NW APS parents, can we talk?

[Anonymous]

It's obvious we're going to get an option program over this way. No matter which set of projections you look at, we're probably going to have somewhere between 500 and 600 excess seats in the region after Reed opens and it'll be really challenging to fill those seats via busing. So Ashlawn, Barrett, Discovery, Jamestown, McKinley, Nottingham and Tuckahoe families (note those are in alphabetical order so as to not suggest any preference or prejudice), is there any interest in trying to have a constructive conversation about the needs of the region as a whole, which sites seem like the best candidates, and what could be done for the families displaced from any of those sites to make the transition better for them? We're the ones who really know this area and I'd like to believe that we could work together productively to come up with a good proposal. It won't be perfect, it would be a compromise that necessarily would work out better for some than others, but I'd like to believe we're capable of having that conversation anyway, including acknowledging how each of our schools is and is not a good candidate for an option site. The conditions are no sniping, no targeting a particular school because you have a grudge against it, and no saying "Eff the rest of you, only I matter."

Anyone in?

[Anonymous]

I'm a parent at one of the schools you mentioned and I would be in if I had anything all that exciting to say. But the thing is, I don't really care that much. The way I look at it, my planning unit will be moved somewhere (so with fellow neighborhood kids) and there will be general disruption for all the kids with boundary shifts and my kid (it will be my last kid who is impacted) will be fine wherever and will adapt. This is not a scenario where only my child is plucked out of school and put in a brand new environment. It will be fine. I just can't get that worked up about it and can't relate at all to the people who are very worked up about it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a parent at one of the schools you mentioned and I would be in if I had anything all that exciting to say. But the thing is, I don't really care that much. The way I look at it, my planning unit will be moved somewhere (so with fellow neighborhood kids) and there will be general disruption for all the kids with boundary shifts and my kid (it will be my last kid who is impacted) will be fine wherever and will adapt. This is not a scenario where only my child is plucked out of school and put in a brand new environment. It will be fine. I just can't get that worked up about it and can't relate at all to the people who are very worked up about it.

OP here. In a lot of ways I agree with you. My youngest will be going into fourth grade when this all goes down so we're only looking at two years of change. We have enough of a heads up about it that if I know we're going to move, we can do more to encourage friendships with kids likely to be with us afterward (not to the exclusion of other friendships, of course). We will all survive the immediate school changes.

My real concerns are beyond that. I'm concerned that this process is so scattered and haphazard that the staff/SB will end up making bad decisions that muck everything up, and then in a few years when our kids really need APS to be focusing time and resources on other issues (like high school seats), they'll instead be back to elementary school boundaries, putting even more resources into trying to fix the mess created this time around. If we accept certain realities (e.g., there is an option school coming) and get to work on coming up with a proposal that the community largely agrees to get behind, maybe the SB will work with us on it to avoid the drama of a drawn-out battle.

[Anonymous]

We are not going to have an excess of 500-600 seats. I don't know where you got that number, but that ain't happening in 2021 when Reed opens.

Do you know they are building 27 townhouses on Lee Highway? Nine single family homes at Sycamore across the street from the metro? My street alone has four new houses going in where there were three homes (and no school aged children).

Also, APS is assuming in all of this that all schools has the same number of transfers. Tuckahoe and Nottingham COMBINED had fewer than Jamestown.

Of course we want to talk and come up with a solution. We are likely losing a school. But, we can't roll over and let APS use their same awful projections and data to overcrowd us the day Reed opens.

Everyone needs to be willing to listen to these types of things. Those of you who don't care or are doing math on the back of an envelope need to listen to those of us who have been screwed over and over by APS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are not going to have an excess of 500-600 seats. I don't know where you got that number, but that ain't happening in 2021 when Reed opens.

Do you know they are building 27 townhouses on Lee Highway? Nine single family homes at Sycamore across the street from the metro? My street alone has four new houses going in where there were three homes (and no school aged children).

Also, APS is assuming in all of this that all schools has the same number of transfers. Tuckahoe and Nottingham COMBINED had fewer than Jamestown.

Of course we want to talk and come up with a solution. We are likely losing a school. But, we can't roll over and let APS use their same awful projections and data to overcrowd us the day Reed opens.

Everyone needs to be willing to listen to these types of things. Those of you who don't care or are doing math on the back of an envelope need to listen to those of us who have been screwed over and over by APS.

