Anonymous wrote:County projecting in 5 years we will have a surplus of over 1,000 elementary seats. That sounds...optimistic.
Based on what I wonder. There has been a lot of turnover and lots of new kids in the neighborhood. Pandemic dip was a blip driven by desperate parents who could afford alternatives. We’re coming back.
There’s absolutely no facts/data to support this one way or the other. It’s 1,000 kids going to private school and APS doesn’t know or care to know if they are ever coming back. And if they leave for good, what does that mean for other families in the neighborhood when it’s normal to send your kids to private schools?
I have zero confidence in APS planning/projections. I understand that as a member of the public school community we need to every once in a while deal with these adjustments. APS has convinced me that they are totally incompetent at predicting seats so why should we all run around like crazy people on an annual basis trying to fill seats that APS couldn’t accurately predict?
They need better, outside data before I believe that these moves actually need to be made. They have wasted our money long enough on poor planning and annual neighborhood fights over boundaries.
South Arl poster, our neighborhood has kids divided everywhere, especially private. The effect on the neighborhood has been ...just fine. We just had a real July 4th parade you probably have heard of and a neighborhood picnic at the community house. Having your young kids dispersed doesn't not kill your neighborhood, that is blatantly untrue and known by many county residents apparently outside of your neighborhood.
As for no confidence in APS planning, sure, you do your opinion. My opinion is APS is never allowed to make good strategic decisions because of having to give too much deference to neighborhood feedback. I just don't understand how a 26-square mile system allows itself to be handcuffed by a group of maybe a dozen streets at every decision.
I second that!! - different southern neighborhood. We don't have our own parade or community house but still have a vibrant neighborhood community with kids attending minimally 6 elementary schools, 2 middle schools, and 4 high schools that I can think of quickly off the top of my head.
Kudos to you. Nobody else wants this. You are the vast minority. We want our kids to walk to schools with their neighborhood friends. Hang out after school. Know the parents and families. Know what is happening in the classroom from the crazy moms who are there every other day. We want a little Mayberry. We take comfort in knowing that our neighbors around the corner are just as smart and just fancy elitists as we are and yet also choose to send their kid to this great public school. Seriously. I am not joking. That is why people move to North Arlington. You can delude yourself that others want what you have in terms of “community” but they don’t. What you have is what will happen to us in N Arlington when everyone sends their kids to private schools.
A lot of people would love to send their kids to a great, walkable school. But Arlington is part of a large and diverse school district. There are many different kinds of kids and families. Nobody owns any particular school. I say this gently, but if you want that kind of certainty, you need to pay for private school. And you don’t get a medal for sending your kids to a wealthy, white, walkable elementary school. You’re kidding yourself if you think you’re contributing to some kind of public good through this action. If the Nott community really wants that school to stay open, then they should support denser housing in that part of the county.
Nottingham family. I do support denser housing and proudly supported missing middle. I don’t support public housing projects and never have - not in my neighborhood and not anywhere - because we have known for 40+ years that concentrating poverty in this way is a bad idea. But the so-called “affordable housing” mafia seems to run this place and they get what they want.
I do find it a bit rich, though, when incredibly privileged people pat themselves on the back for buying a $1m+ house in a “diverse” neighborhood, promptly send their kids to option schools, and then berate others for looking after their interests.
Eyeroll. You didn’t even need to tell us you were from Nottingham. Obvious from your nasty tone.
Something sensitive there? Do you have a problem with me pointing out the rampant privilege that runs through this county and how aggressive people are about looking after their own interests everywhere? The average sales and rentals prices don’t lie. People in this town are RICH - and increasingly so with each passing year.
I’m not aware of any MC or above community that has willingly sacrificed itself for the greater good on anything. The communities just have varying levels of effectiveness in getting what they want. That’s the truth.
You want to talk about privilege? It’s laughable that you think the Nott kids getting assigned to another wealthy N Arlington ES is “sacrificing yourself.” You need to get out more.
+1
+1000. Moving your kid to Jamestown, Taylor or Tuckahoe isn’t exactly a hardship. Cut me a break.
Yes, let’s take 2 slightly under capacity schools and a third under capacity school and create 2 over capacity schools complete with long waiting lists for extended day and classrooms in trailers. What a great idea!
FWIW, Nottingham currently has an extensive waiting list for extended day.
There are fewer than 400 kids at Nottingham. Just saying.
And how many will be at Tuckahoe, Taylor and Disocvery in 2026?
Why does it matter? All of these schools are under enrolled and have capacity for higher enrollment. They might become modestly over capacity. Not one of these schools is projected to become significantly overcrowded under this plan.
APS’s projections have been proven to be worse than worthless time and time again. I’m sure their numbers were computed correctly. Or at least I have no reason to doubt it. It’s just their methodology is so limited as to be useless.
People like to make fun of the moms who chose to move to North Arlington specifically for the schools. Problem is, in high enough numbers, this behavior will blow whatever projections APS has based on birth rates and historical patterns clear out of the water. They missed it before and I truly believe they are setting themselves out to miss it again.
I disagree bc the prices are high enough that a lot of people are choosing the neighborhood that they like best, and then paying for private. If you can afford a new SFH in Arlington, you don’t need the public schools.
I mean, you don’t have to believe it, but this is what people have told me. Many people at this point. I know, anecdote is not data, but maybe there’s something reflecting in the preschool waitlists that isn’t showing in APS’s numbers?
Also - not everyone is moving into a brand new house. We still have lots of 1940s stock here. And not everyone who is moving into a brand new house at today’s rates has an extra post-tax $100k to send a couple of kids to private school. There are cheaper places to live if all you’re looking for is a good commute and a leafy neighborhood.
But the replacement houses are going private at significant rates and the birth rate is going down. And you aren’t getting as much as a single CAF building in 22207. Your schools aren’t going to get overcrowded.
I know a ton of people that have moved within the last 2 years to new builds. None are going private, all public, which is partly the reason they moved here to begin with.
I'm in 22207 and know a ton of people in new builds with kids in public schools
+2, 22213
Change is hard. It’s going to be ok. I promise.
Problem for me is the frequency of these change (aka battles) and the fact that they are always wrong in hindsight. Think you could get more of the community behind them if they were a rarer occurrence and people felt that the end result was good for the community as a whole.
They aren’t always wrong in hindsight, there are just various people who can never let anything go. School moves was mostly right. It would have been even better to send Key straight to Reed, but the current outcome is fine.
Alright you anonymous posters, this seems like an invitation to revisit all the dumb moves. I’ll start:
- Cardinal. Building/opening a whole new elementary in … NORTH Arlington.
Wrong. The bad move was not opening Cardinal. The bad move was promising Westover it would be a neighborhood school. They needed the seats at the time in the south. Cardinal was never about seats for N Arl. Cardinal didn’t cause the big drop at Nottingham. 1/4 of Nottingham going private did that.
THIS! AB.SO.LUTELY!
APS intended for that to be an option school. But, surprise surprise - not, SB catered to neighborhood pushback insisting it should have a "walkable" neighborhood school and that traffic there was going to be so bad if a choice school went there. (Sound familiar?)
At the time, however, we were bursting at the seams as a system, especially Oakridge, and we needed another elementary school. People seem to think these things happen in a flash. They don't. Takes years to get a new school opened. So while Cardinal may not have opened until 2021 (wow! seems odd that it opened during COVID?) anyway, it may have opened then, but it was decided and planned out years earlier. And the whole process was limited by APS only being 'able' to build on land it owned; lack of County offering land; and neighborhood insistence on a walkable neighborhood school.
Maybe seems like poor planning; but it wasn't APS' actual plan.
+1. It was the school board caving to the absurd “Reed must be a walkable neighborhood school” crowd. Which did sound a lot like the Nottingham crowd does today. And by the way, because of the redistricting required by keeping Cardinal neighborhood when there was no need for seats there, it had a bunch of busses now anyway.
Agree. And that is APS’s fault as the decision-maker. Not the parents. APS shouldn’t cave when it’s not the best decision for APS as a whole. I do not understand why the APS defenders can’t see that. And it’s probably bc their own unreasonable demands have been met so they are the “winners” of the bad behavior wars. Anyone saying APS made all the right decisions - or even the best of the bad decisions- can’t be right. Just own that they have made some bad calls, people.
