What do you expect from APS staff (option/neighborhood) on 4/30?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Discouraging north Arlington parents from sending their kids south isn’t going to create diverse schools that are balanced. There are not enough UMC families in s Arlington to do that. The option schools will just have high farms rates too. Claremont and key are already nicely balanced, at around 40% farms each. That doesn’t mean the schools don’t need more Spanish speakers, but being a Spanish speaker doesn’t mean you are poor!

Turning a school that is 80% fr/ to one that is 50-60% is a positive. It's not possible to make every school at or below 40%, without moving MANY more kids around. Perfect should not be the enemy of good.

But SOUTH Arlington nutters won't settle for compromises.

Is there anyone in this process so far who has seemed especially amenable to compromise?

All of the families who have NOT been pushing an agenda with the SB at office hours or calling their neighbors names. Many of those people are OK with a variety of outcomes. Ask around - if you ever take a break from pushing your own agenda.

The people who aren't showing up aren't showing up because they expect to be largely unaffected by all of this. Which option families haven't been speaking up, and which neighborhood schools that may be shuttered to make way for an option program haven't been showing up?

My kids will probably be moved from one school to another, breaking up the community. There are some vocal parents who oppose the change, but a large contingent is also fine with it. It's not ideal for us, but we can see how it serves the greater good.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Discouraging north Arlington parents from sending their kids south isn’t going to create diverse schools that are balanced. There are not enough UMC families in s Arlington to do that. The option schools will just have high farms rates too. Claremont and key are already nicely balanced, at around 40% farms each. That doesn’t mean the schools don’t need more Spanish speakers, but being a Spanish speaker doesn’t mean you are poor!

Turning a school that is 80% fr/ to one that is 50-60% is a positive. It's not possible to make every school at or below 40%, without moving MANY more kids around. Perfect should not be the enemy of good.

But SOUTH Arlington nutters won't settle for compromises.

I AM a South Arlington "nutter."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Discouraging north Arlington parents from sending their kids south isn’t going to create diverse schools that are balanced. There are not enough UMC families in s Arlington to do that. The option schools will just have high farms rates too. Claremont and key are already nicely balanced, at around 40% farms each. That doesn’t mean the schools don’t need more Spanish speakers, but being a Spanish speaker doesn’t mean you are poor!

Turning a school that is 80% fr/ to one that is 50-60% is a positive. It's not possible to make every school at or below 40%, without moving MANY more kids around. Perfect should not be the enemy of good.

But SOUTH Arlington nutters won't settle for compromises.

Is there anyone in this process so far who has seemed especially amenable to compromise?

All of the families who have NOT been pushing an agenda with the SB at office hours or calling their neighbors names. Many of those people are OK with a variety of outcomes. Ask around - if you ever take a break from pushing your own agenda.

The people who aren't showing up aren't showing up because they expect to be largely unaffected by all of this. Which option families haven't been speaking up, and which neighborhood schools that may be shuttered to make way for an option program haven't been showing up?

My kids will probably be moved from one school to another, breaking up the community. There are some vocal parents who oppose the change, but a large contingent is also fine with it. It's not ideal for us, but we can see how it serves the greater good.

Families at lots of schools are okay with that because their kids will have moved on to middle school by the time this all goes down.

[Anonymous]

What are the “compromises” S Arlington is NOT settling for? Please, enlighten me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Years ago, a SB member said Drew needed to have Montessori pulled out to attract more families to the school. He said a lot of highly invested parents transferred out and it made it hard for Drew to form a community. His thought was that if the school was all neighborhood, more invested parents would stay and the school would see academic improvements. It looks like we are about to put that theory to the test.

A lot will depend on the Drew farms rate when the boundaries are redrawn. Parents are going to look at that number very, very closely. And probably not much else. APS really need to do their very best to keep it at about 50%, which is the average for south Arlington as a whole.You can tell from other elementaries that once the farms rate goes much above 50%, the middle and upper middle class families take that as their cue to leave and then you end up with a carlin springs, Barcroft, or Randolph.

50% is too high. They can do much better than that. Doesn't mean they will; but they can. If you really want people excited about Drew, you need to stay well below 40%. People aren't going to want to send their kids to another Title I school, especially one with the academic performance history of Drew.