This kind of thing is happening all over Arlington and certainly not unique to the NW corner. And it seems like every week the County Board approves another multi-family building where children will live. Yesterday it was the former Red Cross building. None of those are in the NW corner.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are not going to have an excess of 500-600 seats. I don't know where you got that number, but that ain't happening in 2021 when Reed opens.

Do you know they are building 27 townhouses on Lee Highway? Nine single family homes at Sycamore across the street from the metro? My street alone has four new houses going in where there were three homes (and no school aged children).

Also, APS is assuming in all of this that all schools has the same number of transfers. Tuckahoe and Nottingham COMBINED had fewer than Jamestown.

Of course we want to talk and come up with a solution. We are likely losing a school. But, we can't roll over and let APS use their same awful projections and data to overcrowd us the day Reed opens.

Everyone needs to be willing to listen to these types of things. Those of you who don't care or are doing math on the back of an envelope need to listen to those of us who have been screwed over and over by APS.

OP here, I agree we need to be talking about this. As to the 500-600 figure, 600 is APS’s estimate, 500 seemed more reasonable to me because of things like the townhouses. But even if the real number is 350 we’re still getting a program, so maybe a good starting point for the discussion is to say we should only be considering sites with smaller capacities. If we set the cap at 600 (because we can’t reasonably expect to convince APS to back off their numbers, we’re going to have to work with them) that would narrow the pool of candidate sites we should consider to Barrett, Jamestown, Nottingham and Tuckahoe (my school is on that list, so this isn’t self-serving). Thoughts?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are not going to have an excess of 500-600 seats. I don't know where you got that number, but that ain't happening in 2021 when Reed opens.

Do you know they are building 27 townhouses on Lee Highway? Nine single family homes at Sycamore across the street from the metro? My street alone has four new houses going in where there were three homes (and no school aged children).

Also, APS is assuming in all of this that all schools has the same number of transfers. Tuckahoe and Nottingham COMBINED had fewer than Jamestown.

Of course we want to talk and come up with a solution. We are likely losing a school. But, we can't roll over and let APS use their same awful projections and data to overcrowd us the day Reed opens.

Everyone needs to be willing to listen to these types of things. Those of you who don't care or are doing math on the back of an envelope need to listen to those of us who have been screwed over and over by APS.

OP here, I agree we need to be talking about this. As to the 500-600 figure, 600 is APS’s estimate, 500 seemed more reasonable to me because of things like the townhouses. But even if the real number is 350 we’re still getting a program, so maybe a good starting point for the discussion is to say we should only be considering sites with smaller capacities. If we set the cap at 600 (because we can’t reasonably expect to convince APS to back off their numbers, we’re going to have to work with them) that would narrow the pool of candidate sites we should consider to Barrett, Jamestown, Nottingham and Tuckahoe (my school is on that list, so this isn’t self-serving). Thoughts?

APS said it wants sites that can add capacity via trailers. Barrett has far too many walkers and wouldn't be considered in the NW quadrant where they are targeting.

For this to happen, I want APS to show the SB how it calculated savings in transportation costs and what kids are going to be going to school further away from their home vs. those now going closer. The whole scenario with Key becoming a neighborhood school makes sense to me, but I don't live there and my kids aren't in immersion. If that decision is made and Key goes somewhere else, I'm guessing it won't come to the NW Quadrant. So what would they put there? ATS? That would be ridiculous to move that program further North.

I want to find solutions, but I want a better identification of the problem now and some thought into the problems that might be created by these solutions. Is it better to draw odd boundaries than have ATS at Nottingham/Tuckahoe/Discovery etc? What about the cluster of five schools within one mile of one another in S. Arlington? How will moving an option program there impact boundaries and how far kids travel on the bus?

[Anonymous]

Not just the NW. APS needs real projections for 2021 before they can do this. Their projections don't reflect changes in admissions policies. They don't have improvements suggested by their consultants. This can't be done now. They have no idea what they need where or if they even have a surplus in the NW in 2021. Because their elementary projection data is old and bad.

[Anonymous]

The new AH site at the Red Cross building is zoned to Barrett. And Barrett is right next door to ATS. I don't really consider that area to be the NW.

Agree that we need to look at new construction, but we also need to remember that all new construction does not bring the same density. The Red Cross building is 120 new AH units where a commercial building used to sit. Huge difference between that and the 9 new houses going up across from the EFC metro station.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are not going to have an excess of 500-600 seats. I don't know where you got that number, but that ain't happening in 2021 when Reed opens.

