APS Middle School Boundaries?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hamm is bigger than WMS and Swanson FYI.

Those schools were not undergoing a reno. Would have been easy and cost effective to make Hamm bigger at that time. But YOU didn't want that for your snowflakes. And the result is they have to go to WMS. Sorry you don't like the results of what you yourself wanted.

Cost effective is an empty phrase when they blew $100M on the Heights for 700 students. Carve off $40M and they could have expanded WMS and Swanson and the Heights would still be the nicest middle school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I bet they delay it for another year or two. People in pretty much every middle school were furious about having to move, and that eventually is inevitable. But it's easier to just kick the can for a few years.

I haven't heard that much furor. The loudest are a few Taylor parents who don't think their kids should have to move to WMS, but that will likely be ignored as ridiculous. And two Ashlawn PUs that don't want to be carved off the rest of the elementary school, but I think that can pretty easily be fixed. No one else has posted a significant number of comments.

I agree with this. It's really not that big of a deal. The Hamm people are just nuts.

Sure you can call us names, but delaying won’t end end the outrage. The angriest people are those with little kids at Taylor who bought a home walking distance to an elementary and middle school, usually two working parent households where having walkable and independent students is a huge time savings.

We will be angry in two years, angry in 5 years, and likely will STILL campaign against the stupid “bus half the walkzone away” decision in perpetuity.

Kids will waste so much time waiting for and riding a bus needlessly. So this fight will only be over in December if the school board does the right thing, and moves Immersion to the school with the greatest capacity and uses the plan that minimizes bus costs and staffing. That is probably moving it to WMS, but math whizs are welcome to prove otherwise.

Haven't you read your own posts? It doesn't matter how far away MS is located because parents NEVER have to go there and MS students are 100% fine taking the bus by themselves. Transportation isn't an issue by MS, right? That's what Taylor parents are posting.

APS changes boundaries roughly every year. If anyone bought not knowing that, then they should have done more research. It's not exactly a secret.

It’s about independence and wasting time on a longer than necessary bus ride. Taylor students are almost universally ridiculously close to Hamm, and busing to WMS takes a circuitous route through neighborhoods.

It’s okay for option because that is part of the deal which you can always walk away from, to coin a phrase.

People who chose neighborhood prioritized proximity and short commutes to school. They don’t have a fallback.

And boundaries shouldn’t be changing every year, if they would just invest appropriately in facilities rather than blowing the budget on slides and award winning urban schools.

Boundaries don’t change every year. And boundaries changing this time has zero to do with past buildings having amenities you don’t approve of.

Doesn’t even make any sense.

DHMS opened in 2019, 4 years later we are RADICALLY redrawing boundaries. Maybe not “yearly” but incompetence and misguided investment. They should have made HBW bigger when they blew $100M, or maybe enlarged the other middle schools and built them a standard building for $50M.

OMG! There WAS an option to build Hamm larger to accommodate 1300 students instead of 1000. The neighbhorhood around Hamm rejected it and the board listened and voted it down. Now this same neighbhorhood doesnt' want to be moved away because, wait for it, Hamm is too small. So there you are, you are living with the consequences of your OWN actions.

Don’t be obtuse. Hamm is ALREADY at the LARGEST capacity middle school. They should have expanded the other middle schools, especially HBW, which blew all the money on their award winning building.

The affected families are less than 500 ft from the school, if they made Hamm 1300 seats, they would have moved Immersion there and still kicked out the walkzone.

How exactly am I being obtuse? There was the option to build Hamm at 1300 at the time of the renovation. Your neighbhohood lobbied against it and won. Sorry you don't like the consequences.

Because you see they are important people so the school should be not too big and not too small and not too fancy but just nice enough and not too crowded either and it's for THEIR kids. Not any other kids. They bought their house and this was the understanding that came with the house.

See? We are simply advocating to be treated like other schools, and you insult and put out personal attacks.

Go through the thread. At no point have any Hamm parents called someone crazy, entitled or mocked them.

No, you aren’t advocating to be treated like other schools. That is the whole point of this thread. APS has been doing boundary shifts forever which always impacts someone negatively. Again, you aren’t that special.

They have never bused away half a walkzone

I could see APS changing the proposal so that the PUs that are closest to Hamm (and likely actually walk) remain at Hamm and more PUs that already takes a bus are shifted to WMS. Are there specific PUs that make more sense to shift?