I'm PPP. I wasn't "defending" APS. I've faulted them for years for caving to certain parts of the community and for not making decisions that best serve the whole system. that goes for both SB and staff. But I guess I will defend APS a little bit because I do think they made some actually good proposals in the past - which were shot down or "tweaked" by the Board. Making Cardinal a neighborhood school was stupid - but that wasn't what STAFF wanted to do. It's what Reid Goldstein stupidly and inappropriately promised the parents. Staff moved forward with planning accordingly. It was the path of least resistance, or at least the path of quieter objections. But if Cardinal had been the new location for an option program, some future mayhem and ridiculousness would have been avoided.
Another example of APS staff making decent recommendations was the high school boundary proposal whereby they actually took demographics into consideration and made a reasonable plan. But SB Barbara had to propose her alternative plan to appease herself and her constituency, even though a SB member's constituency is the entire county.
Me again. However, I do believe it is also the fault of parents. It's fine to express concerns and raise issues. Sometimes something is overlooked and hearing from the community brings up something important and it can be dealt with. But the insistence and fierceness of some parents/communities "speaking up" and pushing back is done with short-sighted narrow-mindedness according to their own self-interests and not considering what's best for others. And if they wouldn't be so "forceful," APS wouldn't back down so much. So yes, parents share in the blame.
I think there is plenty of blame to go around. But it would be a lot easier to get on board with Staff recommendations if they didn’t have so many holes and weren’t so open to attack.
It’s easy to say that some other group of parents should sacrifice for the greater good. It’s a lot harder to actually be the group doing the sacrificing, especially when that “greater good” is not being clearly demonstrated.
I’m a Nottingham parent and my first instinct is to fight for my kids, but I’m also a taxpayer who believes in good governance and not pissing away money like it’s going out of style. Make the case to me, address my reasonable concerns, and I’ll probably end up doing your outreach work for you with my neighbors and friends. Throw a bunch of half baked data and TBDs at me and be prepared for a lot of pointed questions and organized opposition.
releasing the proposal is the first step of that process. Ask your questions and have a conversation.It's the immediate closed-mindedness, "nope! no way!" reactions that immediately put up a divide with "the other groups" not doing the sacrificing.
Read the PTA statements. They basically are agreeing with PP. Make the case, backed up with data, that Nottingham needs to be converted, and so be it. But they have yet to make the case and there’s hardly any time before the first vote.
Anonymous wrote:Out of curiosity, what is the plan for the 100+ kids that will result from the massive Toll Brothers development at Wilson and McKinley? Cardinal is full. What about Ashlawn?
I’ve asked myself the same. I don’t think there’s lots of space at Ashlawn.
Anonymous wrote:Why would you not just push out the population of the to-be renovated school into schools that are closer? Even if some kids are bussed to other schools, it is going to be better and shorter bus ride as opposed to trucking everyone to the north west corner of Arlington and destroying the heartbeat of an entire neighborhood?
Also, far less disruptive would be leasing office space as temporary swing space. They did this with the APS preschool, the one that provide space for APS employees- it seemed like a really nice space. Especially with the low occupancy rates of office space across Arlington
We don’t live in the immediate Nottingham surrounding neighborhood, and my child is old enough that he will not be impacted (he probably wants to be impacted and use the slide at Discovery). However, fundamentally, I don’t think students or neighborhoods should be sacrificed when there are other viable options.
I'm not sure I follow. You propose to move kids from a school being renovated to various nearby schools for the time during the renovation, and then back together again once the renovation is complete? You propose to overcrowd/disrupt multiple "nearby" neighborhood schools temporarily to do a renovation and then disrupt them again in a year when the renovation is complete? Rather than "destroy the heartbeat of an entire neighborhood" that must not beat all that strongly if it can't withstand a change in the location to where it sends its kids to school?
Yes, eventually you would re-open the school and children would attend it. Renovation will take years. Closing down Nottingham also overcrowds and disrupts the nearby schools - you think the Discovery families are going to be happy about having their kids in a trailer so kids from across the city can be bussed to Nottingham?
The heartbeat of the neighborhood is because the school is in the middle of the neighborhood and the hub of a lot activities.
This is nonsense. Discovery is a school that will never have any trailers, the site design does not allow it. Same goes for Fleet. The max is and will be the max.
Anonymous wrote:Is there another elementary school that has had 3 pedestrian deaths within 2 blocks of tbe school in the last decade? Nottingham isn’t set up for the kind of traffic influx they would need. It can’t even handle the current traffic, where most people walk.
If it’s so dangerous for pedestrians maybe it makes sense to bus kids in and use it as swing space rather than have so many walkers.
If there was space for the buses needed to move 450-600 kids, I might agree with you. There is not in fact space for that amount of buses. Also this ignores that there will still be a significant added influx of cars due to extended day drop offs/pickups.
There is nothing more menacing than a series of distracted drivers racing the clock and treating your neighborhood like their highway/parking lot. The Tuckahoe neighborhood goes through this every few years with McConnell, and that is a well established school community. We’d be reinventing the wheel every year with the Airbnb approach APS has planned for Nottingham.
This is a bit more of a “sacrifice” to this community than which blue ribbon school we attend, and again, not one word about it in the APS analysis.
The biggest eye roll isn’t big enough. Lots of neighborhoods already have the traffic of which you speak. FFS, there are 3 schools within a few blocks of each other on Carlin Springs Rd all with the same start (during morning rush) and end times. If APS doesn’t give an eff about that, why should they fall over dead because a few buses will be “invading” your neighborhood. Also, it’s really galling that you liken your neighbors’ kids to a plague of locusts. Deal with it! Arlington is dense, crowded, full of traffic. Welcome!
Interesting choice of words. What’s a few dead rich white people, am I right?
WUT? APS staff is rich white people? “THEY” is APS staff, not Nottingham parents.
I am referring to the choice of words “drop dead”, which is exactly what happened to several individuals within sight of Nottingham due to design problems with that road.
But Carlin Springs, an arterial that intersects with other arterials, is busy, so us “rich white people” should just deal with a dangerous influx of cars on a deadly road not built to handle it. Do I got that right? Just want to understand the depth of the sacrifice we supposedly have no choice to make up here for the convenience of APS planning staff.
Have you seen the road in and out of Cardinal? Just checking.
Tiny violins is right.
Are you referring to State Route 27, Washington Boulevard? Yes, I travel that arterial road often - on foot, by car, and even occasionally by bus.
The main bus/car access to Cardinal is from McKinley Rd, which is a small road with SFH homes directly across from the access point. The other vehicle access point to the school is in the back through a narrow residential street as well. It's quite tight and there is a a lot of traffic and competing things in that area including a heavily used public library. There have been many concerns about all the kids walking to school in that area and the influx of cars and pedestrians, which understandably you are not aware of since you are concerned about Nottingham.
It is a very heavily trafficked area and imagine it has been that way for a long time with the shopping center, library, etc. I’m surprised there was so many concerns about traffic given the community’s desire for a neighborhood school serving Westover.
But I think we can all agree it’s one thing to suffer increased traffic for something that improves your neighborhood versus something that is more convenient for people undergoing temporary challenges at soon-to-be-renovated schools in other parts of the county.
Sounds like this is what it’s really about. “Other” kids coming into your neighborhood. As soon as people brought up the possibility of it being Southie kids. Really, SMH.
No, it's not about that, and that doesn't even make sense. Their kids will attend Tuckahoe or Discovery - other wealthy, non-diverse N. Arlington Elementary schools.
It’s the busses and cars, folks. Turning a 90% walk school into a 100% drop off school, while also forcing more Nottingham kids into cars for their treks to Nottingham and Discovery. Same outcome as if they were coming from Randolph, Jamestown, or more likely, both over subsequent years.
I know this doesn’t fit the “rich white racist a-holes in the North hate us Southies” bias but trust me when I say it’s that simple. We got all types up here, including people who paid less for their 22207 homes than you did for yours in 22204. People have died on these roads. It’s not a made up concern.
This was of zero concern to APS and most APS families when ATS was moved to McKinley, so I think APS and most families will manage… again.
Anonymous wrote:Why would you not just push out the population of the to-be renovated school into schools that are closer? Even if some kids are bussed to other schools, it is going to be better and shorter bus ride as opposed to trucking everyone to the north west corner of Arlington and destroying the heartbeat of an entire neighborhood?
