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: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.
Hahaha. Notties have not shown themselves to be reasonable people in past APS initiatives.
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.
No. Nottingham families have already said they can’t take another bus. It’s a traffic safety matter.
I see Nottingham moms posting in this thread that this plan is so unfair etc, and all are up in arms re trying to protect their school, but nobody is trying to solve the problem. Nottingham most of all, but the northern elementaries around it are all underenrolled. Nottingham has a capacity (without trailers) of 530 kids and had fewer than 400 kids last year and is expected to have fewer than 400 kids again this year. One of the underenrolled classes last year was kindergarten, so these low numbers can currently be expected to be a problem at Nottingham over the next five years at least.
When schools are underenrolled, they waste resources because the district is out laying money on resources for a smaller number of kids. You have a principal and assistant principal and countless other staff whose time should be divided over 500 kids that is instead getting divided over fewer than 400 kids. That is a luxury for Nottingham. We are paying money to heat and cool your school for less than 400 kids when it’s designed for 530.
You seem upset but your solution just seems to be to keep things as they are so you continue to benefit from this situation when APS needs to cut costs. Except for someone’s solution to bus some southern kids up, which Nottingham parents and APS will never go for, what is your solution, exactly? You don’t seem to see or care about the problem, and just want your school to stay the same. Your sense of privilege is so frustrating.
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.
Cardinal could have been very walkable. McKinley wanted to stay together and got their way. In fact in the last go around APS put our maps and was clearly moving the direction of emptying out Tuckahoe and Nottingham (many of those kids could walk to Cardinal) and probably a case could have easily been made to close Tuckahoe or Nottingham at that time.
I just find the hypocrisy of people screaming about how now APS is wrong and everyone should listen to the parents but before APS knew better but listened to the parents therefore showing their incompetence pretty funny. So they should listen to you when you have an opinion but for the other people they should stand strong. You all see it right???
I think there’s actually a lot of factions and alliances here. It’s not just APE, the sanctimonious APS defenders, and the Notties.
Probably not, but I just find it highly suspect that APE put out a statement about Nott closing but declined to comment on other things saying they were outside of their core mission. What exactly is their core mission? Whatever is in the self interest of their privileged bubble?
Not in APE, but I’d think closing schools and causing disruptive ripple effects and likely overcrowding would be within their mission. More so than masks or whatever else you accuse them of not addressing.
I found the statement everyone is so focused on here. Sounds more like the questions being asked here. What’s the plan? Does APS have funding for those plans? Doesn’t sound like they are pro or anti but does seem like APS putting horse before the cart.
I’ve said the same thing here that APS probably needs to know the problem it’s solving and how this fits into the plan. Maybe they do and haven’t told the rest of us, maybe they have other reasons for this plan.
Watchdog group Arlington Parents for Education says APS introduced this proposal before presenting the rationale, such as specific schools to renovate and timelines for them.
“What’s not clear is what problem APS is trying to solve,” the group said in a statement. “Long range major renovations? Which schools and with what budget? Where are the proposals and plans? Are these temporary or permanent fixes? Given the sizable impact of these changes, more than ever, we urge APS to be transparent with the community about its intentions and forthcoming about future plans.”
It's not so much what they said. It's the fact that they only speak up for the benefit of their privileged little bubble of core supporters.
Nottingham probably needs to close. They will also need to send additional kids from Central Arlington up to Williamsburg and Yorktown in the next 5ish years. This is what happens when the density in one part of the county is so wildly different than the density in the other parts of the county. I only hope we don’t waste too much time discussing it. And the Nottingham kids are going to land in another great place.
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 have a special power to be able to ascertain skin color of someone who responds on an anon message board. The brown and black groups seem pretty happy with Duran and the decisions he made during the pandemic, judging from the show of support for his reinstatement. APE on the other hand is not.
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.?
It's not really annual. It feels like it though! They were supposed to do a full County elementary boundary process when they drew the boundaries for and opened Cardinal and they kicked the can down the road due to covid. There was talk at that time about closing one of the N Arl schools or turning it option.
I agree with what others have said. APS staff knows the right things to do long-term. APS School Board members, who of course are elected so how do we expect them to act, cave to the screaming lunatic parents. My favorite is when the former screaming lunatics BECOME School Board members. That really helps. (It doesn't.)
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.
No. Nottingham families have already said they can’t take another bus. It’s a traffic safety matter.
Categorically untrue - Nottingham families don't want an entire school bussed into their neighborhood school, dramatically ramping up traffic while at the same time displacing their own school. I don't think accepting another busload or two of kids is going to upset the apple cart.
Anonymous wrote:Nottingham probably needs to close. They will also need to send additional kids from Central Arlington up to Williamsburg and Yorktown in the next 5ish years. This is what happens when the density in one part of the county is so wildly different than the density in the other parts of the county. I only hope we don’t waste too much time discussing it. And the Nottingham kids are going to land in another great place.
Yes, and this is also what happens if a County Board acts like its acts don't have paramount impact on school infrastructure.