They will do what they did with cardinal. Initially the PU that abutted Cardinal was not proposed to go there. They subsequently included it in later proposals after everyone freaked out. Likely APS staff knows this is their concession point back to the community to put a few of these walkable PUs back to Hamm. And Hamm will be very full (as Cardinal is now). But whatever these walker people will be happy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I bet they delay it for another year or two. People in pretty much every middle school were furious about having to move, and that eventually is inevitable. But it's easier to just kick the can for a few years.

I haven't heard that much furor. The loudest are a few Taylor parents who don't think their kids should have to move to WMS, but that will likely be ignored as ridiculous. And two Ashlawn PUs that don't want to be carved off the rest of the elementary school, but I think that can pretty easily be fixed. No one else has posted a significant number of comments.

I agree with this. It's really not that big of a deal. The Hamm people are just nuts.

Sure you can call us names, but delaying won’t end end the outrage. The angriest people are those with little kids at Taylor who bought a home walking distance to an elementary and middle school, usually two working parent households where having walkable and independent students is a huge time savings.

We will be angry in two years, angry in 5 years, and likely will STILL campaign against the stupid “bus half the walkzone away” decision in perpetuity.

Kids will waste so much time waiting for and riding a bus needlessly. So this fight will only be over in December if the school board does the right thing, and moves Immersion to the school with the greatest capacity and uses the plan that minimizes bus costs and staffing. That is probably moving it to WMS, but math whizs are welcome to prove otherwise.

Haven't you read your own posts? It doesn't matter how far away MS is located because parents NEVER have to go there and MS students are 100% fine taking the bus by themselves. Transportation isn't an issue by MS, right? That's what Taylor parents are posting.

APS changes boundaries roughly every year. If anyone bought not knowing that, then they should have done more research. It's not exactly a secret.

It’s about independence and wasting time on a longer than necessary bus ride. Taylor students are almost universally ridiculously close to Hamm, and busing to WMS takes a circuitous route through neighborhoods.

It’s okay for option because that is part of the deal which you can always walk away from, to coin a phrase.

People who chose neighborhood prioritized proximity and short commutes to school. They don’t have a fallback.

And boundaries shouldn’t be changing every year, if they would just invest appropriately in facilities rather than blowing the budget on slides and award winning urban schools.

Boundaries don’t change every year. And boundaries changing this time has zero to do with past buildings having amenities you don’t approve of.

Doesn’t even make any sense.

DHMS opened in 2019, 4 years later we are RADICALLY redrawing boundaries. Maybe not “yearly” but incompetence and misguided investment. They should have made HBW bigger when they blew $100M, or maybe enlarged the other middle schools and built them a standard building for $50M.

OMG! There WAS an option to build Hamm larger to accommodate 1300 students instead of 1000. The neighbhorhood around Hamm rejected it and the board listened and voted it down. Now this same neighbhorhood doesnt' want to be moved away because, wait for it, Hamm is too small. So there you are, you are living with the consequences of your OWN actions.

Don’t be obtuse. Hamm is ALREADY at the LARGEST capacity middle school. They should have expanded the other middle schools, especially HBW, which blew all the money on their award winning building.

The affected families are less than 500 ft from the school, if they made Hamm 1300 seats, they would have moved Immersion there and still kicked out the walkzone.

How exactly am I being obtuse? There was the option to build Hamm at 1300 at the time of the renovation. Your neighbhohood lobbied against it and won. Sorry you don't like the consequences.

Because you see they are important people so the school should be not too big and not too small and not too fancy but just nice enough and not too crowded either and it's for THEIR kids. Not any other kids. They bought their house and this was the understanding that came with the house.

See? We are simply advocating to be treated like other schools, and you insult and put out personal attacks.

Go through the thread. At no point have any Hamm parents called someone crazy, entitled or mocked them.

No, you aren’t advocating to be treated like other schools. That is the whole point of this thread. APS has been doing boundary shifts forever which always impacts someone negatively. Again, you aren’t that special.

They have never bused away half a walkzone

I could see APS changing the proposal so that the PUs that are closest to Hamm (and likely actually walk) remain at Hamm and more PUs that already takes a bus are shifted to WMS. Are there specific PUs that make more sense to shift?

