4th comprehensive Arlington high school
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Anonymous
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A lot of folks seem to think the Career Center site is a shoe-in for a fourth comprehensive high school. But a lot of people think Kenmore makes more sense, regardless of the current traffic complaint. So, given the current process to add seats to the Career Center site and the very limited budget and phased approach to increasing capacity there, why should that be the location for a fourth comprehensive high school? Considering the various programs and the elementary school currently there, and the acreage being less than a third of the acreage at Kenmore, how/why would this make sense? How/why would this be the most efficient and feasible solution to high school capacity in the timeframe needed?
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Anonymous
This is a case where the School Board is right. We do not need to waste 130+ million on a highschool that will be a ghost town one day just like Arlington schools were in the 80s? The SB has made the right decisions with expanding W&L and adding Arlington Tech. These are the innovative ways that will not waste money on a a comprehensive high school we do not need. |
Anonymous
And when will the schools be a ghost town? When traffic magically improves and people decide living in Arlington isn’t worth the money? When Trump drains the swamp? No one has ever given me anything but a laughable explanation on how Arlington Tech is going to pull enough kids out of the high schools to make any difference. |
Anonymous
Arlington Tech is unlikely to ever shed the vocational school tag. This isn’t necessarily fair given what they are trying to do with the program and I love vocational schools. But perceptions will persist and it won’t really appeal to the Type A demographic that dominates Arlington. |
Anonymous
I pray for the day Arlington becomes a ghost town. Maybe my kids can actually get into classrooms WITHIN the school buildings. 
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Anonymous
It was this attitude - that obviously needed projects in APS would be a waste of money - that convinced us to move to Fairfax. I know that’s what posters like PP are counting on, but it still feels good to have escaped the indifference to families and know our kids won’t be stuck in some annex to an already overcrowded high school. |
Anonymous
| Why waste money on a football team, pool and all of the stuff a 'comprehensive' highschool comes with? HB is a great model...in this day why waste money on a football coaching team? |
Anonymous
How much is spent per pupil at HB? You must be joking, right? |
Anonymous
Unless they pump a ton of money into science labs (or things like that) and somehow make it “elite,” the number of kids zoned to Yorktown who go there will be painfully low. It won’t make a dent into overcrowding. And, because of that, the money put into it will be a waste. |
Anonymous
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Given the amount of new construction (high rises and, packing McManus ions on to every vacant lot) the population pressures are permanent, not a bubble. The County needs to face up to the impact of greenligthing so much expansion, retrench on vanity projects like the Nauck Town Center, and build scools for the students who live here.
Kenmore neighborhood is dug in in opposition to a high school. I'd like to see the county pilot smaller high schools, like an arts focused one in one of the many vacant high rises, a second HB Woodlawn, etc. It's hard to picture where the county would be able to site a fourth large high school. But whichever way--a 4th comprehensive or multiple smaller environments--the county MUST act responsibly and immediately to adress surging student enrollment that is here to stay. |
Anonymous
Yes, "the county MUST act responsibly and immediately"...... And that means making sound decisions that serve the system's needs - NOT cowering to one neighborhood's objections. Glencarlyn can make its objections and concerns known; then, just like everywhere else work within the processes to mitigate them as much as possible. |
Anonymous
It will never shed the negative misperceptions if they add a comprehensive high school to the same site. Arl Tech and the Career Center will suffer, being overshadowed and suffocated by a full-sized comprehensive high school competing for space. And, like the IB program at W-L, the comprehensive's students will take-up the spaces in the Career Center classes and Arl tech program/classes and make those opportunities inaccessible to the students in the other three comprehensives. Alternatively, if they continue to expand capacity on that site for the Career Center programs and for Arlington Tech, I believe Arl Tech particularly will eventually gain the recognition and respect intended. People will eventually realize how the opportunities in these programs fit into the new standards for high school diplomas set by the State, as well as the advantages of dual enrollment gaining college credit and the more direct access to internships. But the SB is most likely poised to suffocate Arl Tech before it has a full chance to take-off by deciding to put a fourth comprehensive there. Then everyone will say "told you so" about Arl Tech, even though they'd be wrong as to the reasons for its failure. |
Anonymous
Suburban SFH neighborhoods go through cycles. Most housing in Arlington used to be SFH, so the student population here plummeted in the 80s after the last boomers graduated high school and their parents aged in place. It only recovered when their millenial children and grandchildren moved here and had kids. Now we've got a much larger number of apartments and condos, which provide a steady stream of children. That will be where most of the students come from in 10, 20 years. Especially in south Arlington. And I don't see any decrease in the population. It's not a case of what goes up must come down. |
Anonymous
| ^ as long as the county fights to hold onto the crumbling roach pits, like Barcroft Apts, South Arlington will become more crowded not less. There are 6 month turn arounds in those complexes. Always new school aged children moving in. |
Anonymous
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What ultimately stopped me from lobbying for a 4th comprehensive was its location in the south and the fact that it would ultimately be made disproportionately of FARMs students. W-L is a great site for bringing North and South together, and the Career Center is more centrally located in the same way.
But I agree that Kenmore has superior land available to it and the whole thing makes me angry. But ... once a student population is around 45% FARMs, it's a bit doomed in terms of achievement, and that's the way a Kenmore High seemed, to me, likely to be zoned under this School Board's way of doing things. |