Anonymous wrote:I see Nottingham moms posting in this thread that this plan is so unfair etc, and all are up in arms re trying to protect their school, but nobody is trying to solve the problem. Nottingham most of all, but the northern elementaries around it are all underenrolled. Nottingham has a capacity (without trailers) of 530 kids and had fewer than 400 kids last year and is expected to have fewer than 400 kids again this year. One of the underenrolled classes last year was kindergarten, so these low numbers can currently be expected to be a problem at Nottingham over the next five years at least.
When schools are underenrolled, they waste resources because the district is out laying money on resources for a smaller number of kids. You have a principal and assistant principal and countless other staff whose time should be divided over 500 kids that is instead getting divided over fewer than 400 kids. That is a luxury for Nottingham. We are paying money to heat and cool your school for less than 400 kids when it’s designed for 530.
You seem upset but your solution just seems to be to keep things as they are so you continue to benefit from this situation when APS needs to cut costs. Except for someone’s solution to bus some southern kids up, which Nottingham parents and APS will never go for, what is your solution, exactly? You don’t seem to see or care about the problem, and just want your school to stay the same. Your sense of privilege is so frustrating.
Honestly I don’t see any sense of privilege - what I see is parents trying to understand the reasoning of APS as to why it is happening and what will happen. It doesn’t seem to be just about a few years of under enrollment, but a wholesale change not only for the school site itself, but the larger neighborhood (yes including traffic and safety patterns!) and neighborhood schools.
This is a major plan and you all seem to just expect Nottingham to instantly acquiesce without any second guessing.
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.?
It's not really annual. It feels like it though! They were supposed to do a full County elementary boundary process when they drew the boundaries for and opened Cardinal and they kicked the can down the road due to covid. There was talk at that time about closing one of the N Arl schools or turning it option.
I agree with what others have said. APS staff knows the right things to do long-term. APS School Board members, who of course are elected so how do we expect them to act, cave to the screaming lunatic parents. My favorite is when the former screaming lunatics BECOME School Board members. That really helps. (It doesn't.)
Anonymous wrote:I see Nottingham moms posting in this thread that this plan is so unfair etc, and all are up in arms re trying to protect their school, but nobody is trying to solve the problem. Nottingham most of all, but the northern elementaries around it are all underenrolled. Nottingham has a capacity (without trailers) of 530 kids and had fewer than 400 kids last year and is expected to have fewer than 400 kids again this year. One of the underenrolled classes last year was kindergarten, so these low numbers can currently be expected to be a problem at Nottingham over the next five years at least.
When schools are underenrolled, they waste resources because the district is out laying money on resources for a smaller number of kids. You have a principal and assistant principal and countless other staff whose time should be divided over 500 kids that is instead getting divided over fewer than 400 kids. That is a luxury for Nottingham. We are paying money to heat and cool your school for less than 400 kids when it’s designed for 530.
You seem upset but your solution just seems to be to keep things as they are so you continue to benefit from this situation when APS needs to cut costs. Except for someone’s solution to bus some southern kids up, which Nottingham parents and APS will never go for, what is your solution, exactly? You don’t seem to see or care about the problem, and just want your school to stay the same. Your sense of privilege is so frustrating.
You're right. Except it isn't that they don't see the problem; it's that they don't believe there IS a problem.
Anonymous wrote:I see Nottingham moms posting in this thread that this plan is so unfair etc, and all are up in arms re trying to protect their school, but nobody is trying to solve the problem. Nottingham most of all, but the northern elementaries around it are all underenrolled. Nottingham has a capacity (without trailers) of 530 kids and had fewer than 400 kids last year and is expected to have fewer than 400 kids again this year. One of the underenrolled classes last year was kindergarten, so these low numbers can currently be expected to be a problem at Nottingham over the next five years at least.
When schools are underenrolled, they waste resources because the district is out laying money on resources for a smaller number of kids. You have a principal and assistant principal and countless other staff whose time should be divided over 500 kids that is instead getting divided over fewer than 400 kids. That is a luxury for Nottingham. We are paying money to heat and cool your school for less than 400 kids when it’s designed for 530.
You seem upset but your solution just seems to be to keep things as they are so you continue to benefit from this situation when APS needs to cut costs. Except for someone’s solution to bus some southern kids up, which Nottingham parents and APS will never go for, what is your solution, exactly? You don’t seem to see or care about the problem, and just want your school to stay the same. Your sense of privilege is so frustrating.
You're right. Except it isn't that they don't see the problem; it's that they don't believe there IS a problem.
Right! Look at the PP above reading that post and saying they don’t see any privilege inherent in them wanting the county to use many of the same resources for their <400 kid school as for a >600 kid school — that’s A-okay with them. Seriously, these people, I can’t even with them.
Anonymous wrote:Nottingham probably needs to close. They will also need to send additional kids from Central Arlington up to Williamsburg and Yorktown in the next 5ish years. This is what happens when the density in one part of the county is so wildly different than the density in the other parts of the county. I only hope we don’t waste too much time discussing it. And the Nottingham kids are going to land in another great place.
Yes, and this is also what happens if a County Board acts like its acts don't have paramount impact on school infrastructure.
This is the root cause, people. The school board is merely playing a terrible hand the best that they can. If you want better educational infrastructure/outcomes, the county board needs a philosophical change in how they deal with education.
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