Also, far less disruptive would be leasing office space as temporary swing space. They did this with the APS preschool, the one that provide space for APS employees- it seemed like a really nice space. Especially with the low occupancy rates of office space across Arlington
We don’t live in the immediate Nottingham surrounding neighborhood, and my child is old enough that he will not be impacted (he probably wants to be impacted and use the slide at Discovery). However, fundamentally, I don’t think students or neighborhoods should be sacrificed when there are other viable options.
I'm not sure I follow. You propose to move kids from a school being renovated to various nearby schools for the time during the renovation, and then back together again once the renovation is complete? You propose to overcrowd/disrupt multiple "nearby" neighborhood schools temporarily to do a renovation and then disrupt them again in a year when the renovation is complete? Rather than "destroy the heartbeat of an entire neighborhood" that must not beat all that strongly if it can't withstand a change in the location to where it sends its kids to school?
Yes, eventually you would re-open the school and children would attend it. Renovation will take years. Closing down Nottingham also overcrowds and disrupts the nearby schools - you think the Discovery families are going to be happy about having their kids in a trailer so kids from across the city can be bussed to Nottingham?
The heartbeat of the neighborhood is because the school is in the middle of the neighborhood and the hub of a lot activities.
This is nonsense. Discovery is a school that will never have any trailers, the site design does not allow it. Same goes for Fleet. The max is and will be the max.
This plan sends half of Discovery to Taylor to make way for Nottingham kids. I'm sure Discovery families will be thrilled with that.
Anonymous wrote:County projecting in 5 years we will have a surplus of over 1,000 elementary seats. That sounds...optimistic.
Based on what I wonder. There has been a lot of turnover and lots of new kids in the neighborhood. Pandemic dip was a blip driven by desperate parents who could afford alternatives. We’re coming back.
There’s absolutely no facts/data to support this one way or the other. It’s 1,000 kids going to private school and APS doesn’t know or care to know if they are ever coming back. And if they leave for good, what does that mean for other families in the neighborhood when it’s normal to send your kids to private schools?
I have zero confidence in APS planning/projections. I understand that as a member of the public school community we need to every once in a while deal with these adjustments. APS has convinced me that they are totally incompetent at predicting seats so why should we all run around like crazy people on an annual basis trying to fill seats that APS couldn’t accurately predict?
They need better, outside data before I believe that these moves actually need to be made. They have wasted our money long enough on poor planning and annual neighborhood fights over boundaries.
South Arl poster, our neighborhood has kids divided everywhere, especially private. The effect on the neighborhood has been ...just fine. We just had a real July 4th parade you probably have heard of and a neighborhood picnic at the community house. Having your young kids dispersed doesn't not kill your neighborhood, that is blatantly untrue and known by many county residents apparently outside of your neighborhood.
As for no confidence in APS planning, sure, you do your opinion. My opinion is APS is never allowed to make good strategic decisions because of having to give too much deference to neighborhood feedback. I just don't understand how a 26-square mile system allows itself to be handcuffed by a group of maybe a dozen streets at every decision.
I second that!! - different southern neighborhood. We don't have our own parade or community house but still have a vibrant neighborhood community with kids attending minimally 6 elementary schools, 2 middle schools, and 4 high schools that I can think of quickly off the top of my head.
Kudos to you. Nobody else wants this. You are the vast minority. We want our kids to walk to schools with their neighborhood friends. Hang out after school. Know the parents and families. Know what is happening in the classroom from the crazy moms who are there every other day. We want a little Mayberry. We take comfort in knowing that our neighbors around the corner are just as smart and just fancy elitists as we are and yet also choose to send their kid to this great public school. Seriously. I am not joking. That is why people move to North Arlington. You can delude yourself that others want what you have in terms of “community” but they don’t. What you have is what will happen to us in N Arlington when everyone sends their kids to private schools.
A lot of people would love to send their kids to a great, walkable school. But Arlington is part of a large and diverse school district. There are many different kinds of kids and families. Nobody owns any particular school. I say this gently, but if you want that kind of certainty, you need to pay for private school. And you don’t get a medal for sending your kids to a wealthy, white, walkable elementary school. You’re kidding yourself if you think you’re contributing to some kind of public good through this action. If the Nott community really wants that school to stay open, then they should support denser housing in that part of the county.
Nottingham family. I do support denser housing and proudly supported missing middle. I don’t support public housing projects and never have - not in my neighborhood and not anywhere - because we have known for 40+ years that concentrating poverty in this way is a bad idea. But the so-called “affordable housing” mafia seems to run this place and they get what they want.
I do find it a bit rich, though, when incredibly privileged people pat themselves on the back for buying a $1m+ house in a “diverse” neighborhood, promptly send their kids to option schools, and then berate others for looking after their interests.
Eyeroll. You didn’t even need to tell us you were from Nottingham. Obvious from your nasty tone.
Something sensitive there? Do you have a problem with me pointing out the rampant privilege that runs through this county and how aggressive people are about looking after their own interests everywhere? The average sales and rentals prices don’t lie. People in this town are RICH - and increasingly so with each passing year.
I’m not aware of any MC or above community that has willingly sacrificed itself for the greater good on anything. The communities just have varying levels of effectiveness in getting what they want. That’s the truth.
You want to talk about privilege? It’s laughable that you think the Nott kids getting assigned to another wealthy N Arlington ES is “sacrificing yourself.” You need to get out more.
+1
+1000. Moving your kid to Jamestown, Taylor or Tuckahoe isn’t exactly a hardship. Cut me a break.
Yes, let’s take 2 slightly under capacity schools and a third under capacity school and create 2 over capacity schools complete with long waiting lists for extended day and classrooms in trailers. What a great idea!
FWIW, Nottingham currently has an extensive waiting list for extended day.
There are fewer than 400 kids at Nottingham. Just saying.
And how many will be at Tuckahoe, Taylor and Disocvery in 2026?
Why does it matter? All of these schools are under enrolled and have capacity for higher enrollment. They might become modestly over capacity. Not one of these schools is projected to become significantly overcrowded under this plan.
APS’s projections have been proven to be worse than worthless time and time again. I’m sure their numbers were computed correctly. Or at least I have no reason to doubt it. It’s just their methodology is so limited as to be useless.
People like to make fun of the moms who chose to move to North Arlington specifically for the schools. Problem is, in high enough numbers, this behavior will blow whatever projections APS has based on birth rates and historical patterns clear out of the water. They missed it before and I truly believe they are setting themselves out to miss it again.
I disagree bc the prices are high enough that a lot of people are choosing the neighborhood that they like best, and then paying for private. If you can afford a new SFH in Arlington, you don’t need the public schools.
I mean, you don’t have to believe it, but this is what people have told me. Many people at this point. I know, anecdote is not data, but maybe there’s something reflecting in the preschool waitlists that isn’t showing in APS’s numbers?
Also - not everyone is moving into a brand new house. We still have lots of 1940s stock here. And not everyone who is moving into a brand new house at today’s rates has an extra post-tax $100k to send a couple of kids to private school. There are cheaper places to live if all you’re looking for is a good commute and a leafy neighborhood.
But the replacement houses are going private at significant rates and the birth rate is going down. And you aren’t getting as much as a single CAF building in 22207. Your schools aren’t going to get overcrowded.
I know a ton of people that have moved within the last 2 years to new builds. None are going private, all public, which is partly the reason they moved here to begin with.
I'm in 22207 and know a ton of people in new builds with kids in public schools
+2, 22213
Change is hard. It’s going to be ok. I promise.
Problem for me is the frequency of these change (aka battles) and the fact that they are always wrong in hindsight. Think you could get more of the community behind them if they were a rarer occurrence and people felt that the end result was good for the community as a whole.
They aren’t always wrong in hindsight, there are just various people who can never let anything go. School moves was mostly right. It would have been even better to send Key straight to Reed, but the current outcome is fine.
Alright you anonymous posters, this seems like an invitation to revisit all the dumb moves. I’ll start:
- Cardinal. Building/opening a whole new elementary in … NORTH Arlington.
Wrong. The bad move was not opening Cardinal. The bad move was promising Westover it would be a neighborhood school. They needed the seats at the time in the south. Cardinal was never about seats for N Arl. Cardinal didn’t cause the big drop at Nottingham. 1/4 of Nottingham going private did that.
THIS! AB.SO.LUTELY!
