APS Construction - Never believe their schedules

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Regarding the Tuckahoe planning units, we are friends with a family in that unit, and the issue is that the two units wanted to move together-- not that they wanted to move to McK specifically. They would have been fine both moving to Nottingham too, but the Nottingham parents circulated a petition opposing taking the additional students and got nasty with APS over it. So by the time the alternative came to McK for discussion, the choice was to take one planning unit or take them both. Also, my impression from the meeting is that some of the parents complaining were the units moving over from Glebe-- these parents have been jerked around a bit by APS, because they have been getting conflicting messages over the past two years about whether they really need to move to create space at Glebe.]

I'm in one of those planning units. McK is the furthest school from school. We didn't want to go there; we wanted to stay with the rest of our neighbors. So don't blame us!

[Anonymous]

I am a McKinley parent and I do blame you for wanting to grossly overcrowd McKinley so your kids could have more friends in class even though it would disadvantage every other child at McKinley, but NOW complain about the capacity issues the school is facing and claim that McKinley will be too large for your child to attend. It's infuriating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At the meeting, APS said that they only expected to need 1-2 trailers when the construction was finished (as opposed to the current six-plex units). There is a chart floating around that shows the number of projected trailers post-construction-- I will post a link if I can find it in an old email. The issue with McKinley is that there will be so little field space after that addition is finished-- so even 1-2 trailers will take that green space away. I think McKinley is unique compared to some of the other elementary schools, in that it is completely boxed in on all sides by residential housing. This is also why I don't understand the decision to build out McKinley in the first place, as opposed to some of the other schools, but that ship has obviously sailed.

Regarding the Tuckahoe planning units, we are friends with a family in that unit, and the issue is that the two units wanted to move together-- not that they wanted to move to McK specifically. They would have been fine both moving to Nottingham too, but the Nottingham parents circulated a petition opposing taking the additional students and got nasty with APS over it. So by the time the alternative came to McK for discussion, the choice was to take one planning unit or take them both. Also, my impression from the meeting is that some of the parents complaining were the units moving over from Glebe-- these parents have been jerked around a bit by APS, because they have been getting conflicting messages over the past two years about whether they really need to move to create space at Glebe.

In any event, if you look at the chart at the link below, Discovery (our newest, most beautiful elementary school) is projected to be undercapacity until the 2020-2021 school year. So why can't APS allow transfers, or consider reshifting the boundaries elsewhere to give some relief to McK and Ashlawn? I think they are just lazy and don't want to reopen the boundary process again. We should be complaining to the SB about this as McK and Ashlawn parents. When you ask the APS staff, they just give you a lame excuse that everyone is going to be full again by 2021, so there is no point to shifting. However, that is almost the entirety of elementary school for a significant number of students.

http://www.apsva.us/cms/lib2/VA01000586/Centricity/Domain/11/Capacity_Utilization_FallProjections16-25_Final_Revised_11172015.pdf

At the McKinley meeting the APS staff were specifically asks whether they expected ANY trailers to be left after construction, even if the school was at 104% capacity, and APS said their expectation even at that number was NO TRAILERS. I'm not sure where you're getting 1 or 2 from, because APS said 0.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am a McKinley parent and I do blame you for wanting to grossly overcrowd McKinley so your kids could have more friends in class even though it would disadvantage every other child at McKinley, but NOW complain about the capacity issues the school is facing and claim that McKinley will be too large for your child to attend. It's infuriating.

Wait I might be an idiot because you may have been saying you were from Glebe. I am not mad at the Glebe people, sorry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am a McKinley parent and I do blame you for wanting to grossly overcrowd McKinley so your kids could have more friends in class even though it would disadvantage every other child at McKinley, but NOW complain about the capacity issues the school is facing and claim that McKinley will be too large for your child to attend. It's infuriating.

Wait I might be an idiot because you may have been saying you were from Glebe. I am not mad at the Glebe people, sorry.

[Anonymous]

APS is telling you know trailers because that's what they want you to believe. However, at a capacity over 100%, they cannot guarantee no trailers because it all depends upon how the students are distributed amongst the grades. Once they kick FLES out of their classroom, if there still aren't enough rooms, the trailers will be back. At almost every previous meeting, someone from APS would remind parents that trailers come on site before 100% capacity is reached. The fact that there will be no trailers at 104% capacity seems very suspect.

[Anonymous]

They said that they did not expect to need the **six-plex trailer unit** once the addition is opened in January if they continue to do Specials in the classroom, but they did say they expected to need 1-2 standalone trailers by the following school year. That's why one of the parents raised the follow-up question about the field and whether we would lose it again, and they responded that 1 or 2 trailers would not take up as much room as the six-plex. That said, I don't think we should be focusing on the relocatable issue so much as the overall size of the school and why APS insists on cramming more and more kids in when we have other smaller schools like Discovery that are underenrolled. If you focus on the trailers, they will just give you stories about how much the kids supposedly love them and it is just the parents that are upset about their kids attending school in a double-wide. There is still time to reshift enrollment before September, or at the very least allow parents in the new planning units the option to transfer into Discovery or Nottingham-- which is just as close to them as McKinley.

