APS Elementary Location Working Group 4/12
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Anonymous
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Anonymous
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Key isn't going to get neighborhood preference back. That's not happening, so they need to accept that.
And the decision to make ASFS a neighborhood school means it need a new boundary as part of this process because it can't have Key's boundary, OR, they can designate it a site for one of the five option programs that they decided to maintain. That's what this is about. If you are a current ASFS family, you should really think about your position. They aren't going to leave things as status quo. They can't have a neighborhood school that sits outside its own boundary. Too few walkers. So your choices are: advocate to be moved to Key, since you can mostly stay together as a community. Or accept that there will be a new neighborhood boundary around ASFS and you are not likely to be included in that boundary. I know which one I'd be choosing. As for the Key families, they should be advocating to move to the largest capacity building possible and closest to a Spanish-speaking community. I think both communities would rather things stay as they are, but they can't. So what's the best possible outcome? Start there and work your way back. |
Anonymous
| Also, to reiterate, this isn't about creating more seats. It never was. Only construction creates new seats. It's about using the seats we have most efficiently. |
Anonymous
I largely agree with you, except for one point- this is about decisions that will take place in either 2020 or 2021- most likely 2021 when Reed comes on line. The current Kindergartners will be 4th graders. I think a problem with this whole effort is that everyone thinks about what is good for them right now- instead of what would be good for APS as a whole 4 years from now. |
Anonymous
And yet, there's zero attention on balancing DEMAND to help distribute students efficiently. this process is going to increase school segregation because our neighborhoods are segregated; walkability just maps that to the boundaries. That will in turn only make the "good" schools more in demand/crowded, the "bad" ones less in demand/underenrolled. This process should have started with the stated goal of making every neighborhood school at least an acceptable choice for everyone zoned to it. That's my south Arlington showing. North Arlington doesn't want to integrate in a meaningful way; see Arlington forest, for example. |
Anonymous
That's a fair point, but it will affect many families personally. We're not at either school, but will likely be moved around as part of the shifts. We have one child in lower years (depending on whether they make the moves in 2020 or 2021, child could be affected for 4th or 5th grade). And one rising K student, so that child will be affected, too, at either 1st or 2nd grade. So it is personal for many of us, and it's hard to remain completely detached and rational. I think the thing to recognize is that change is coming. Maybe it's unfair, or feels unfair, but it is coming. So the question you should be asking is how do you help shape that change so that it has the least downside for both you and the system? |
Anonymous
So you stopped capitalizing forest now? Did that make the other neighborhoods feel bad? 
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Anonymous
Arlington Forest? But they are too close to Buckingham not to be integrated at Barrett. And now that the Red Cross building is approved? Current boundary is Barrett. Are you talking about HS? Because Barrett is about to become more highly segregated than many South Arlington schools. I agree with your point that doubling down on walking has the exact effect of increasing school segregation. It really makes so little sense for walk zones outside of 1/2 a mile to be a factor in boundaries at the ES level. These aren't MS of HS students who can walk safely by themselves. |
Anonymous
Im talking about boundary drawing in general, because parents look at the es/ms/hs pyramid as a whole. The more segregated the lower the levels, the more segregated then upper levels tend to become as parents complain about "splitting up" classmates who went to the same es in ms, or from ms to hs. |
Anonymous
I'm in the Key neighborhood boundaries with a preschooler and a baby, so I am definitely rooting for a neighborhood school at Key. It is frustrating to hear from some of the advocates to keep immersion at Key who are talking about how vital it is to keep the school in it's current location because of the poor Hispanic students who will be gravely endangered by a move - while conveniently ignoring the fact that those families no longer have a right to attend the school as it stands. Yes, they can apply and will probably get in, but the most disadvantaged are the ones least likely to jump through the hoops. As for rest of the (majority not Hispanic) neighborhood, they just DGAF. All of the explanations for why it needs to be immersion hinge on it being a neighborhood school... which it is not! |
Anonymous
This is what I'm getting so frustrated with in this process, and that's not limited to the Key/ASFS area, it's all of us everywhere. Everyone is clinging to their ideal solution for them, and very few people have thus far shown a willingness to come up with a realistic second choice if they can't have their ideal. The staff and the SB may have their agendas that they haven't shared and they may already have ideas about what the solutions should be, but the staff and SB also have a significant incentive to get through this process with as little strife and conflict as possible. That's what ultimately happened with middle school boundaries, staff/SB were looking for ways to make them more balanced but everyone was dug in so hard on what they wanted for themselves that they eventually gave up, let everyone have their way and the people who fought so hard for themselves ended up screwed in a different way instead. Do we really want to repeat that? I think if we as a community could give the staff/SB some compromise options that we agreed to accept, lots of us could end up better off than we otherwise might if the staff has to find the compromise solution themselves without our input. So, for instance, for the Key families who want immersion to stay at Key, what's your second choice? If APS says the immersion program has to move because there will be such a drastic shortage of neighborhood seats in that area otherwise, where would you want to go instead, and what could APS realistically offer you at that site that would make it more palatable to you? P.S., the answer can't be to move to ASFS, because that does nothing to address the neighborhood capacity crisis APS would be trying to address. Same goes for Nottingham (which is my school, so I have a better sense of what some second-choice proposals could be). Obviously our community has spoken out that we largely don't want our school made an option site. But since it may happen anyway, it would be great if we as a community could form some kind of consensus on a second choice we could offer APS that we would agree not to fight if