APS intended for that to be an option school. But, surprise surprise - not, SB catered to neighborhood pushback insisting it should have a "walkable" neighborhood school and that traffic there was going to be so bad if a choice school went there. (Sound familiar?)
At the time, however, we were bursting at the seams as a system, especially Oakridge, and we needed another elementary school. People seem to think these things happen in a flash. They don't. Takes years to get a new school opened. So while Cardinal may not have opened until 2021 (wow! seems odd that it opened during COVID?) anyway, it may have opened then, but it was decided and planned out years earlier. And the whole process was limited by APS only being 'able' to build on land it owned; lack of County offering land; and neighborhood insistence on a walkable neighborhood school.
Maybe seems like poor planning; but it wasn't APS' actual plan.
+1. It was the school board caving to the absurd “Reed must be a walkable neighborhood school” crowd. Which did sound a lot like the Nottingham crowd does today. And by the way, because of the redistricting required by keeping Cardinal neighborhood when there was no need for seats there, it had a bunch of busses now anyway.
Agree. And that is APS’s fault as the decision-maker. Not the parents. APS shouldn’t cave when it’s not the best decision for APS as a whole. I do not understand why the APS defenders can’t see that. And it’s probably bc their own unreasonable demands have been met so they are the “winners” of the bad behavior wars. Anyone saying APS made all the right decisions - or even the best of the bad decisions- can’t be right. Just own that they have made some bad calls, people.
I'm PPP. I wasn't "defending" APS. I've faulted them for years for caving to certain parts of the community and for not making decisions that best serve the whole system. that goes for both SB and staff. But I guess I will defend APS a little bit because I do think they made some actually good proposals in the past - which were shot down or "tweaked" by the Board. Making Cardinal a neighborhood school was stupid - but that wasn't what STAFF wanted to do. It's what Reid Goldstein stupidly and inappropriately promised the parents. Staff moved forward with planning accordingly. It was the path of least resistance, or at least the path of quieter objections. But if Cardinal had been the new location for an option program, some future mayhem and ridiculousness would have been avoided.
Another example of APS staff making decent recommendations was the high school boundary proposal whereby they actually took demographics into consideration and made a reasonable plan. But SB Barbara had to propose her alternative plan to appease herself and her constituency, even though a SB member's constituency is the entire county.
Anonymous wrote:Why aren’t they looking more seriously at building the S Arlington elementary? They report and presentation yesterday said it was going to be needed but basically that “it’s hard” because the site is county owned. If the demand is there for Virginia Highlands, let’s invest in S Arlington and give them the elementary they need, rather than creating a bandaid solution by shutting down Nottingham, even though the report acknowledges it may need to be reopened as a neighborhood school. IMHO it just seems like the school board doesn’t want to work with the county. A cynical part of me wonders if this is a play to get N Arlingotn parents to push for investment in S Arlington (… and it might work)
If we give them permission to invest in South Arlington, do you think they’ll stop trying to destroy active and invested school communities in the North? There other ways to achieve “equity” besides making everyone’s experience equally awful. We could, you know, raise the bar.
Oh my.
Yeah. North Arlington has to give the SB and the County permission to invest in south Arlington. At least someone finally actually stated it outright!
Lol, yes.
Lol, no. If you’re going to quote threads, quote the response.
Anonymous wrote:County projecting in 5 years we will have a surplus of over 1,000 elementary seats. That sounds...optimistic.
Based on what I wonder. There has been a lot of turnover and lots of new kids in the neighborhood. Pandemic dip was a blip driven by desperate parents who could afford alternatives. We’re coming back.
There’s absolutely no facts/data to support this one way or the other. It’s 1,000 kids going to private school and APS doesn’t know or care to know if they are ever coming back. And if they leave for good, what does that mean for other families in the neighborhood when it’s normal to send your kids to private schools?
I have zero confidence in APS planning/projections. I understand that as a member of the public school community we need to every once in a while deal with these adjustments. APS has convinced me that they are totally incompetent at predicting seats so why should we all run around like crazy people on an annual basis trying to fill seats that APS couldn’t accurately predict?
They need better, outside data before I believe that these moves actually need to be made. They have wasted our money long enough on poor planning and annual neighborhood fights over boundaries.
South Arl poster, our neighborhood has kids divided everywhere, especially private. The effect on the neighborhood has been ...just fine. We just had a real July 4th parade you probably have heard of and a neighborhood picnic at the community house. Having your young kids dispersed doesn't not kill your neighborhood, that is blatantly untrue and known by many county residents apparently outside of your neighborhood.
As for no confidence in APS planning, sure, you do your opinion. My opinion is APS is never allowed to make good strategic decisions because of having to give too much deference to neighborhood feedback. I just don't understand how a 26-square mile system allows itself to be handcuffed by a group of maybe a dozen streets at every decision.
I second that!! - different southern neighborhood. We don't have our own parade or community house but still have a vibrant neighborhood community with kids attending minimally 6 elementary schools, 2 middle schools, and 4 high schools that I can think of quickly off the top of my head.
Kudos to you. Nobody else wants this. You are the vast minority. We want our kids to walk to schools with their neighborhood friends. Hang out after school. Know the parents and families. Know what is happening in the classroom from the crazy moms who are there every other day. We want a little Mayberry. We take comfort in knowing that our neighbors around the corner are just as smart and just fancy elitists as we are and yet also choose to send their kid to this great public school. Seriously. I am not joking. That is why people move to North Arlington. You can delude yourself that others want what you have in terms of “community” but they don’t. What you have is what will happen to us in N Arlington when everyone sends their kids to private schools.
A lot of people would love to send their kids to a great, walkable school. But Arlington is part of a large and diverse school district. There are many different kinds of kids and families. Nobody owns any particular school. I say this gently, but if you want that kind of certainty, you need to pay for private school. And you don’t get a medal for sending your kids to a wealthy, white, walkable elementary school. You’re kidding yourself if you think you’re contributing to some kind of public good through this action. If the Nott community really wants that school to stay open, then they should support denser housing in that part of the county.
Nottingham family. I do support denser housing and proudly supported missing middle. I don’t support public housing projects and never have - not in my neighborhood and not anywhere - because we have known for 40+ years that concentrating poverty in this way is a bad idea. But the so-called “affordable housing” mafia seems to run this place and they get what they want.
I do find it a bit rich, though, when incredibly privileged people pat themselves on the back for buying a $1m+ house in a “diverse” neighborhood, promptly send their kids to option schools, and then berate others for looking after their interests.
Eyeroll. You didn’t even need to tell us you were from Nottingham. Obvious from your nasty tone.
Something sensitive there? Do you have a problem with me pointing out the rampant privilege that runs through this county and how aggressive people are about looking after their own interests everywhere? The average sales and rentals prices don’t lie. People in this town are RICH - and increasingly so with each passing year.
I’m not aware of any MC or above community that has willingly sacrificed itself for the greater good on anything. The communities just have varying levels of effectiveness in getting what they want. That’s the truth.
You want to talk about privilege? It’s laughable that you think the Nott kids getting assigned to another wealthy N Arlington ES is “sacrificing yourself.” You need to get out more.
+1
+1000. Moving your kid to Jamestown, Taylor or Tuckahoe isn’t exactly a hardship. Cut me a break.
Yes, let’s take 2 slightly under capacity schools and a third under capacity school and create 2 over capacity schools complete with long waiting lists for extended day and classrooms in trailers. What a great idea!
FWIW, Nottingham currently has an extensive waiting list for extended day.
There are fewer than 400 kids at Nottingham. Just saying.
And how many will be at Tuckahoe, Taylor and Disocvery in 2026?
Why does it matter? All of these schools are under enrolled and have capacity for higher enrollment. They might become modestly over capacity. Not one of these schools is projected to become significantly overcrowded under this plan.
APS’s projections have been proven to be worse than worthless time and time again. I’m sure their numbers were computed correctly. Or at least I have no reason to doubt it. It’s just their methodology is so limited as to be useless.
People like to make fun of the moms who chose to move to North Arlington specifically for the schools. Problem is, in high enough numbers, this behavior will blow whatever projections APS has based on birth rates and historical patterns clear out of the water. They missed it before and I truly believe they are setting themselves out to miss it again.
I disagree bc the prices are high enough that a lot of people are choosing the neighborhood that they like best, and then paying for private. If you can afford a new SFH in Arlington, you don’t need the public schools.