[Anonymous]

I just continue to think this is not that big of a deal. The Glebe kids sure don't want to go to Discovery or Nottingham (did you see the auction Glebe just put on last weekend? Hold moly!) and I'll be damned if I'm going to get riled up for the rights of the special snowflake Tuckahoe kids to attend Discovery or Nottingham. Seriously.

[Anonymous]

^that's diplomatic.

Maybe I'm just not in the loop of all of this but why does everyone hate Tuckahoe? Seems to me that they have had it the worst over the years. They were the most crowded for years. They lost some planning units to Nottingham and then to Glebe and then again to Nottingham. They seem like the land of misfit toys. I don't think they are out to make any other school overcrowded. That wouldn't really make sense for them to want to do. Am I missing a back story?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just continue to think this is not that big of a deal. The Glebe kids sure don't want to go to Discovery or Nottingham (did you see the auction Glebe just put on last weekend? Hold moly!) and I'll be damned if I'm going to get riled up for the rights of the special snowflake Tuckahoe kids to attend Discovery or Nottingham. Seriously.

No, why? What are you trying to say?
How is it different from other school's auctions?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just continue to think this is not that big of a deal. The Glebe kids sure don't want to go to Discovery or Nottingham (did you see the auction Glebe just put on last weekend? Hold moly!) and I'll be damned if I'm going to get riled up for the rights of the special snowflake Tuckahoe kids to attend Discovery or Nottingham. Seriously.

No, why? What are you trying to say?
How is it different from other school's auctions?

Yeah, I was wondering why non-Glebe readers would have seen the Glebe auction. Was it televised?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just continue to think this is not that big of a deal. The Glebe kids sure don't want to go to Discovery or Nottingham (did you see the auction Glebe just put on last weekend? Hold moly!) and I'll be damned if I'm going to get riled up for the rights of the special snowflake Tuckahoe kids to attend Discovery or Nottingham. Seriously.

No, why? What are you trying to say?
How is it different from other school's auctions?

I have a friend at Glebe and their PTA is extremely involved in and supportive of the school. My friend showed me the auction offerings they had this year as well as a picture of the auction space after they decorated it to resemble a rainbow from the Wizard of Oz, which was amazing. I think their auction raised something like $50K last year, some of which they (I think) donated to a sister elementary school in South Arlington.

What I'm saying is, the Glebe community is TIGHT. The planning committee for the auction had, like, 15 subcommittees under it. Our auction's planning committee has maybe three? There is a LOT of parental involvement in basically EVERYTHING and the school is a real community. From what I have seen and heard, NOBODY at Glebe lusts after Nottingham or Discovery.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Regarding the Tuckahoe planning units, we are friends with a family in that unit, and the issue is that the two units wanted to move together-- not that they wanted to move to McK specifically. They would have been fine both moving to Nottingham too, but the Nottingham parents circulated a petition opposing taking the additional students and got nasty with APS over it. So by the time the alternative came to McK for discussion, the choice was to take one planning unit or take them both. Also, my impression from the meeting is that some of the parents complaining were the units moving over from Glebe-- these parents have been jerked around a bit by APS, because they have been getting conflicting messages over the past two years about whether they really need to move to create space at Glebe.]

I'm in one of those planning units. McK is the furthest school from school. We didn't want to go there; we wanted to stay with the rest of our neighbors. So don't blame us!

Regarding the units moving together this is the kind of crap that parents do all the time whether it be sports teams, friend requests for camp or what have you. God forbid your child try to learn how to make new friends.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just continue to think this is not that big of a deal. The Glebe kids sure don't want to go to Discovery or Nottingham (did you see the auction Glebe just put on last weekend? Hold moly!) and I'll be damned if I'm going to get riled up for the rights of the special snowflake Tuckahoe kids to attend Discovery or Nottingham. Seriously.

No, why? What are you trying to say?
How is it different from other school's auctions?

Yeah, I was wondering why non-Glebe readers would have seen the Glebe auction. Was it televised?

That's funny. Maybe on a public access channel.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: What I'm saying is, the Glebe community is TIGHT. The planning committee for the auction had, like, 15 subcommittees under it. Our auction's planning committee has maybe three? There is a LOT of parental involvement in basically EVERYTHING and the school is a real community. From what I have seen and heard, NOBODY at Glebe lusts after Nottingham or Discovery.

This is what you get with a smaller school and this is why turning elementary schools into facilities for 700+ kids is a bad idea. The point to allowing transfers is that there are parents both in the planning units moving over to McKinley and parents who are in McKinley already who would probably voluntarily transfer out just to have their kids in a smaller elementary school. This is why I do not understand why APS is driving McKinley and Ashlawn over capacity when they are already two of the biggest elementary schools in Arlington. Having class in a trailer is not the issue. It is all the other downsides of such a large student body at the elementary level. Fall of 2016-- Discovery and Glebe will have under 600 kids, and Nottingham will have under 500 kids. All three will be under capacity. Meanwhile, McK will be at 700+ kids. How does that not impact school culture?