they agreed to our requests. As for what those requests might be, I'm thinking things like * A balanced split of our population north of Lee Highway between Tuckahoe and Discovery (this can include Reed as well if there's a sensible way to do that) so you don't end up with 80% of the neighborhood at Tuckahoe and then the remaining student who go to Discovery are cut off from most of their friends. Give our staff some opportunities either to stay at Nottingham with the program that comes in or to transfer to Tuckahoe or Discovery (yes, I know that means some of the staff at the other schools leaving), both for continuity for the students changing schools and out of respect for the numerous Nottingham staff members who live in the neighborhood and walk to work, so they're not forced into a cross-county commute after investing in a home so close to their jobs. * Work with the county to fix the road situation on Little Falls right on the block right in front of the school so that you don't have the road narrowing for just that block with bike riders merging into car traffic at the same time people are trying to cross the street while parked cars are opening their doors into traffic, and then put a bunch of buses and additional cars there as well. Either widen the road to continue the bike line through that block and have it as a buffer between the parking and travel lanes, or eliminate street parking along that block, widen the travel lanes and add back bike lanes. * Commit to staggering the start times so that Discovery and Tuckahoe keep their 9 am start times but the Nottingham site will change to am 8:25 start time so that you don't have students walking out of the neighborhood to Tuckahoe or Discovery at the same time you're bringing ten extra buses and 80 extra cars into tertiary neighborhood roads. * Put crosswalks and a crossing guard at 26th and Ohio to help with safe transit for walkers to Tuckahoe. * Commit to a safety review of the Williamsburg/Harrison intersection post-transition to assess for any additional safety measures needed to accommodate the increase in both both walker traffic and vehicular traffic that will happen at that intersection. * Do not jam those schools as full as possible in expectation of the elementary-age population dropping because while the staff keeps predicting this, they also keep turning out to be wrong, and it seems like every other year we're fighting for a fourth kindergarten class that APS finally concedes we need sometime in July or August when the stragglers finally register. If you're going to take away our most flexible neighborhood school, give us a little breathing room (just a percent or two) for your predictions to be wrong. What I'd really love is if the NW (not just Tuckahoe, Nottingham and Discovery but also McKinley, future Reed, Ashlawn and Barrett) could all come together, accept that someone is going to become a neighborhood school, and come up with a compromise proposal for the region that we think is the best solution and agree not to fight the county over if they work with us on our requests. But that's a pipe dream right now. |
Anonymous
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I completely agree with the person right above. I live in the Key neighborhood and my kids go to ASFS. Up until now, its been very us versus them, where the guys who live around asfs are pushing to keep the school where it is and the rest of us are pushing to keep the community together since keeping it where it is will result in the majority of the school being sent to much further away schools. If we lose a walkable school, a lot of people who have a single car or no car will no longer be able to live in the neighborhood anymore. It'll force families out and will really change the character of our neighborhood. As a long time resident of the Courthouse/Clarendon area, I find this sad.
I'd really like it if we could come up with some sort of a compromise. Maybe get all the civic association reps for the r-b corridor and the ptas from longbranch, asfs, key, taylor, and ats together and see if there is a good solution that works for everyone. Instead it feels like you have to be super loud to just not get screwed over in this county, which I don't have the time and energy to do at this point. |
Anonymous
| me too- to this points right above. I'm disgusted by the 'change.org' petitions, and the self focus. I would love to be a part of an civil discussion wherein people laid out their interests and concerns- and we worked together to find a solution- rather than just starting from MUST FIGHT. |
Anonymous
Samesies. As a future parent looking in, I'm of course biased in that I'd love my kids' future neighborhood school to be closer rather than farther away (as it seems most families do). It's hard for me to see why families in the current Key boundary would want to stay at ASFS rather than move to Key other than (1) status quo bias [and the not insignificant hassle to staff to relocate--fair enough], and (2) the science lab? I have not seen this science lab, but as a future ES parent, I'll take a school I don't have to drive to over some beakers any day. I also find it sort of crazy that folks in parts of the county with schools super close together are freaking out as much as they are about losing one of their several neighborhood sites (and that the school board is worried about students in a "corner" of the county not having any options--looking at Tuckahoe, here) when everyone is Rosslyn is way farther away even from Key--to say nothing of how far they are from ASFS, Taylor, etc. Rosslyn appears to be the "corner" of the county with reason to complain about not having proximate neighborhood options. No real dog in the Rosslyn plight, except that the unfairness of the analysis is annoying to me; I live toward Court House. |
Anonymous
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This whole process is still so backwards, they need to be considering up front where they could move option programs that need to be moved. Key needs to be moved from where it is because they need two neighborhood schools over there. For this reason it can't go to ASFS. The other schools in its geographic area are Barrett, Discovery, Glebe, Henry, Jamestown, Long Branch and Taylor. Henry is off the table completely, and moving an option site to Glebe would be foolish given its walkability. Of the remaining options, the only schools near any kind of Spanish-speaking population are Barrett and Long Branch; ATS should also be brought into the analysis due to its proximity to the immersion zone and to Spanish-speaking populations. APS will save itself a lot of headache if it's open about this and then focuses on which of those three schools would make the best site for the immersion program given the needs of the program and the considerations and priorities. If you think more broadly about all of the needs and considerations around the county, I think there's a very clear leading contender among those three (but am curious to see if other people would come up with a different result).
If the staff went ahead and made the Key decision first, a lot of the other decisions become obvious (or at least the scope of options is reduced considerably). |