ATS Move?
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Anonymous
They want Randolph to be a bus-free school, as it is now. They have no intention of adding buses there. Instead they send buses from 5 options schools to pick up kids from Barcroft and take them hither tither and yon. |
Anonymous
That sucks but ATS can't be sitting pretty on the largest lot of land and not expect to take some overflow. There is a lot of land for trailers. Losing your only paved outdoor space? Did you see what they did to Swanson? They didn't have any paved outdoor space before they took over the parking lot with 8 trailers. |
Anonymous
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11:27 - if they were really taking the size of the property into account, they would force a 4th comprehensive high school onto the Kenmore site. ATS has 7 acres, Kenmore has 32, yet ATS was actually being considered for a high school site because the NIMBYs around Kenmore were fighting the idea of a high school there. (They say it's because of traffic - which is a factor - but I also think they want their kids to keep being zoned for Washington-Lee, a better HS than a HS at Kenmore would likely be.)
Anyway, just because something is done at other schools doesn't make it ideal. McKinley tried to fight their trailers, but they also fought against having kids reboundaried to other schools. Swanson has a bunch, but I imagine some of them will go away when Stratford opens? Williamsburg's back side looks like a trailer park. |
Anonymous
I truly can’t wait for Glen Carlyn to get rezoned to Wakefield. It’s coming. |
Anonymous
From what I understand vhc uses the ATS field as a landing pad for helicopters. Trailers or expansion onto the field space wouldn’t necessarily just be up to Aps. Not that it couldn’t eventually happen, but it’s not a simple matter. |
Anonymous
The proposed areas for the trailers won't interfere with the landing pad. There's plenty of room for trailers. All I'm saying is that ATS has room for overflow. How many classes per grade? 3 or 4? When other elementary schools have up to 6? I don't think people realize how protected the ATS population is. |
Anonymous
NP here (also an ATS parent). ATS does sit on one of the larger lots of land for elementary schools in APS. But it's quite a small building. I believe that it's the fourth smallest elementary school building in APS. There is plenty of room for more trailers for classrooms (although we would have to give up playground and field space), but the common areas of the school can't accommodate too many more students. Lunch already starts very early. Adding a fifth class per grade would leave ATS at 137% capacity, making it one of the most overcrowded schools in the county. It's possible that APS could decide to do this anyway (I acknowledge that there aren't a lot of pain-free options for adding elementary seats) but it's hardly a perfect solution. The ATS PTA is already mobilizing on this, arguing that a permanent increase to four classes per grade is feasible, but going to five would be a problem. |
Anonymous
| As an option school, it should be the most overcrowded. No one is forcing students to go there. It is a decision parents make when they apply. |
Anonymous
Welcome to much of the rest of Arlington's reality. You are not going to win the rest of us over by your statements that I bolded. You sound absolutely clueless! |
Anonymous
Yup - keep talking your way into a corner. Talk about sheltered! |
Anonymous
Why should ATS - or any other option school - be the most overcrowded? I would think that the most overcrowding would result from unexpectedly large enrollments in a given year. Option schools can control their enrollments, so it doesn't make sense that they would ever end up as the most overcrowded. That wouldn't be an efficient way to operate. Granted, this assumes that APS is balancing enrollments across all elementary schools, and we all agree APS is not doing a good job with that. Option schools should certainly not be under-enrolled, and they should certainly do their share to take on extra students as needed (as should all schools). But why should they bear that burden disproportionately? Which is what you would be asking ATS to do if you went to five classes per grade. I know that some other elementary schools have five or more classes per grade, but they are in larger buildings. You seem to be under the impression that ATS is underutilized. And as currently built, it's simply not. It happens to be in a small building. I do agree that a larger school could be built on the land, and/or that the school is a good candidate for an addition, but that's not what we are discussing here. (And, as an ATS parent, I would have absolutely no objection to putting an addition onto the school to accommodate significantly more kids.) The school is already over capacity. It already has the largest class sizes of any elementary school in the county, bar none. So ATS is already feeling the capacity crunch just like most other elementary schools in the county. I'm not sure why you think it is protected from this demographic problem. |
Anonymous
Not to mention that many more parents want their children to go there than the school accepts. I’m sure plenty of parents whose children are at very crowded neighborhood schools would be fine with sending their children to a very crowded ATS. |
Anonymous
| The problem with Ats’ over capacity, is that aps needs to add an addition so that there is enough common space to have 725 kids like all aps elementary schools are supposed to be. For most aps schools, the land parcel is too small to add, ats is not. That space can can plenty of outdoor space and additions to make the school much bigger. That would help a lot. |
Anonymous
No shit right? Is all of our taxes plus, it's just a school with tucked in shirts and a principal who fakes test scores by holding back kids rather than testing them for specific learning disorders in reading. Wow. It's amazing that such violation of IDEA law is allowed in APS. |
Anonymous
We all pay the same taxes, we all need the over enrollment and you don't care about FARMS but pretend to. Thanks for playing the fun hypocrisy game. Choice is not sustainable and also ATS is not different. |