They really can't, not without some very crazy boundaries and a lot of buses. I think with that excellent principal and an fr/l rate around 50%, which seems probable given the likely attendance zone, there is no reason the school can't be a success.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Discouraging north Arlington parents from sending their kids south isn’t going to create diverse schools that are balanced. There are not enough UMC families in s Arlington to do that. The option schools will just have high farms rates too. Claremont and key are already nicely balanced, at around 40% farms each. That doesn’t mean the schools don’t need more Spanish speakers, but being a Spanish speaker doesn’t mean you are poor!

There are only 62 transfers to Claremont from North Arlington, and the school is 37% fr/l. I think if both immersion schools move S, they will, over time, become more populated with kids from South Arlington. I bet current UMC families from North Arlington will move with the school. But other than those very committed to the Immersion model, new applicants will probably begin to skew South Arlington. There are more and more South Arlington UMC families every day. Because if you can afford a SFH in South Arlington, you are UMC. You may not be a 1%er, and maybe you don't feel like you're UMC because of the HCOL, but you're doing quite well. Not as well as people buying $2.5 million homes over in Bellevue Forest, but let's have some perspective here.

[Anonymous]

How in earth does anything any of these changes is going to reduce the number of farms kids at barcroft, Carlin springs and Randolph???? You don’t change the farms rate at barcroft by eliminating the space as a neighborhood School. All you are doing is shifting those same poor kids to other poor schools. The UMC in barcroft will largely leave if they can. Same thing with Carlin springs, do you really think those kids will go to ashlawn? Hell no. They will go to Randolph and Barrett and maybe some to Abingdon (and make Abingdon even less diverse).

And I think the SB is leaving Campbell well enough alone because it is already a neighborhood school when you look at who goes there. Sure, a handful of kids from north Arlington and a couple other areas in south Arlington will go there, but the overwhelming majority of the school is from local vpi and Carlin springs. I suspect Campbell will open up more vpi classrooms at Campbell if barcroft is changed to an option School.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How in earth does anything any of these changes is going to reduce the number of farms kids at barcroft, Carlin springs and Randolph???? You don’t change the farms rate at barcroft by eliminating the space as a neighborhood School. All you are doing is shifting those same poor kids to other poor schools. The UMC in barcroft will largely leave if they can. Same thing with Carlin springs, do you really think those kids will go to ashlawn? Hell no. They will go to Randolph and Barrett and maybe some to Abingdon (and make Abingdon even less diverse).

And I think the SB is leaving Campbell well enough alone because it is already a neighborhood school when you look at who goes there. Sure, a handful of kids from north Arlington and a couple other areas in south Arlington will go there, but the overwhelming majority of the school is from local vpi and Carlin springs. I suspect Campbell will open up more vpi classrooms at Campbell if barcroft is changed to an option School.

I think the thought is to pull a large chunk of Carlin springs into ashlawn (with a similar sized chunk of ashlawn going to asfs). They could similarly pull a chunk of long branch into asfs and then based off of that have long branch’s boundary go deeper into south Arlington. By extending boundaries south, it should increase diversity at those schools, but I might be wrong there. Also putting immersion at Carlin springs would bring a lot of umc to that school— I imagine the farms rate would be close to that of key or Claremont.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Years ago, a SB member said Drew needed to have Montessori pulled out to attract more families to the school. He said a lot of highly invested parents transferred out and it made it hard for Drew to form a community. His thought was that if the school was all neighborhood, more invested parents would stay and the school would see academic improvements. It looks like we are about to put that theory to the test.

A lot will depend on the Drew farms rate when the boundaries are redrawn. Parents are going to look at that number very, very closely. And probably not much else. APS really need to do their very best to keep it at about 50%, which is the average for south Arlington as a whole.You can tell from other elementaries that once the farms rate goes much above 50%, the middle and upper middle class families take that as their cue to leave and then you end up with a carlin springs, Barcroft, or Randolph.

50% is too high. They can do much better than that. Doesn't mean they will; but they can. If you really want people excited about Drew, you need to stay well below 40%. People aren't going to want to send their kids to another Title I school, especially one with the academic performance history of Drew.