Do you know they are building 27 townhouses on Lee Highway? Nine single family homes at Sycamore across the street from the metro? My street alone has four new houses going in where there were three homes (and no school aged children).

Also, APS is assuming in all of this that all schools has the same number of transfers. Tuckahoe and Nottingham COMBINED had fewer than Jamestown.

Of course we want to talk and come up with a solution. We are likely losing a school. But, we can't roll over and let APS use their same awful projections and data to overcrowd us the day Reed opens.

Everyone needs to be willing to listen to these types of things. Those of you who don't care or are doing math on the back of an envelope need to listen to those of us who have been screwed over and over by APS.

OP here, I agree we need to be talking about this. As to the 500-600 figure, 600 is APS’s estimate, 500 seemed more reasonable to me because of things like the townhouses. But even if the real number is 350 we’re still getting a program, so maybe a good starting point for the discussion is to say we should only be considering sites with smaller capacities. If we set the cap at 600 (because we can’t reasonably expect to convince APS to back off their numbers, we’re going to have to work with them) that would narrow the pool of candidate sites we should consider to Barrett, Jamestown, Nottingham and Tuckahoe (my school is on that list, so this isn’t self-serving). Thoughts?

APS said it wants sites that can add capacity via trailers. Barrett has far too many walkers and wouldn't be considered in the NW quadrant where they are targeting.

For this to happen, I want APS to show the SB how it calculated savings in transportation costs and what kids are going to be going to school further away from their home vs. those now going closer. The whole scenario with Key becoming a neighborhood school makes sense to me, but I don't live there and my kids aren't in immersion. If that decision is made and Key goes somewhere else, I'm guessing it won't come to the NW Quadrant. So what would they put there? ATS? That would be ridiculous to move that program further North.

I want to find solutions, but I want a better identification of the problem now and some thought into the problems that might be created by these solutions. Is it better to draw odd boundaries than have ATS at Nottingham/Tuckahoe/Discovery etc? What about the cluster of five schools within one mile of one another in S. Arlington? How will moving an option program there impact boundaries and how far kids travel on the bus?

I think ultimately moving Key immersion out of the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor will be what pushes an option program into NW. if you look at the list of schools assigned to the Key immersion program, the only potential sites near any kind of Spanish-speaking population are Long Branch, ATS and Barrett. Putting it at Long Branch undermines the goal of moving it away from Key, so that’s probably a non-starter. That means the option program in NW will either be Immersion at Barrett or ATS at one of the other schools (it could be any of them but won’t be Barrett, because there would be no point to moving two option programs instead of one to end up using the same sites).

I hear what you’re saying about Barrett walkers, the same argument applies to Nottingham. If we accepted that argument it would point to the best solution being ATS to Jamestown or Tuckahoe so Immersion could go to ATS, but those outcomes would also be problematic for how rich/white the ATS program would become (especially at Jamestown), so I’m not sure we should eliminate either Barrett or Nottingham just yet.

[Anonymous]

I wouldn’t be surprised if Staff does away with east/West divide on immersion.

[Anonymous]

Can we be more specific about the location of these open seats? Are we talking North of 50 and west of Old Dominion or Glebe? Should empty schools like Jamestown be included?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wouldn’t be surprised if Staff does away with east/West divide on immersion.

It would surprise me only because it would add a layer of complexity to the process and what would they get for it? There are no good sites in North Arlington for an immersion program that aren’t already assigned to Key. They have to keep some kind of geographic division for transportation efficiency, so what makes more sense and solves a current problem?

[Anonymous]

I’m new to Arlington and am currently zoned to one of the listed schools. Silly me thought I could send my kids to the neighborhood school 2 blocks to my house. Can someone please explain to me why the option programs are preferable to having kids attend a neighborhood school and allow transfers in from overcrowded schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wouldn’t be surprised if Staff does away with east/West divide on immersion.

How would they divide it? If both became countywide, that would certainly increase transportation costs. And if they divided N/S, there are not enough families in the N and too many is the S who want Immersion. Also, there might be an imbalance in the number of native speakers N vs. S. It has to be E/W, but the exact boundary may shift a bit to even things out. Do you remember the K-12 maps that had the "west" division along Four Mile Run rather than George Mason south of 50? That might happen. That was probably based on actual data about where certain populations live, or evening out of demand.