They will do what they did with cardinal. Initially the PU that abutted Cardinal was not proposed to go there. They subsequently included it in later proposals after everyone freaked out. Likely APS staff knows this is their concession point back to the community to put a few of these walkable PUs back to Hamm. And Hamm will be very full (as Cardinal is now). But whatever these walker people will be happy.

Isn’t the plan for all middle schools to be full, because Gunston is overcrowded

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I bet they delay it for another year or two. People in pretty much every middle school were furious about having to move, and that eventually is inevitable. But it's easier to just kick the can for a few years.

I haven't heard that much furor. The loudest are a few Taylor parents who don't think their kids should have to move to WMS, but that will likely be ignored as ridiculous. And two Ashlawn PUs that don't want to be carved off the rest of the elementary school, but I think that can pretty easily be fixed. No one else has posted a significant number of comments.

I agree with this. It's really not that big of a deal. The Hamm people are just nuts.

What are they doing that is nuts?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I bet they delay it for another year or two. People in pretty much every middle school were furious about having to move, and that eventually is inevitable. But it's easier to just kick the can for a few years.

I haven't heard that much furor. The loudest are a few Taylor parents who don't think their kids should have to move to WMS, but that will likely be ignored as ridiculous. And two Ashlawn PUs that don't want to be carved off the rest of the elementary school, but I think that can pretty easily be fixed. No one else has posted a significant number of comments.

I agree with this. It's really not that big of a deal. The Hamm people are just nuts.

Sure you can call us names, but delaying won’t end end the outrage. The angriest people are those with little kids at Taylor who bought a home walking distance to an elementary and middle school, usually two working parent households where having walkable and independent students is a huge time savings.

We will be angry in two years, angry in 5 years, and likely will STILL campaign against the stupid “bus half the walkzone away” decision in perpetuity.

Kids will waste so much time waiting for and riding a bus needlessly. So this fight will only be over in December if the school board does the right thing, and moves Immersion to the school with the greatest capacity and uses the plan that minimizes bus costs and staffing. That is probably moving it to WMS, but math whizs are welcome to prove otherwise.

Haven't you read your own posts? It doesn't matter how far away MS is located because parents NEVER have to go there and MS students are 100% fine taking the bus by themselves. Transportation isn't an issue by MS, right? That's what Taylor parents are posting.

APS changes boundaries roughly every year. If anyone bought not knowing that, then they should have done more research. It's not exactly a secret.

It’s about independence and wasting time on a longer than necessary bus ride. Taylor students are almost universally ridiculously close to Hamm, and busing to WMS takes a circuitous route through neighborhoods.

It’s okay for option because that is part of the deal which you can always walk away from, to coin a phrase.

People who chose neighborhood prioritized proximity and short commutes to school. They don’t have a fallback.

And boundaries shouldn’t be changing every year, if they would just invest appropriately in facilities rather than blowing the budget on slides and award winning urban schools.

Boundaries don’t change every year. And boundaries changing this time has zero to do with past buildings having amenities you don’t approve of.

Doesn’t even make any sense.

DHMS opened in 2019, 4 years later we are RADICALLY redrawing boundaries. Maybe not “yearly” but incompetence and misguided investment. They should have made HBW bigger when they blew $100M, or maybe enlarged the other middle schools and built them a standard building for $50M.

OMG! There WAS an option to build Hamm larger to accommodate 1300 students instead of 1000. The neighbhorhood around Hamm rejected it and the board listened and voted it down. Now this same neighbhorhood doesnt' want to be moved away because, wait for it, Hamm is too small. So there you are, you are living with the consequences of your OWN actions.

Don’t be obtuse. Hamm is ALREADY at the LARGEST capacity middle school. They should have expanded the other middle schools, especially HBW, which blew all the money on their award winning building.

The affected families are less than 500 ft from the school, if they made Hamm 1300 seats, they would have moved Immersion there and still kicked out the walkzone.

How exactly am I being obtuse? There was the option to build Hamm at 1300 at the time of the renovation. Your neighbhohood lobbied against it and won. Sorry you don't like the consequences.

Because you see they are important people so the school should be not too big and not too small and not too fancy but just nice enough and not too crowded either and it's for THEIR kids. Not any other kids. They bought their house and this was the understanding that came with the house.