I mean, you don’t have to believe it, but this is what people have told me. Many people at this point. I know, anecdote is not data, but maybe there’s something reflecting in the preschool waitlists that isn’t showing in APS’s numbers?
Also - not everyone is moving into a brand new house. We still have lots of 1940s stock here. And not everyone who is moving into a brand new house at today’s rates has an extra post-tax $100k to send a couple of kids to private school. There are cheaper places to live if all you’re looking for is a good commute and a leafy neighborhood.
But the replacement houses are going private at significant rates and the birth rate is going down. And you aren’t getting as much as a single CAF building in 22207. Your schools aren’t going to get overcrowded.
I know a ton of people that have moved within the last 2 years to new builds. None are going private, all public, which is partly the reason they moved here to begin with.
I'm in 22207 and know a ton of people in new builds with kids in public schools
+2, 22213
Change is hard. It’s going to be ok. I promise.
Problem for me is the frequency of these change (aka battles) and the fact that they are always wrong in hindsight. Think you could get more of the community behind them if they were a rarer occurrence and people felt that the end result was good for the community as a whole.
They aren’t always wrong in hindsight, there are just various people who can never let anything go. School moves was mostly right. It would have been even better to send Key straight to Reed, but the current outcome is fine.
Alright you anonymous posters, this seems like an invitation to revisit all the dumb moves. I’ll start:
- Cardinal. Building/opening a whole new elementary in … NORTH Arlington.
Wrong. The bad move was not opening Cardinal. The bad move was promising Westover it would be a neighborhood school. They needed the seats at the time in the south. Cardinal was never about seats for N Arl. Cardinal didn’t cause the big drop at Nottingham. 1/4 of Nottingham going private did that.
THIS! AB.SO.LUTELY!
APS intended for that to be an option school. But, surprise surprise - not, SB catered to neighborhood pushback insisting it should have a "walkable" neighborhood school and that traffic there was going to be so bad if a choice school went there. (Sound familiar?)
At the time, however, we were bursting at the seams as a system, especially Oakridge, and we needed another elementary school. People seem to think these things happen in a flash. They don't. Takes years to get a new school opened. So while Cardinal may not have opened until 2021 (wow! seems odd that it opened during COVID?) anyway, it may have opened then, but it was decided and planned out years earlier. And the whole process was limited by APS only being 'able' to build on land it owned; lack of County offering land; and neighborhood insistence on a walkable neighborhood school.
Maybe seems like poor planning; but it wasn't APS' actual plan.
+1. It was the school board caving to the absurd “Reed must be a walkable neighborhood school” crowd. Which did sound a lot like the Nottingham crowd does today. And by the way, because of the redistricting required by keeping Cardinal neighborhood when there was no need for seats there, it had a bunch of busses now anyway.
Agree. And that is APS’s fault as the decision-maker. Not the parents. APS shouldn’t cave when it’s not the best decision for APS as a whole. I do not understand why the APS defenders can’t see that. And it’s probably bc their own unreasonable demands have been met so they are the “winners” of the bad behavior wars. Anyone saying APS made all the right decisions - or even the best of the bad decisions- can’t be right. Just own that they have made some bad calls, people.
I'm PPP. I wasn't "defending" APS. I've faulted them for years for caving to certain parts of the community and for not making decisions that best serve the whole system. that goes for both SB and staff. But I guess I will defend APS a little bit because I do think they made some actually good proposals in the past - which were shot down or "tweaked" by the Board. Making Cardinal a neighborhood school was stupid - but that wasn't what STAFF wanted to do. It's what Reid Goldstein stupidly and inappropriately promised the parents. Staff moved forward with planning accordingly. It was the path of least resistance, or at least the path of quieter objections. But if Cardinal had been the new location for an option program, some future mayhem and ridiculousness would have been avoided.
Another example of APS staff making decent recommendations was the high school boundary proposal whereby they actually took demographics into consideration and made a reasonable plan. But SB Barbara had to propose her alternative plan to appease herself and her constituency, even though a SB member's constituency is the entire county.
Me again. However, I do believe it is also the fault of parents. It's fine to express concerns and raise issues. Sometimes something is overlooked and hearing from the community brings up something important and it can be dealt with. But the insistence and fierceness of some parents/communities "speaking up" and pushing back is done with short-sighted narrow-mindedness according to their own self-interests and not considering what's best for others. And if they wouldn't be so "forceful," APS wouldn't back down so much. So yes, parents share in the blame.
I think there is plenty of blame to go around. But it would be a lot easier to get on board with Staff recommendations if they didn’t have so many holes and weren’t so open to attack.
It’s easy to say that some other group of parents should sacrifice for the greater good. It’s a lot harder to actually be the group doing the sacrificing, especially when that “greater good” is not being clearly demonstrated.
I’m a Nottingham parent and my first instinct is to fight for my kids, but I’m also a taxpayer who believes in good governance and not pissing away money like it’s going out of style. Make the case to me, address my reasonable concerns, and I’ll probably end up doing your outreach work for you with my neighbors and friends. Throw a bunch of half baked data and TBDs at me and be prepared for a lot of pointed questions and organized opposition.
releasing the proposal is the first step of that process. Ask your questions and have a conversation.It's the immediate closed-mindedness, "nope! no way!" reactions that immediately put up a divide with "the other groups" not doing the sacrificing.
Read the PTA statements. They basically are agreeing with PP. Make the case, backed up with data, that Nottingham needs to be converted, and so be it. But they have yet to make the case and there’s hardly any time before the first vote.
That had to have been the plan all along. We will spend more time rearranging the boundaries for middle schools than we will debating whether to shut down an entire school that was wildly over capacity in the last decade. The late Thursday PM drop before a holiday weekend wasn’t an accident.
Anonymous wrote:Isn't the main problem with dwindling numbers at Nottingham due to many Nottingham families going private? I think it was just under capacity before covid about 4 years ago. It's shrunk to under 400 kids because so many took their kids out for private, I thought? Not sure if I can find the 2017 numbers.
Here: In 2017, APS was projecting that Nottingham would have 535 kids attending in 2018, which for Nottingham is about 100% capacity (I think without trailers their capacity is 530). So in just 5 years they've lost more than 140 kids and their school now has under 400 kids. You're seeing that shrinkage more in the way way North where parents wend private due to school closures and less in the south where minority families who were actually more likely to be negatively affected by covid healthwise were often okay with the closures. But you can't have your cake and eat it too -- have kids leave the system in your northern elementary schools and think that's "fair" -- the reality is you're spending more on your school to staff and operate it when you've only got 400 kids compared to a school that's closer to full capacity.
I have to respond to this point. Many were not ok with the closures, especially the ones that continued to work outside the home in public facing jobs and wanted their kids to get an education or at least be supervised for 6-7 hours a day. They just didn’t have the resources to flee to private school.
sorry no this is fake news, and reeks of white APEs trying to speak for the brown people. we all saw the data on who picked virtual.
We all saw the recent test results, too.
Anyway, happy to be corrected by a brown person that actually worked outside the home in the pandemic rather than another white savior.
Anonymous wrote:County projecting in 5 years we will have a surplus of over 1,000 elementary seats. That sounds...optimistic.
Based on what I wonder. There has been a lot of turnover and lots of new kids in the neighborhood. Pandemic dip was a blip driven by desperate parents who could afford alternatives. We’re coming back.
There’s absolutely no facts/data to support this one way or the other. It’s 1,000 kids going to private school and APS doesn’t know or care to know if they are ever coming back. And if they leave for good, what does that mean for other families in the neighborhood when it’s normal to send your kids to private schools?
I have zero confidence in APS planning/projections. I understand that as a member of the public school community we need to every once in a while deal with these adjustments. APS has convinced me that they are totally incompetent at predicting seats so why should we all run around like crazy people on an annual basis trying to fill seats that APS couldn’t accurately predict?
They need better, outside data before I believe that these moves actually need to be made. They have wasted our money long enough on poor planning and annual neighborhood fights over boundaries.
South Arl poster, our neighborhood has kids divided everywhere, especially private. The effect on the neighborhood has been ...just fine. We just had a real July 4th parade you probably have heard of and a neighborhood picnic at the community house. Having your young kids dispersed doesn't not kill your neighborhood, that is blatantly untrue and known by many county residents apparently outside of your neighborhood.
