Who said there isn't a North-South divide?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You only buy in SA if you can’t afford NA. Plain and simple truth.

For many, but not all. I've spoken with two different new neighbors just this past week who have professed quite the opposite. They both, in fact, specifically chose south Arlington. One of them even specifically targeted one of the high FRL schools, fully aware of the GS ratings. And if people like you making comments such as you did actually took the time to come south and talk to people, you would hear over and over again how they can, but choose not to, or wouldn't even if they could, move to the north.

Yes.

We bought a house in SA for 1.2 million, and budgeted to pay 35K a year for private school for our kids, so we clearly could have afforded NA! Initially we made this choice because we prefer private school, and didn't want to "pay" for the good public schools. BUT I've come to LOVE South Arlington. The Pentagon City area is wonderful, the Whole Foods there is significantly nicer than the one in NA, we are much closer to Alexandria (Del Ray especially but also Old Town), and we still get the advantages Arlington County gives over Alexandria (better parks, good gymnastics program and great swim classes for the kids, good library system). We go to Shirlington all the time, and the dog park. And frankly, I love that our local playground on any random afternoon is up to 50% minority. It's important that my kids get exposure to people of different races and cultures (we are white).

We have neighbors in the same position as us.

South Arlington is not what it is made out to be on DCUM.

This is not even remotely relevant to this discussion. But go you, I guess.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You only buy in SA if you can’t afford NA. Plain and simple truth.

For many, but not all. I've spoken with two different new neighbors just this past week who have professed quite the opposite. They both, in fact, specifically chose south Arlington. One of them even specifically targeted one of the high FRL schools, fully aware of the GS ratings. And if people like you making comments such as you did actually took the time to come south and talk to people, you would hear over and over again how they can, but choose not to, or wouldn't even if they could, move to the north.

We are two working parents who bought what we could afford in a nice area that gives us both a short commute. That meant S. Arlington. Now, several years later, we are in a financial position to move North, but we are happily staying put. Perhaps it is because we are minorities, but we feel more comfortable in SA. We value education, but it is not THE defining value in our household. We also emphasize kindness, empathy, hard work, family time, bettering our community, etc.

Hmm, seems like things like "kindness" would include not engaging in stereotyping and maligning thousands of people you don't know.

Agreed. I was the PP who said I don't understand why people feel the need to demonize those based simply on which side of 50 they live (07/21/2018 14:02). I think we are all trying to raise our children the best we can, North or South.

I think you may be reading your own biases into what I'm saying. I'm not trying to stereotype or malign anyone. It's more, some people on these threads claim that those of us in SA are either poor, or don't value education, (the implication being, otherwise, why else would we live here?). The intention of my post was to say some of us choose to be here, for a variety of reasons.

It's not that other values aren't reflected or important to parents in NA; of course they are. By virtue of where we live though, my children see a wide range of different kinds of people and different life situations. That gives me a lot of opportunities to teach and reinforce some of the values important to me, because the prompts for these discussions come up in their daily life.

To bring it back to schools though, just as my kids benefit from living here, I hope that my kids are also contributing to the benefit of their classmates. Not to get too much into my background, but books taught me to dream; it was the few middle class kids (and their parents) in my early life who showed me my dreams could become a reality. It's why schools like Randolph and Carlin Springs make me sad. It's not that there aren't great teachers, loving parents, and wonderful students in those schools. There absolutely ARE. But some of the educational benefits are lost when the schools are so very segregated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You only buy in SA if you can’t afford NA. Plain and simple truth.

For many, but not all. I've spoken with two different new neighbors just this past week who have professed quite the opposite. They both, in fact, specifically chose south Arlington. One of them even specifically targeted one of the high FRL schools, fully aware of the GS ratings. And if people like you making comments such as you did actually took the time to come south and talk to people, you would hear over and over again how they can, but choose not to, or wouldn't even if they could, move to the north.

We are two working parents who bought what we could afford in a nice area that gives us both a short commute. That meant S. Arlington. Now, several years later, we are in a financial position to move North, but we are happily staying put. Perhaps it is because we are minorities, but we feel more comfortable in SA. We value education, but it is not THE defining value in our household. We also emphasize kindness, empathy, hard work, family time, bettering our community, etc.

Hmm, seems like things like "kindness" would include not engaging in stereotyping and maligning thousands of people you don't know.

Agreed. I was the PP who said I don't understand why people feel the need to demonize those based simply on which side of 50 they live (07/21/2018 14:02). I think we are all trying to raise our children the best we can, North or South.