See? We are simply advocating to be treated like other schools, and you insult and put out personal attacks.

Go through the thread. At no point have any Hamm parents called someone crazy, entitled or mocked them.

No, you aren’t advocating to be treated like other schools. That is the whole point of this thread. APS has been doing boundary shifts forever which always impacts someone negatively. Again, you aren’t that special.

They have never bused away half a walkzone

I could see APS changing the proposal so that the PUs that are closest to Hamm (and likely actually walk) remain at Hamm and more PUs that already takes a bus are shifted to WMS. Are there specific PUs that make more sense to shift?

They will do what they did with cardinal. Initially the PU that abutted Cardinal was not proposed to go there. They subsequently included it in later proposals after everyone freaked out. Likely APS staff knows this is their concession point back to the community to put a few of these walkable PUs back to Hamm. And Hamm will be very full (as Cardinal is now). But whatever these walker people will be happy.

Isn’t the plan for all middle schools to be full, because Gunston is overcrowded

In order to appease these folks, I bet they'll leave Hamm so that on paper it's closer to 100 percent capacity which leaves very little margin for error and a school that full feels crowded typically. Swanson feels overcrowded and it's not even over capacity on paper.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I bet they delay it for another year or two. People in pretty much every middle school were furious about having to move, and that eventually is inevitable. But it's easier to just kick the can for a few years.

I haven't heard that much furor. The loudest are a few Taylor parents who don't think their kids should have to move to WMS, but that will likely be ignored as ridiculous. And two Ashlawn PUs that don't want to be carved off the rest of the elementary school, but I think that can pretty easily be fixed. No one else has posted a significant number of comments.

I agree with this. It's really not that big of a deal. The Hamm people are just nuts.

What are they doing that is nuts?

Suggesting that the County's middle school immersion program should move to the opposite corner of the Couty from its current location and bulk of current students. Oh also that part of the County has extremely limited native spanish speakers nearby pretty much ensuring the program will ultimately fail. Behaving as if the option schools should just take whatever crumbs are left and like it and they have no right to complain or advocate as neighborhood schools are the priority. I don't even have kids in an option school and most of the arguments are both ignorant and entitled.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I bet they delay it for another year or two. People in pretty much every middle school were furious about having to move, and that eventually is inevitable. But it's easier to just kick the can for a few years.

I haven't heard that much furor. The loudest are a few Taylor parents who don't think their kids should have to move to WMS, but that will likely be ignored as ridiculous. And two Ashlawn PUs that don't want to be carved off the rest of the elementary school, but I think that can pretty easily be fixed. No one else has posted a significant number of comments.

I agree with this. It's really not that big of a deal. The Hamm people are just nuts.

What are they doing that is nuts?

Suggesting that the County's middle school immersion program should move to the opposite corner of the Couty from its current location and bulk of current students. Oh also that part of the County has extremely limited native spanish speakers nearby pretty much ensuring the program will ultimately fail. Behaving as if the option schools should just take whatever crumbs are left and like it and they have no right to complain or advocate as neighborhood schools are the priority. I don't even have kids in an option school and most of the arguments are both ignorant and entitled.

Yes, making suggestions… a clear sign of an unhinged mind.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I bet they delay it for another year or two. People in pretty much every middle school were furious about having to move, and that eventually is inevitable. But it's easier to just kick the can for a few years.

I haven't heard that much furor. The loudest are a few Taylor parents who don't think their kids should have to move to WMS, but that will likely be ignored as ridiculous. And two Ashlawn PUs that don't want to be carved off the rest of the elementary school, but I think that can pretty easily be fixed. No one else has posted a significant number of comments.

I agree with this. It's really not that big of a deal. The Hamm people are just nuts.

Sure you can call us names, but delaying won’t end end the outrage. The angriest people are those with little kids at Taylor who bought a home walking distance to an elementary and middle school, usually two working parent households where having walkable and independent students is a huge time savings.

We will be angry in two years, angry in 5 years, and likely will STILL campaign against the stupid “bus half the walkzone away” decision in perpetuity.

Kids will waste so much time waiting for and riding a bus needlessly. So this fight will only be over in December if the school board does the right thing, and moves Immersion to the school with the greatest capacity and uses the plan that minimizes bus costs and staffing. That is probably moving it to WMS, but math whizs are welcome to prove otherwise.