As for no confidence in APS planning, sure, you do your opinion. My opinion is APS is never allowed to make good strategic decisions because of having to give too much deference to neighborhood feedback. I just don't understand how a 26-square mile system allows itself to be handcuffed by a group of maybe a dozen streets at every decision.
I second that!! - different southern neighborhood. We don't have our own parade or community house but still have a vibrant neighborhood community with kids attending minimally 6 elementary schools, 2 middle schools, and 4 high schools that I can think of quickly off the top of my head.
Kudos to you. Nobody else wants this. You are the vast minority. We want our kids to walk to schools with their neighborhood friends. Hang out after school. Know the parents and families. Know what is happening in the classroom from the crazy moms who are there every other day. We want a little Mayberry. We take comfort in knowing that our neighbors around the corner are just as smart and just fancy elitists as we are and yet also choose to send their kid to this great public school. Seriously. I am not joking. That is why people move to North Arlington. You can delude yourself that others want what you have in terms of “community” but they don’t. What you have is what will happen to us in N Arlington when everyone sends their kids to private schools.
A lot of people would love to send their kids to a great, walkable school. But Arlington is part of a large and diverse school district. There are many different kinds of kids and families. Nobody owns any particular school. I say this gently, but if you want that kind of certainty, you need to pay for private school. And you don’t get a medal for sending your kids to a wealthy, white, walkable elementary school. You’re kidding yourself if you think you’re contributing to some kind of public good through this action. If the Nott community really wants that school to stay open, then they should support denser housing in that part of the county.
Nottingham family. I do support denser housing and proudly supported missing middle. I don’t support public housing projects and never have - not in my neighborhood and not anywhere - because we have known for 40+ years that concentrating poverty in this way is a bad idea. But the so-called “affordable housing” mafia seems to run this place and they get what they want.
I do find it a bit rich, though, when incredibly privileged people pat themselves on the back for buying a $1m+ house in a “diverse” neighborhood, promptly send their kids to option schools, and then berate others for looking after their interests.
Eyeroll. You didn’t even need to tell us you were from Nottingham. Obvious from your nasty tone.
Something sensitive there? Do you have a problem with me pointing out the rampant privilege that runs through this county and how aggressive people are about looking after their own interests everywhere? The average sales and rentals prices don’t lie. People in this town are RICH - and increasingly so with each passing year.
I’m not aware of any MC or above community that has willingly sacrificed itself for the greater good on anything. The communities just have varying levels of effectiveness in getting what they want. That’s the truth.
You want to talk about privilege? It’s laughable that you think the Nott kids getting assigned to another wealthy N Arlington ES is “sacrificing yourself.” You need to get out more.
+1
+1000. Moving your kid to Jamestown, Taylor or Tuckahoe isn’t exactly a hardship. Cut me a break.
Yes, let’s take 2 slightly under capacity schools and a third under capacity school and create 2 over capacity schools complete with long waiting lists for extended day and classrooms in trailers. What a great idea!
FWIW, Nottingham currently has an extensive waiting list for extended day.
There are fewer than 400 kids at Nottingham. Just saying.
And how many will be at Tuckahoe, Taylor and Disocvery in 2026?
Why does it matter? All of these schools are under enrolled and have capacity for higher enrollment. They might become modestly over capacity. Not one of these schools is projected to become significantly overcrowded under this plan.
APS’s projections have been proven to be worse than worthless time and time again. I’m sure their numbers were computed correctly. Or at least I have no reason to doubt it. It’s just their methodology is so limited as to be useless.
People like to make fun of the moms who chose to move to North Arlington specifically for the schools. Problem is, in high enough numbers, this behavior will blow whatever projections APS has based on birth rates and historical patterns clear out of the water. They missed it before and I truly believe they are setting themselves out to miss it again.
I disagree bc the prices are high enough that a lot of people are choosing the neighborhood that they like best, and then paying for private. If you can afford a new SFH in Arlington, you don’t need the public schools.
I mean, you don’t have to believe it, but this is what people have told me. Many people at this point. I know, anecdote is not data, but maybe there’s something reflecting in the preschool waitlists that isn’t showing in APS’s numbers?
Also - not everyone is moving into a brand new house. We still have lots of 1940s stock here. And not everyone who is moving into a brand new house at today’s rates has an extra post-tax $100k to send a couple of kids to private school. There are cheaper places to live if all you’re looking for is a good commute and a leafy neighborhood.
But the replacement houses are going private at significant rates and the birth rate is going down. And you aren’t getting as much as a single CAF building in 22207. Your schools aren’t going to get overcrowded.
I know a ton of people that have moved within the last 2 years to new builds. None are going private, all public, which is partly the reason they moved here to begin with.
I'm in 22207 and know a ton of people in new builds with kids in public schools
+2, 22213
Change is hard. It’s going to be ok. I promise.
Problem for me is the frequency of these change (aka battles) and the fact that they are always wrong in hindsight. Think you could get more of the community behind them if they were a rarer occurrence and people felt that the end result was good for the community as a whole.
They aren’t always wrong in hindsight, there are just various people who can never let anything go. School moves was mostly right. It would have been even better to send Key straight to Reed, but the current outcome is fine.
Alright you anonymous posters, this seems like an invitation to revisit all the dumb moves. I’ll start:
- Cardinal. Building/opening a whole new elementary in … NORTH Arlington.
Wrong. The bad move was not opening Cardinal. The bad move was promising Westover it would be a neighborhood school. They needed the seats at the time in the south. Cardinal was never about seats for N Arl. Cardinal didn’t cause the big drop at Nottingham. 1/4 of Nottingham going private did that.
THIS! AB.SO.LUTELY!
APS intended for that to be an option school. But, surprise surprise - not, SB catered to neighborhood pushback insisting it should have a "walkable" neighborhood school and that traffic there was going to be so bad if a choice school went there. (Sound familiar?)
At the time, however, we were bursting at the seams as a system, especially Oakridge, and we needed another elementary school. People seem to think these things happen in a flash. They don't. Takes years to get a new school opened. So while Cardinal may not have opened until 2021 (wow! seems odd that it opened during COVID?) anyway, it may have opened then, but it was decided and planned out years earlier. And the whole process was limited by APS only being 'able' to build on land it owned; lack of County offering land; and neighborhood insistence on a walkable neighborhood school.
Maybe seems like poor planning; but it wasn't APS' actual plan.
+1. It was the school board caving to the absurd “Reed must be a walkable neighborhood school” crowd. Which did sound a lot like the Nottingham crowd does today. And by the way, because of the redistricting required by keeping Cardinal neighborhood when there was no need for seats there, it had a bunch of busses now anyway.
Agree. And that is APS’s fault as the decision-maker. Not the parents. APS shouldn’t cave when it’s not the best decision for APS as a whole. I do not understand why the APS defenders can’t see that. And it’s probably bc their own unreasonable demands have been met so they are the “winners” of the bad behavior wars. Anyone saying APS made all the right decisions - or even the best of the bad decisions- can’t be right. Just own that they have made some bad calls, people.
I'm PPP. I wasn't "defending" APS. I've faulted them for years for caving to certain parts of the community and for not making decisions that best serve the whole system. that goes for both SB and staff. But I guess I will defend APS a little bit because I do think they made some actually good proposals in the past - which were shot down or "tweaked" by the Board. Making Cardinal a neighborhood school was stupid - but that wasn't what STAFF wanted to do. It's what Reid Goldstein stupidly and inappropriately promised the parents. Staff moved forward with planning accordingly. It was the path of least resistance, or at least the path of quieter objections. But if Cardinal had been the new location for an option program, some future mayhem and ridiculousness would have been avoided.
Another example of APS staff making decent recommendations was the high school boundary proposal whereby they actually took demographics into consideration and made a reasonable plan. But SB Barbara had to propose her alternative plan to appease herself and her constituency, even though a SB member's constituency is the entire county.
Me again. However, I do believe it is also the fault of parents. It's fine to express concerns and raise issues. Sometimes something is overlooked and hearing from the community brings up something important and it can be dealt with. But the insistence and fierceness of some parents/communities "speaking up" and pushing back is done with short-sighted narrow-mindedness according to their own self-interests and not considering what's best for others. And if they wouldn't be so "forceful," APS wouldn't back down so much. So yes, parents share in the blame.
I think there is plenty of blame to go around. But it would be a lot easier to get on board with Staff recommendations if they didn’t have so many holes and weren’t so open to attack.