I think you may be reading your own biases into what I'm saying. I'm not trying to stereotype or malign anyone. It's more, some people on these threads claim that those of us in SA are either poor, or don't value education, (the implication being, otherwise, why else would we live here?). The intention of my post was to say some of us choose to be here, for a variety of reasons.

It's not that other values aren't reflected or important to parents in NA; of course they are. By virtue of where we live though, my children see a wide range of different kinds of people and different life situations. That gives me a lot of opportunities to teach and reinforce some of the values important to me, because the prompts for these discussions come up in their daily life.

To bring it back to schools though, just as my kids benefit from living here, I hope that my kids are also contributing to the benefit of their classmates. Not to get too much into my background, but books taught me to dream; it was the few middle class kids (and their parents) in my early life who showed me my dreams could become a reality. It's why schools like Randolph and Carlin Springs make me sad. It's not that there aren't great teachers, loving parents, and wonderful students in those schools. There absolutely ARE. But some of the educational benefits are lost when the schools are so very segregated.

Why do you think it makes you different from N.A. parents that you value things like kindness, hard work, empathy, family, community, etc.? It seems like you are stereotyping N.A. parents with the implication that all they care about is having the best schools at the expense of all of those other things. There’s been plentry of demonization on both sides of 50 in these discussions, and I hope you can appreciate that the stereotypes of N.A. families are just as inappropriate as the stereotypes of S.A. families.

[Anonymous]

I find it so interesting how in one breath people will rant about how toxic North Arlington families are, and then in the next breath will demand all of the schools be integrated across 50 to give more SES balance and improve South Arlington elementaries. Which is it, are they the devil incarnate or the only hope for saving South Arlington schools? If they’re so awful, why would you want your kids mixing with theirs?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I find it so interesting how in one breath people will rant about how toxic North Arlington families are, and then in the next breath will demand all of the schools be integrated across 50 to give more SES balance and improve South Arlington elementaries. Which is it, are they the devil incarnate or the only hope for saving South Arlington schools? If they’re so awful, why would you want your kids mixing with theirs?

Option C: Neither. You're talking to multiple people and the issue isn't as either-or as you're portraying it. But you already knew that, so let's stop with the straw-man arguments.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I find it so interesting how in one breath people will rant about how toxic North Arlington families are, and then in the next breath will demand all of the schools be integrated across 50 to give more SES balance and improve South Arlington elementaries. Which is it, are they the devil incarnate or the only hope for saving South Arlington schools? If they’re so awful, why would you want your kids mixing with theirs?

Option C: Neither. You're talking to multiple people and the issue isn't as either-or as you're portraying it. But you already knew that, so let's stop with the straw-man arguments.

So which is it for you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Of course it would move the needle. Giving the lower income kids access to more classroom materials and technology, more educational clubs, more enrichment, more this and more that exposes them to new things. Why do you think NA schools enjoy them - they are enriching! They raise expectations and help kids understand the possibilities in the world. If a kid with parents lacking even a high school education is exposed to the enrichment and resources money brings - they are more likely to work hard and study to get that dream for themselves. It isn't handed to them on a silver platter in SA, it is in most of NA. The immigrant children in lower income housing want the American dream, they want it bad. Expose them to it to help them get there. They will work to the bone to get there - that is what makes America GREAT!

Says the grandchild of immigrants who got exposure to that American dream and then worked to the bone to get it. There is not a single person on that side of my family who is now anything but educated with advanced degrees.

DP. Let's say we give each of the Title I elementary schools an extra $80k in their budgets to make up the difference between what their PTAs can fundraise and what the typical NA PTA can fundraise. For those schools, that represents 1% or less of their annual budget. If that could meaningfully close the achievement gap, I think most people would support throwing an extra $640k per year that way. But let's get serious, $80k isn't going to move the needle at schools like Randolph ($7.4 million budget for FY 2019) or Carlin Springs ($9.2 million for FY 2019). What those extra PTA dollars are really a proxy for is parental involvement/resources. More money tends to correlate with more time and flexibility to give to children both in school and out, and with the money/time to devote to getting their children any additional help they need that the school can't/won't provide. An extra $80k of PTA money can't substitute for that.

