APS Elementary Planning Mtg at Swanson - Option 1 in, Option 2 out, McKinley Moms out of contro
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Anonymous
That presentation was painful to get through. |
Anonymous
I don't get that, either |
Anonymous
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Can anyone from McKinley explain this talking point: APS’s two proposals do not leverage excess capacity in the NW part of the county—in fact, they create an even bigger surplus of seats in the NW part of Arlington. What’s more,the “Representative Boundary”scenario[no school moves] actually generates a higher positive seat differential (369 seats) in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor than either Proposal 1 (276 seats) or Proposal 2 (315 seats).
It doesn't make any sense at all. You're saying that there are more neighborhood seats in the RB corridor with Key as option and that somehow having McKinley as neighborhood decreases the total number of seats in the west? |
Anonymous
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That presentation looks like an 8th grade group project desperately cobbled together the night before it’s due.
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Anonymous
It's because McKinley isn't using the zone maps properly. While the zone boundaries follow current schools boundaries, what APS is actually calculating is the difference between the number of neighborhood school seats in a particular zone as compared to the projected number of students in all of the planning units in that zone. When McKinley overlaid their own calculations, instead of continuing to use that formula (thus making it an apples-to-apples comparison), they didn't follow the zone boundaries for calculating the number of students. Instead, they looked at the potential boundaries laid out in the representative boundary scenario and the other spreadsheet for proposals one and two, and calculated the projected number of students in each school zone. So, for instance, in the representative boundary scenario, McKinley's border has to reach way into south Arlington to fill the school because there would be such an excess of seats. What McKinley did in their calculations was move all of those kids from Zone 3 into Zone 1 (since they'd be zoned for McKinley rather than Carlin Springs), making it look like Zone 3 would have a much greater surplus of seats and Zone 1 a far smaller surplus of seats than the zones actually would). I don't know if the McKinley people who put it together were being disingenuous or just fundamentally don't understand the data analysis, but either way their analysis simply isn't credible or reliable. |
Anonymous
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09:14, I think part of the problem is that McKinley is so focused on their own self-interest that they fundamentally misunderstand the goal of this process. Opponents of these proposal keep shouting about how moving schools doesn't create new seats, but the staff knows this. Unfortunately APS has limited capital investment funds, though, so they have a limited ability to add new seat capacity. They've done a lot through additions to existing schools, but their running out of sites where they can expand existing schools on a more cost-effective basis than building a new school, so the answer can't be to leave all of the schools where they are and make spot additions where needed -- there simply isn't the money for that.
So the way APS is trying to address the overcrowding issue is to figure out where they can more effectively add new capacity, either through a new school or in places where it's still cost-effective to expand existing schools, and target their capital projects there, and then address the needs of the other zones by shifting around existing capacity. For this purpose, the zone system makes a lot of sense because people don't want their kids bused miles away past two other neighborhood schools to get to their own neighborhood school, they want their kids to go to their local neighborhood school. This is something the McKinley advocates don't understand, or don't want to acknowlege -- they all live within the McKinley walk zone so crazy McKinley boundaries are fine wtih them. But they're not thinking at all about why the Ashlawn tail that has been clamoring to go ASFS because it's their local school won't see going to McKinley (even further from them than Ashlawn) as an acceptable alternative. APS has identified Zone 3 as the one that's going to see some of the greatest growth in the next several years *and* that has the most potential for cost-effective seat construction. Therefore, this process is about moving option schools around to balance the number of neighborhood seats against anticipated student population in Zones 1, 2 and 4. Proposal 2 actually would have been the best from this standpoint, but the other challenges it created were more than the community would tolerate, so proposal 1 is the compromise solution. And it's a good one if you look at the needs of the whole community, including (arguably even particularly) for the more disadvantaged students in APS. |
Anonymous
| Key is working on their own map. Their version screws McKinley and Long Branch and also ignores VPI and new developments coming online. It also has some dubious looking capacity numbers in the NW. |
Anonymous
| I wonder how many ppl will speak at the SB mtg tomorrow... |
Anonymous
I meant tonight! |
Anonymous
If they take any step towards actual facts that'd be a move in the right direction. |
Anonymous
Yup. They do that to Ashlawn, and also snatch the dominion hills part of ashlawn (13040 and 13041) and move them to McK- interestingly while moving 14100, which is north of Wilson and further from Ashlawn FROM McK TO Ashlawn instead - guess that planning unit didn't pay their PTA dues this year! Agree it also totally screws over Barrett by moving the Arlington Forest planning units to Ashlawn. And there is a ton of other weird stuff going in with the way they've done other boundaries- looking at Taylor and Discovery. Not to mention they are totally slicing off small planning units and shuffling them from one school to another across the county in an effort to make their numbers "work," which is one of the things they are whining about APS doing to some of their planning units. Get off my lawn, indeed! Save McKinley at the expense of everyone else! |
Anonymous
It also makes a bunch of micro moves to make the math work, which was something they specifically criticized about proposal 1 in their slideshow. For instance, they move a single Nottingham unit to Discovery, and two Discovery units to Nottingham. Two (very small) Nottingham units to Tuckahoe. One Glebe unit to Reed. One Barcroft unit to Ashlawn. Two small Fleet units to Barcroft. McKinley's boundary-only scenario is basically everything they's attacked as inappropriate and unacceptable, except it all happens to other peoples' kids while their own are unaffected. It is the one of the most cravenly self-interested things I've seen a community put out in this kind of process. |
Anonymous
By APS' own admission, the Zone Map is purely subjective. |
Anonymous
Sure, there are a bunch of different ways you could draw the Zone Map, but since neighborhood schools defined by georgraphy, the core concept of dividing the county into a small number of zones to simplify the processing of determining where you need more schools seats (and where you have excess seats) is analytically sound. If you thnk the zones should be drawn differently and that it would argue for a different solution, go ahead and do the math. All the data you need is out there. |
Anonymous
It's going to be a circus. I gotta wonder if McKrazy will get removed from the premises. |