It’s easy to say that some other group of parents should sacrifice for the greater good. It’s a lot harder to actually be the group doing the sacrificing, especially when that “greater good” is not being clearly demonstrated.
I’m a Nottingham parent and my first instinct is to fight for my kids, but I’m also a taxpayer who believes in good governance and not pissing away money like it’s going out of style. Make the case to me, address my reasonable concerns, and I’ll probably end up doing your outreach work for you with my neighbors and friends. Throw a bunch of half baked data and TBDs at me and be prepared for a lot of pointed questions and organized opposition.
releasing the proposal is the first step of that process. Ask your questions and have a conversation.It's the immediate closed-mindedness, "nope! no way!" reactions that immediately put up a divide with "the other groups" not doing the sacrificing.
Read the PTA statements. They basically are agreeing with PP. Make the case, backed up with data, that Nottingham needs to be converted, and so be it. But they have yet to make the case and there’s hardly any time before the first vote.
That had to have been the plan all along. We will spend more time rearranging the boundaries for middle schools than we will debating whether to shut down an entire school that was wildly over capacity in the last decade. The late Thursday PM drop before a holiday weekend wasn’t an accident.
Exactly. And this really gets to the meat of why so many parents are upset - this process is so lacking in any even minor attempt at transparency. Most parents are reasonable people - show us why it’s necessary to go forward with this plan and you probably will get understanding people who would be accepting.
But this entire thing seems like APS has identified the solution before really figuring out what problem they are trying to solve, while also cherry picking criteria that only Nottingham can match.
Anonymous wrote:Isn't the main problem with dwindling numbers at Nottingham due to many Nottingham families going private? I think it was just under capacity before covid about 4 years ago. It's shrunk to under 400 kids because so many took their kids out for private, I thought? Not sure if I can find the 2017 numbers.
Here: In 2017, APS was projecting that Nottingham would have 535 kids attending in 2018, which for Nottingham is about 100% capacity (I think without trailers their capacity is 530). So in just 5 years they've lost more than 140 kids and their school now has under 400 kids. You're seeing that shrinkage more in the way way North where parents wend private due to school closures and less in the south where minority families who were actually more likely to be negatively affected by covid healthwise were often okay with the closures. But you can't have your cake and eat it too -- have kids leave the system in your northern elementary schools and think that's "fair" -- the reality is you're spending more on your school to staff and operate it when you've only got 400 kids compared to a school that's closer to full capacity.
I have to respond to this point. Many were not ok with the closures, especially the ones that continued to work outside the home in public facing jobs and wanted their kids to get an education or at least be supervised for 6-7 hours a day. They just didn’t have the resources to flee to private school.
sorry no this is fake news, and reeks of white APEs trying to speak for the brown people. we all saw the data on who picked virtual.
We all saw the recent test results, too.
Anyway, happy to be corrected by a brown person that actually worked outside the home in the pandemic rather than another white savior.
I guess you missed the “brown people” trying to speak for themselves at the SB meeting because you were screaming so loud over them.
Anonymous wrote:Out of curiosity, what is the plan for the 100+ kids that will result from the massive Toll Brothers development at Wilson and McKinley? Cardinal is full. What about Ashlawn?
I’ve asked myself the same. I don’t think there’s lots of space at Ashlawn.
Where does it say 100 kids per year are coming out of that community?
Anonymous wrote:Isn't the main problem with dwindling numbers at Nottingham due to many Nottingham families going private? I think it was just under capacity before covid about 4 years ago. It's shrunk to under 400 kids because so many took their kids out for private, I thought? Not sure if I can find the 2017 numbers.
Here: In 2017, APS was projecting that Nottingham would have 535 kids attending in 2018, which for Nottingham is about 100% capacity (I think without trailers their capacity is 530). So in just 5 years they've lost more than 140 kids and their school now has under 400 kids. You're seeing that shrinkage more in the way way North where parents wend private due to school closures and less in the south where minority families who were actually more likely to be negatively affected by covid healthwise were often okay with the closures. But you can't have your cake and eat it too -- have kids leave the system in your northern elementary schools and think that's "fair" -- the reality is you're spending more on your school to staff and operate it when you've only got 400 kids compared to a school that's closer to full capacity.
I have to respond to this point. Many were not ok with the closures, especially the ones that continued to work outside the home in public facing jobs and wanted their kids to get an education or at least be supervised for 6-7 hours a day. They just didn’t have the resources to flee to private school.
sorry no this is fake news, and reeks of white APEs trying to speak for the brown people. we all saw the data on who picked virtual.
We all saw the recent test results, too.
Anyway, happy to be corrected by a brown person that actually worked outside the home in the pandemic rather than another white savior.
I guess you missed the “brown people” trying to speak for themselves at the SB meeting because you were screaming so loud over them.
Can someone please explain to me what everyone means when they say brown people? I mean I’m middle eastern. Am I considered brown?
Anonymous wrote:Out of curiosity, what is the plan for the 100+ kids that will result from the massive Toll Brothers development at Wilson and McKinley? Cardinal is full. What about Ashlawn?
I’ve asked myself the same. I don’t think there’s lots of space at Ashlawn.
Where does it say 100 kids per year are coming out of that community?
It wouldn’t be ridiculous to zone this community to Nottingham for the time being. Nottingham is just up the road, there’s not a neighborhood school in walking distance, it would only add another bus, and it would boost enrollment.
Anonymous wrote:County projecting in 5 years we will have a surplus of over 1,000 elementary seats. That sounds...optimistic.
Based on what I wonder. There has been a lot of turnover and lots of new kids in the neighborhood. Pandemic dip was a blip driven by desperate parents who could afford alternatives. We’re coming back.
There’s absolutely no facts/data to support this one way or the other. It’s 1,000 kids going to private school and APS doesn’t know or care to know if they are ever coming back. And if they leave for good, what does that mean for other families in the neighborhood when it’s normal to send your kids to private schools?
I have zero confidence in APS planning/projections. I understand that as a member of the public school community we need to every once in a while deal with these adjustments. APS has convinced me that they are totally incompetent at predicting seats so why should we all run around like crazy people on an annual basis trying to fill seats that APS couldn’t accurately predict?
They need better, outside data before I believe that these moves actually need to be made. They have wasted our money long enough on poor planning and annual neighborhood fights over boundaries.
South Arl poster, our neighborhood has kids divided everywhere, especially private. The effect on the neighborhood has been ...just fine. We just had a real July 4th parade you probably have heard of and a neighborhood picnic at the community house. Having your young kids dispersed doesn't not kill your neighborhood, that is blatantly untrue and known by many county residents apparently outside of your neighborhood.
As for no confidence in APS planning, sure, you do your opinion. My opinion is APS is never allowed to make good strategic decisions because of having to give too much deference to neighborhood feedback. I just don't understand how a 26-square mile system allows itself to be handcuffed by a group of maybe a dozen streets at every decision.
I second that!! - different southern neighborhood. We don't have our own parade or community house but still have a vibrant neighborhood community with kids attending minimally 6 elementary schools, 2 middle schools, and 4 high schools that I can think of quickly off the top of my head.
Kudos to you. Nobody else wants this. You are the vast minority. We want our kids to walk to schools with their neighborhood friends. Hang out after school. Know the parents and families. Know what is happening in the classroom from the crazy moms who are there every other day. We want a little Mayberry. We take comfort in knowing that our neighbors around the corner are just as smart and just fancy elitists as we are and yet also choose to send their kid to this great public school. Seriously. I am not joking. That is why people move to North Arlington. You can delude yourself that others want what you have in terms of “community” but they don’t. What you have is what will happen to us in N Arlington when everyone sends their kids to private schools.
A lot of people would love to send their kids to a great, walkable school. But Arlington is part of a large and diverse school district. There are many different kinds of kids and families. Nobody owns any particular school. I say this gently, but if you want that kind of certainty, you need to pay for private school. And you don’t get a medal for sending your kids to a wealthy, white, walkable elementary school. You’re kidding yourself if you think you’re contributing to some kind of public good through this action. If the Nott community really wants that school to stay open, then they should support denser housing in that part of the county.
Nottingham family. I do support denser housing and proudly supported missing middle. I don’t support public housing projects and never have - not in my neighborhood and not anywhere - because we have known for 40+ years that concentrating poverty in this way is a bad idea. But the so-called “affordable housing” mafia seems to run this place and they get what they want.