One of our kids is a case in point. He was having some issues at school that seemed like big red flags to us, but because he tested above grade level the school declined to evaluate him for special education. Between evaluations and therapies (which we decided to do privately rather than battle the school), over the course of a year we spent over $10k out of pocket to get him the help we needed, and I personally put well over 500 hours into going to therapies, working with him at home, etc., over that same year. The need for therapies has decreased since that first year so it's not so much on an ongoing basis, but it's still a few thousand a year and probably a dozen hours a month of my time. If we didn't have the time and money to put into that, our kid would be struggling more and more until he was failing and the school finally had to acknowledge there was a problem. No amount of PTA money could help our situation, but our ability to give our PTA about $1,000 a year between all of the various fundraisers and me giving time to chair fundraisers that collectively raise another five figures reflects the same underlying privilege that did help our son.

+1.

Bits of the truth lie in each poster's responses. Additional resources absolutely provide more opportunities which all help "move the needle" and provide learning experiences beyond teaching to the tests which is a much stronger focus in our highest FRL schools. But interactions and influences with socioeconomically diverse peers move the needle even more. But the needle can only move so far until the child becomes English-proficient. Regular interaction with English-proficient classmates would help facilitate the acquisition of English skills. Remaining surrounded by family, neighbors, and classmates who all speak the same non-English language doesn't.

But Arlington has made a social pact with those communities predicated on them not integrating.

You know it’s true. Talento will happily tell you how it is.

Yep, when you buy a house in North Arlington, there's a covenant in the deed where the county guarantees your elementary school will never be over a certain % FARMS.

Or maybe at least some of those people bought in those neighborhoods because the houses were nice and the schools were good, and didn't come to understand the broader socioeconomic dynamics of Arlington until they had already bought the house. If people can buy in the Randolph zone without realizing just how much of an impact the high FARMS rate has, is it not possible that NA parents were similarly ignorant about school inequality when they bought, especially if they didn't even have kids yet and were only doing a cursory check on school quality before buying based on things like commute?

Wow, did the point of my post go past you. The social agreement is with the poor families living in concentrated poverty in south Arlington and Buckingham.

[Anonymous]

We could have bought in North Arlington, but every house we looked at needed more than we could have dealt with at the time. We had lived in South Arlington before and were coming back from living overseas. We just wanted to go home, so we bought there.

I really like my neighborhood and it's only gotten better in terms of social things. We checked out the school ratings on VA DoE and the school we were zoned to was all right. Not great, but all right, with an upward trajectory over the previous 5 years. Then the principal changed and a new group of students with high needs came in. I refer to Barcroft and Arlington Mill. I think the school will get better again.

What the county needs to do, like so many people have said, is to build AH with a plan that's better than "cram it on the Pike, because there were poor people there before." Mixed income would be much better in terms of lifting people up, but I know that the resources would not all be in the same place.

*sigh*

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We could have bought in North Arlington, but every house we looked at needed more than we could have dealt with at the time. We had lived in South Arlington before and were coming back from living overseas. We just wanted to go home, so we bought there.

I really like my neighborhood and it's only gotten better in terms of social things. We checked out the school ratings on VA DoE and the school we were zoned to was all right. Not great, but all right, with an upward trajectory over the previous 5 years. Then the principal changed and a new group of students with high needs came in. I refer to Barcroft and Arlington Mill. I think the school will get better again.

What the county needs to do, like so many people have said, is to build AH with a plan that's better than "cram it on the Pike, because there were poor people there before." Mixed income would be much better in terms of lifting people up, but I know that the resources would not all be in the same place.

*sigh*

I agree, but you are talking 80 years from now. It won’t help today. The county board dug us into this mess and celebrated all of their choices along the way. Now we have board members saying things like, “ let’s keep old people in their homes and excuse them from all taxes. It’s better to keep them, than see a young family with school aged kids move in.” - paraphrase!

[Anonymous]

Barcroft resident here. Ditto PP. I moved in just as the new principal was leaving and new one came in. New one made a bad impression from the start and publicly expressed no idea how to accommodate the unexpected flood of kids from Arlington Mill that had been announced. We went choice because of that (while choice was still an option). I chose Barcroft for some of the same reasons you did, it was on an upward trajectory. Don't know if that will continue, particularly with Gillian Place - a CAF sold to the community as senior housing that is now going to be many, many, families.

Barrett too is about to get another influx too - the Red Cross site will be affordable family housing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Barcroft resident here. Ditto PP. I moved in just as the new principal was leaving and new one came in. New one made a bad impression from the start and publicly expressed no idea how to accommodate the unexpected flood of kids from Arlington Mill that had been announced. We went choice because of that (while choice was still an option). I chose Barcroft for some of the same reasons you did, it was on an upward trajectory. Don't know if that will continue, particularly with Gillian Place - a CAF sold to the community as senior housing that is now going to be many, many, families.

Barrett too is about to get another influx too - the Red Cross site will be affordable family housing.

