestly think most ATS parents know that level of detail about McKinley?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:+1 ATS parent here ok with the move - it's truly not that far away.
I don't view this as worth the fight that others do.

Of course ATS doesn’t mind the move. They are getting a newly renovated building and didn’t have to live through the construction or fundraiser for the playground and items in the building that work with the exemplar program.

Do you honestly think most ATS parents know that level of detail about McKinley?

Perhaps there shouldn't have been fundraisers for the playground - that's supposed to be provided by APS.
As should anything required for the exemplary program.

[Anonymous]

Do people actually think there is something special about the McK building that won’t be at Reed? There isn’t. It will even have colored windows. It might not have a mud pit playground, so I guess there is that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:+1 ATS parent here ok with the move - it's truly not that far away.
I don't view this as worth the fight that others do.

Of course ATS doesn’t mind the move. They are getting a newly renovated building and didn’t have to live through the construction or fundraiser for the playground and items in the building that work with the exemplar program.

Do you honestly think most ATS parents know that level of detail about McKinley?

They don't care - why would they?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:+1 ATS parent here ok with the move - it's truly not that far away.
I don't view this as worth the fight that others do.

Of course ATS doesn’t mind the move. They are getting a newly renovated building and didn’t have to live through the construction or fundraiser for the playground and items in the building that work with the exemplar program.

Do you honestly think most ATS parents know that level of detail about McKinley?

They don't care - why would they?

Exactly! All I know about McKinley is that it looks nice from the outside, that’s it’s a less convenient location from my house than ATS is (but certainly not a deal-breaker), and that it has more capacity. Nothing PP said makes me want to move there any more or any less. I just want to see ATS continue and grow, which the McKinley site offers.

I mean, I’m bummed about losing out on my convenient, prime access to Pupatella, but I’m not writing to the school board about it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:+1 ATS parent here ok with the move - it's truly not that far away.
I don't view this as worth the fight that others do.

Of course ATS doesn’t mind the move. They are getting a newly renovated building and didn’t have to live through the construction or fundraiser for the playground and items in the building that work with the exemplar program.

Do you honestly think most ATS parents know that level of detail about McKinley?

Perhaps there shouldn't have been fundraisers for the playground - that's supposed to be provided by APS.
As should anything required for the exemplary program.

And the ATS PTA paid for the sunshades at ATS. So what?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:+1 ATS parent here ok with the move - it's truly not that far away.
I don't view this as worth the fight that others do.

Of course ATS doesn’t mind the move. They are getting a newly renovated building and didn’t have to live through the construction or fundraiser for the playground and items in the building that work with the exemplar program.

Everyone at ATS would be happy to stay there if they weren't being kicked out for another program. No one covets Mckinley's building. I would guess most ATS parents have never been inside McKinley.

[Anonymous]

8:30 - ATS in its current building is at 126% of capacity. (2nd and 3rd grade classes are all in trailers.) It either needs an addition to grow, or it needs to move. The current building can't hold more kids, and shouldn't have to, when some schools will be well below capacity once Reed is online.

ATS parents are ok with the move, as long as the program continues. The objections raised have largely been of the "McKinley is a less central location" variety. We do worry that the less wealthy families will have a harder time getting to McKinley vs. ATS. I can see people making the same argument for Key staying at Key, though it should be noted that ATS is 0.75 miles from metro and is on several bus lines, which isn't completely out of reach of public transportation, though certainly not as close to Metro as Key. But really, no school is as close to Metro as Key.

[Anonymous]

I understand how neighborhood schools get over capacity, but why are option programs over capacity? That makes no sense to me. They have a building and they should plan enrollment spots for their capacity.

Why should option schools get to grow to a larger number of seats than their allotted building can hold? Shouldn’t decisions about the size and future growth of choice programs be made first - then schools sites - then school boundaries?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I understand how neighborhood schools get over capacity, but why are option programs over capacity? That makes no sense to me. They have a building and they should plan enrollment spots for their capacity.

Why should option schools get to grow to a larger number of seats than their allotted building can hold? Shouldn’t decisions about the size and future growth of choice programs be made first - then schools sites - then school boundaries?

They expand option schools to mitigate the overcapacity at neighborhood schools.

ATS always has max APS class size for each class IIRC.

[Anonymous]

Yes. That used to be the theory—only neighborhood schools had to deal with major overcapacity while option schools never exceeded classroom capacity. This changed a few years ago when parents at massively overcrowded neighborhood schools (130%+) said that option schools should bear some of that burden. ATS isn’t allowed to have 3 classes per grade while Ashlawn has 7 with trailers. That seems right. Except no one applied that logic to HB. They continued to have 75 kids / grade even when Swanson ballooned close to 500 and put an entire grade in trailers. I’d love to see some pressure on HB to contribute to the coming HS overcrowding.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I understand how neighborhood schools get over capacity, but why are option programs over capacity? That makes no sense to me. They have a building and they should plan enrollment spots for their capacity.

Why should option schools get to grow to a larger number of seats than their allotted building can hold? Shouldn’t decisions about the size and future growth of choice programs be made first - then schools sites - then school boundaries?

Why should neighborhood schools get over capacity? Why shouldn't they plan boundaries according to building size of neighborhood schools? Because they CAN'T. So,
why should option schools be protected against the burdens of overcrowding that neighborhood schools cannot? Why should families choosing - and getting into - option schools be so privileged? That's essentially what the HB Woodlawn program has done, and it's not equitable. People can argue that the nature/effectiveness of a special program changes if enrollment is too large. But guess what: the nature and effectiveness of instruction at a neighborhood school changes if enrollment is too large, too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes. That used to be the theory—only neighborhood schools had to deal with major overcapacity while option schools never exceeded classroom capacity. This changed a few years ago when parents at massively overcrowded neighborhood schools (130%+) said that option schools should bear some of that burden. ATS isn’t allowed to have 3 classes per grade while Ashlawn has 7 with trailers. That seems right. Except no one applied that logic to HB. They continued to have 75 kids / grade even when Swanson ballooned close to 500 and put an entire grade in trailers. I’d love to see some pressure on HB to contribute to the coming HS overcrowding.

That’s correct to a point. Option schools don’t get parents enrolling the day before school or 5 enrolling the week of Halloween and more through out the year. My neighborhood school does. The option schools have the ideal aps class size because it makes sense. Until a few years ago ATS was no more diverse than Ashlawn or Glebe are today. APS used increasing the number of VPI pre-K students to help with this and it has worked. But due to sibling preference it would likely be way to hard to increase diversity with the universe of just a few years ago. The VPI pre-K has gotten around this.