I do find it a bit rich, though, when incredibly privileged people pat themselves on the back for buying a $1m+ house in a “diverse” neighborhood, promptly send their kids to option schools, and then berate others for looking after their interests.
Eyeroll. You didn’t even need to tell us you were from Nottingham. Obvious from your nasty tone.
Something sensitive there? Do you have a problem with me pointing out the rampant privilege that runs through this county and how aggressive people are about looking after their own interests everywhere? The average sales and rentals prices don’t lie. People in this town are RICH - and increasingly so with each passing year.
I’m not aware of any MC or above community that has willingly sacrificed itself for the greater good on anything. The communities just have varying levels of effectiveness in getting what they want. That’s the truth.
You want to talk about privilege? It’s laughable that you think the Nott kids getting assigned to another wealthy N Arlington ES is “sacrificing yourself.” You need to get out more.
+1
+1000. Moving your kid to Jamestown, Taylor or Tuckahoe isn’t exactly a hardship. Cut me a break.
Yes, let’s take 2 slightly under capacity schools and a third under capacity school and create 2 over capacity schools complete with long waiting lists for extended day and classrooms in trailers. What a great idea!
FWIW, Nottingham currently has an extensive waiting list for extended day.
There are fewer than 400 kids at Nottingham. Just saying.
And how many will be at Tuckahoe, Taylor and Disocvery in 2026?
Why does it matter? All of these schools are under enrolled and have capacity for higher enrollment. They might become modestly over capacity. Not one of these schools is projected to become significantly overcrowded under this plan.
APS’s projections have been proven to be worse than worthless time and time again. I’m sure their numbers were computed correctly. Or at least I have no reason to doubt it. It’s just their methodology is so limited as to be useless.
People like to make fun of the moms who chose to move to North Arlington specifically for the schools. Problem is, in high enough numbers, this behavior will blow whatever projections APS has based on birth rates and historical patterns clear out of the water. They missed it before and I truly believe they are setting themselves out to miss it again.
I disagree bc the prices are high enough that a lot of people are choosing the neighborhood that they like best, and then paying for private. If you can afford a new SFH in Arlington, you don’t need the public schools.
I mean, you don’t have to believe it, but this is what people have told me. Many people at this point. I know, anecdote is not data, but maybe there’s something reflecting in the preschool waitlists that isn’t showing in APS’s numbers?
Also - not everyone is moving into a brand new house. We still have lots of 1940s stock here. And not everyone who is moving into a brand new house at today’s rates has an extra post-tax $100k to send a couple of kids to private school. There are cheaper places to live if all you’re looking for is a good commute and a leafy neighborhood.
But the replacement houses are going private at significant rates and the birth rate is going down. And you aren’t getting as much as a single CAF building in 22207. Your schools aren’t going to get overcrowded.
I know a ton of people that have moved within the last 2 years to new builds. None are going private, all public, which is partly the reason they moved here to begin with.
I'm in 22207 and know a ton of people in new builds with kids in public schools
+2, 22213
Change is hard. It’s going to be ok. I promise.
Problem for me is the frequency of these change (aka battles) and the fact that they are always wrong in hindsight. Think you could get more of the community behind them if they were a rarer occurrence and people felt that the end result was good for the community as a whole.
They aren’t always wrong in hindsight, there are just various people who can never let anything go. School moves was mostly right. It would have been even better to send Key straight to Reed, but the current outcome is fine.
Alright you anonymous posters, this seems like an invitation to revisit all the dumb moves. I’ll start:
- Cardinal. Building/opening a whole new elementary in … NORTH Arlington.
Wrong. The bad move was not opening Cardinal. The bad move was promising Westover it would be a neighborhood school. They needed the seats at the time in the south. Cardinal was never about seats for N Arl. Cardinal didn’t cause the big drop at Nottingham. 1/4 of Nottingham going private did that.
THIS! AB.SO.LUTELY!
APS intended for that to be an option school. But, surprise surprise - not, SB catered to neighborhood pushback insisting it should have a "walkable" neighborhood school and that traffic there was going to be so bad if a choice school went there. (Sound familiar?)
At the time, however, we were bursting at the seams as a system, especially Oakridge, and we needed another elementary school. People seem to think these things happen in a flash. They don't. Takes years to get a new school opened. So while Cardinal may not have opened until 2021 (wow! seems odd that it opened during COVID?) anyway, it may have opened then, but it was decided and planned out years earlier. And the whole process was limited by APS only being 'able' to build on land it owned; lack of County offering land; and neighborhood insistence on a walkable neighborhood school.
Maybe seems like poor planning; but it wasn't APS' actual plan.
+1. It was the school board caving to the absurd “Reed must be a walkable neighborhood school” crowd. Which did sound a lot like the Nottingham crowd does today. And by the way, because of the redistricting required by keeping Cardinal neighborhood when there was no need for seats there, it had a bunch of busses now anyway.
Agree. And that is APS’s fault as the decision-maker. Not the parents. APS shouldn’t cave when it’s not the best decision for APS as a whole. I do not understand why the APS defenders can’t see that. And it’s probably bc their own unreasonable demands have been met so they are the “winners” of the bad behavior wars. Anyone saying APS made all the right decisions - or even the best of the bad decisions- can’t be right. Just own that they have made some bad calls, people.
I'm PPP. I wasn't "defending" APS. I've faulted them for years for caving to certain parts of the community and for not making decisions that best serve the whole system. that goes for both SB and staff. But I guess I will defend APS a little bit because I do think they made some actually good proposals in the past - which were shot down or "tweaked" by the Board. Making Cardinal a neighborhood school was stupid - but that wasn't what STAFF wanted to do. It's what Reid Goldstein stupidly and inappropriately promised the parents. Staff moved forward with planning accordingly. It was the path of least resistance, or at least the path of quieter objections. But if Cardinal had been the new location for an option program, some future mayhem and ridiculousness would have been avoided.
Another example of APS staff making decent recommendations was the high school boundary proposal whereby they actually took demographics into consideration and made a reasonable plan. But SB Barbara had to propose her alternative plan to appease herself and her constituency, even though a SB member's constituency is the entire county.
Me again. However, I do believe it is also the fault of parents. It's fine to express concerns and raise issues. Sometimes something is overlooked and hearing from the community brings up something important and it can be dealt with. But the insistence and fierceness of some parents/communities "speaking up" and pushing back is done with short-sighted narrow-mindedness according to their own self-interests and not considering what's best for others. And if they wouldn't be so "forceful," APS wouldn't back down so much. So yes, parents share in the blame.
I think there is plenty of blame to go around. But it would be a lot easier to get on board with Staff recommendations if they didn’t have so many holes and weren’t so open to attack.
It’s easy to say that some other group of parents should sacrifice for the greater good. It’s a lot harder to actually be the group doing the sacrificing, especially when that “greater good” is not being clearly demonstrated.
I’m a Nottingham parent and my first instinct is to fight for my kids, but I’m also a taxpayer who believes in good governance and not pissing away money like it’s going out of style. Make the case to me, address my reasonable concerns, and I’ll probably end up doing your outreach work for you with my neighbors and friends. Throw a bunch of half baked data and TBDs at me and be prepared for a lot of pointed questions and organized opposition.
releasing the proposal is the first step of that process. Ask your questions and have a conversation.It's the immediate closed-mindedness, "nope! no way!" reactions that immediately put up a divide with "the other groups" not doing the sacrificing.
Read the PTA statements. They basically are agreeing with PP. Make the case, backed up with data, that Nottingham needs to be converted, and so be it. But they have yet to make the case and there’s hardly any time before the first vote.
That had to have been the plan all along. We will spend more time rearranging the boundaries for middle schools than we will debating whether to shut down an entire school that was wildly over capacity in the last decade. The late Thursday PM drop before a holiday weekend wasn’t an accident.
Exactly. And this really gets to the meat of why so many parents are upset - this process is so lacking in any even minor attempt at transparency. Most parents are reasonable people - show us why it’s necessary to go forward with this plan and you probably will get understanding people who would be accepting.
But this entire thing seems like APS has identified the solution before really figuring out what problem they are trying to solve, while also cherry picking criteria that only Nottingham can match.
I agree. But why the annual drama from APS Planning on school closures, moves, etc.?
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