Too true.

1) I do worry we cannot go choice, but then I hope that means that more UMC families will have to go to Barcroft. I assume that most of those families can move or afford private, while we can't.

2) Has it been officially announced that Gilliam Place will be mostly families? The original plan was for 2/3 seniors, but no of us believed that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You only buy in SA if you can’t afford NA. Plain and simple truth.

True for some, not for all. Again, SA people are not all wannabes. I don't want to send my kid to a school where annual December ski vacations and trust funds are normative.

We are a ethnically mixed family who bought in SA. I don't buy the narrative that all the kids on the other side of Route 50 are skiing in Aspen or spending summers at their family's beach house. We know too many families who are just like us: 2 working parents trying to make do. We could have afforded to buy in some - not all, but some - neighborhoods in NA. We chose SA because we did want a bit more racial diversity, i.e. more kids that looked like ours in the classroom. But that doesn't mean the kids in NA are racist, or wouldn't be welcoming.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You only buy in SA if you can’t afford NA. Plain and simple truth.

True for some, not for all. Again, SA people are not all wannabes. I don't want to send my kid to a school where annual December ski vacations and trust funds are normative.

Where are you getting the idea that annual ski vacations and trust funds are the norm in North Arlington? Talk about wildly inaccurate stereotypes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have been following these threads for a bit and probably shouldn't engage, but I feel compelled. Reading these threads fills me with an odd mixture of bewilderment, amusement, and dread. Maybe it's basic human instinct, but I just don't understand the need to demonize parents simply based on which side of Rt. 50 they live. I don't understand how something as seemingly simple as quality education for all our children brings out the very worst in people. Maybe it's the anonymity, but I cringe reading some of the terrible things stated here.

It's simple. Rich people north of 50 think they have grounds for clamoring for good schools, but somehow their culturally equivalent slightly less wealthy peers in SA are supposed to F off. Move or shut up, don't threaten the political compact that says NA is for the rich, SA for the poor.

This is a good example of part of the problem. When people are branded wholesale as assholes regardless of what they say or do, they tend to check out and not want to make personal sacrifices to help the people spitting on them.

And to honest, I'd rather be helping the ESL kids in Title I schools than the white pseudo-SJW trying to piggy-back off their pain.

Wanna help? Move there. Oh, you'd rather stay in a high performing school zone and just throw money at the problem? THAT is the problem, not SA parents agitating for integrated schools.

Nope, moving there wouldn't help the ESL kids at all. It would help the SA homeowners with buyer's remorse who bought in Title 1 school zones.

Yes, it would. The problem is the status quo: the belief that SA should stay how it is, so that NA can stay how it is. It's only with that mindset that the PP comment about buyers remorse makes sense. That somehow SA homeowners have no right to buy a house there and agitate for better schools. That somehow, "you get what u pay for." And nothing can change, ever. That's a mindset that makes perfect sense to NA people who paid a premium to avoid socioeconomically integrated schools and perceive SA efforts to have that very thing as underhanded, a short cut, a bail out etc. they think SA parents want the same thing they did and paid for. We don't. We want something different, and frankly, better for everyone.

I firmly believe that I pay the same for my $850-900K house that homeowners in north Arlington pay for their $850-900K house. So I don't buy the rationale behind the argument that you get what you pay for and that North Arlington has paid for "more" or "better." So I guess I simply GET less for my $850-900K because there are so many more rental units and homes that cost so much less in the south; and it's the people living in THOSE homes that are "getting what they paid for." Yet, I don't, merely because I purchased property south of route 50?

What NA has actually "bought" is a wealthy homogeneous voice that guarantees they will never have to give-up anything, including their sense of entitlement and superiority.

Plenty of people in NA (myself included) who paid much less than you did. It all depends on when they bought. What I paid doesn't matter. What you expect me to do to validate your housing decision? That matters.

You only support my argument that it isn't " you get what you pay for." People have paid a lot north and south; and people have paid less north and south. But people in north and south are not receiving the same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You only buy in SA if you can’t afford NA. Plain and simple truth.

For many, but not all. I've spoken with two different new neighbors just this past week who have professed quite the opposite. They both, in fact, specifically chose south Arlington. One of them even specifically targeted one of the high FRL schools, fully aware of the GS ratings. And if people like you making comments such as you did actually took the time to come south and talk to people, you would hear over and over again how they can, but choose not to, or wouldn't even if they could, move to the north.

DP. I assume those parents aren't shouting for APS to provide them with more option schools or busing north of 50 to get away from their high FRL schools.

You assume correctly.