They really can't, not without some very crazy boundaries and a lot of buses. I think with that excellent principal and an fr/l rate around 50%, which seems probable given the likely attendance zone, there is no reason the school can't be a success.

PP here, I suggested the 50%. I live in Nauck. I'm not sure it's possible to even get to 50%, I just think it's a number that people have in their heads. I am glad of the principal; I hope her presence brings along the portion of Nauck north and east of glebe road. It's higher ses than my area and my guess is that most of those kids currently attend Hoffman Boston (kids in Nauck can choose hb or drew graded).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Years ago, a SB member said Drew needed to have Montessori pulled out to attract more families to the school. He said a lot of highly invested parents transferred out and it made it hard for Drew to form a community. His thought was that if the school was all neighborhood, more invested parents would stay and the school would see academic improvements. It looks like we are about to put that theory to the test.

A lot will depend on the Drew farms rate when the boundaries are redrawn. Parents are going to look at that number very, very closely. And probably not much else. APS really need to do their very best to keep it at about 50%, which is the average for south Arlington as a whole.You can tell from other elementaries that once the farms rate goes much above 50%, the middle and upper middle class families take that as their cue to leave and then you end up with a carlin springs, Barcroft, or Randolph.

50% is too high. They can do much better than that. Doesn't mean they will; but they can. If you really want people excited about Drew, you need to stay well below 40%. People aren't going to want to send their kids to another Title I school, especially one with the academic performance history of Drew.

They really can't, not without some very crazy boundaries and a lot of buses. I think with that excellent principal and an fr/l rate around 50%, which seems probable given the likely attendance zone, there is no reason the school can't be a success.

PP here, I suggested the 50%. I live in Nauck. I'm not sure it's possible to even get to 50%, I just think it's a number that people have in their heads. I am glad of the principal; I hope her presence brings along the portion of Nauck north and east of glebe road. It's higher ses than my area and my guess is that most of those kids currently attend Hoffman Boston (kids in Nauck can choose hb or drew graded).

I think it unreasonable to expect 50% or less.
What about Randolph and Barcroft? They’ve been suffering for years.

[Anonymous]

Campbell is a Title 1 school with 59% free
and reduced lunch. It also has an innovative
Expeditionary Learning curriculum, an outdoor ed
program and kids/teachers/parents seem happy there.

It’s hard to know what to think as a parent at a high performing Arlington school who would potentially like to send their child to a diverse school with an EL program and finds many things attractive about Campbell.

Thoughts?
How significant are the title 1 status and high free and reduced lunch numbers in judging potential quality of school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Years ago, a SB member said Drew needed to have Montessori pulled out to attract more families to the school. He said a lot of highly invested parents transferred out and it made it hard for Drew to form a community. His thought was that if the school was all neighborhood, more invested parents would stay and the school would see academic improvements. It looks like we are about to put that theory to the test.

A lot will depend on the Drew farms rate when the boundaries are redrawn. Parents are going to look at that number very, very closely. And probably not much else. APS really need to do their very best to keep it at about 50%, which is the average for south Arlington as a whole.You can tell from other elementaries that once the farms rate goes much above 50%, the middle and upper middle class families take that as their cue to leave and then you end up with a carlin springs, Barcroft, or Randolph.

50% is too high. They can do much better than that. Doesn't mean they will; but they can. If you really want people excited about Drew, you need to stay well below 40%. People aren't going to want to send their kids to another Title I school, especially one with the academic performance history of Drew.

They really can't, not without some very crazy boundaries and a lot of buses. I think with that excellent principal and an fr/l rate around 50%, which seems probable given the likely attendance zone, there is no reason the school can't be a success.

PP here, I suggested the 50%. I live in Nauck. I'm not sure it's possible to even get to 50%, I just think it's a number that people have in their heads. I am glad of the principal; I hope her presence brings along the portion of Nauck north and east of glebe road. It's higher ses than my area and my guess is that most of those kids currently attend Hoffman Boston (kids in Nauck can choose hb or drew graded).

I think it unreasonable to expect 50% or less.
What about Randolph and Barcroft? They’ve been suffering for years.

There aren't any planning units that go to either Drew or Randolph, or Drew and Barcroft. The Drew walk zone and the Randolph walk zone are adjacent and separated by a major road (Walter Reed) that elementary children can't cross.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Campbell is a Title 1 school with 59% free
and reduced lunch. It also has an innovative
Expeditionary Learning curriculum, an outdoor ed
program and kids/teachers/parents seem happy there.

It’s hard to know what to think as a parent at a high performing Arlington school who would potentially like to send their child to a diverse school with an EL program and finds many things attractive about Campbell.

Thoughts?
How significant are the title 1 status and high free and reduced lunch numbers in judging potential quality of school?

Less important at self-selecting option schools where parent involvement is high. More so at neighborhood schools where it is t.

I don't think those measures indicate school quality, but they certainly indicate school focus. To attract MC families to these schools, admins need to convince them that their children, who probably all attended preschool and are starting school at or above grade level, are going to be given enough attention and challenge, and not written off with comments like, "they'll be fine". Yes, the disadvantaged kids plain need more help but everyone wants their kid to get a lot of attention. This task is made harder by the absence of tracking. I've heard buzzy phrases like individualized learning in place of tracking but TBH I need to read more to know if its real or just marketing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Years ago, a SB member said Drew needed to have Montessori pulled out to attract more families to the school. He said a lot of highly invested parents transferred out and it made it hard for Drew to form a community. His thought was that if the school was all neighborhood, more invested parents would stay and the school would see academic improvements. It looks like we are about to put that theory to the test.

A lot will depend on the Drew farms rate when the boundaries are redrawn. Parents are going to look at that number very, very closely. And probably not much else. APS really need to do their very best to keep it at about 50%, which is the average for south Arlington as a whole.You can tell from other elementaries that once the farms rate goes much above 50%, the middle and upper middle class families take that as their cue to leave and then you end up with a carlin springs, Barcroft, or Randolph.

50% is too high. They can do much better than that. Doesn't mean they will; but they can. If you really want people excited about Drew, you need to stay well below 40%. People aren't going to want to send their kids to another Title I school, especially one with the academic performance history of Drew.

They really can't, not without some very crazy boundaries and a lot of buses. I think with that excellent principal and an fr/l rate around 50%, which seems probable given the likely attendance zone, there is no reason the school can't be a success.

PP here, I suggested the 50%. I live in Nauck. I'm not sure it's possible to even get to 50%, I just think it's a number that people have in their heads. I am glad of the principal; I hope her presence brings along the portion of Nauck north and east of glebe road. It's higher ses than my area and my guess is that most of those kids currently attend Hoffman Boston (kids in Nauck can choose hb or drew graded).

I think it unreasonable to expect 50% or less.
What about Randolph and Barcroft? They’ve been suffering for years.

There aren't any planning units that go to either Drew or Randolph, or Drew and Barcroft. The Drew walk zone and the Randolph walk zone are adjacent and separated by a major road (Walter Reed) that elementary children can't cross.

That’s not true.
Part of DP goes to Hoffman Boston. Nauck parents have been floating moving those units to Drew. They are all sfh’s and the higher end condos at the corner of Walter Reed and 4 mile.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Campbell is a Title 1 school with 59% free
and reduced lunch. It also has an innovative
Expeditionary Learning curriculum, an outdoor ed
program and kids/teachers/parents seem happy there.

It’s hard to know what to think as a parent at a high performing Arlington school who would potentially like to send their child to a diverse school with an EL program and finds many things attractive about Campbell.

Thoughts?
How significant are the title 1 status and high free and reduced lunch numbers in judging potential quality of school?

Less important at self-selecting option schools where parent involvement is high. More so at neighborhood schools where it is t.

I don't think those measures indicate school quality, but they certainly indicate school focus. To attract MC families to these schools, admins need to convince them that their children, who probably all attended preschool and are starting school at or above grade level, are going to be given enough attention and challenge, and not written off with comments like, "they'll be fine". Yes, the disadvantaged kids plain need more help but everyone wants their kid to get a lot of attention. This task is made harder by the absence of tracking. I've heard buzzy phrases like individualized learning in place of tracking but TBH I need to read more to know if its real or just marketing.

Tracking needs to happen in south Arlington if they want middle class buy in.