Haven't you read your own posts? It doesn't matter how far away MS is located because parents NEVER have to go there and MS students are 100% fine taking the bus by themselves. Transportation isn't an issue by MS, right? That's what Taylor parents are posting.

APS changes boundaries roughly every year. If anyone bought not knowing that, then they should have done more research. It's not exactly a secret.

It’s about independence and wasting time on a longer than necessary bus ride. Taylor students are almost universally ridiculously close to Hamm, and busing to WMS takes a circuitous route through neighborhoods.

It’s okay for option because that is part of the deal which you can always walk away from, to coin a phrase.

People who chose neighborhood prioritized proximity and short commutes to school. They don’t have a fallback.

And boundaries shouldn’t be changing every year, if they would just invest appropriately in facilities rather than blowing the budget on slides and award winning urban schools.

Boundaries don’t change every year. And boundaries changing this time has zero to do with past buildings having amenities you don’t approve of.

Doesn’t even make any sense.

DHMS opened in 2019, 4 years later we are RADICALLY redrawing boundaries. Maybe not “yearly” but incompetence and misguided investment. They should have made HBW bigger when they blew $100M, or maybe enlarged the other middle schools and built them a standard building for $50M.

OMG! There WAS an option to build Hamm larger to accommodate 1300 students instead of 1000. The neighbhorhood around Hamm rejected it and the board listened and voted it down. Now this same neighbhorhood doesnt' want to be moved away because, wait for it, Hamm is too small. So there you are, you are living with the consequences of your OWN actions.

Don’t be obtuse. Hamm is ALREADY at the LARGEST capacity middle school. They should have expanded the other middle schools, especially HBW, which blew all the money on their award winning building.

The affected families are less than 500 ft from the school, if they made Hamm 1300 seats, they would have moved Immersion there and still kicked out the walkzone.

How exactly am I being obtuse? There was the option to build Hamm at 1300 at the time of the renovation. Your neighbhohood lobbied against it and won. Sorry you don't like the consequences.

Because you see they are important people so the school should be not too big and not too small and not too fancy but just nice enough and not too crowded either and it's for THEIR kids. Not any other kids. They bought their house and this was the understanding that came with the house.

See? We are simply advocating to be treated like other schools, and you insult and put out personal attacks.

Go through the thread. At no point have any Hamm parents called someone crazy, entitled or mocked them.

No, you aren’t advocating to be treated like other schools. That is the whole point of this thread. APS has been doing boundary shifts forever which always impacts someone negatively. Again, you aren’t that special.

They have never bused away half a walkzone

I could see APS changing the proposal so that the PUs that are closest to Hamm (and likely actually walk) remain at Hamm and more PUs that already takes a bus are shifted to WMS. Are there specific PUs that make more sense to shift?

They will do what they did with cardinal. Initially the PU that abutted Cardinal was not proposed to go there. They subsequently included it in later proposals after everyone freaked out. Likely APS staff knows this is their concession point back to the community to put a few of these walkable PUs back to Hamm. And Hamm will be very full (as Cardinal is now). But whatever these walker people will be happy.

Isn’t the plan for all middle schools to be full, because Gunston is overcrowded

In order to appease these folks, I bet they'll leave Hamm so that on paper it's closer to 100 percent capacity which leaves very little margin for error and a school that full feels crowded typically. Swanson feels overcrowded and it's not even over capacity on paper.

Moving immersion anywhere doesn’t matter, APS was going to maximize DHMS enrollment, after leaving it under enrolled not hitting 100% would be a risk of that happening again and even more embarrassment

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I bet they delay it for another year or two. People in pretty much every middle school were furious about having to move, and that eventually is inevitable. But it's easier to just kick the can for a few years.

I haven't heard that much furor. The loudest are a few Taylor parents who don't think their kids should have to move to WMS, but that will likely be ignored as ridiculous. And two Ashlawn PUs that don't want to be carved off the rest of the elementary school, but I think that can pretty easily be fixed. No one else has posted a significant number of comments.

I agree with this. It's really not that big of a deal. The Hamm people are just nuts.

Sure you can call us names, but delaying won’t end end the outrage. The angriest people are those with little kids at Taylor who bought a home walking distance to an elementary and middle school, usually two working parent households where having walkable and independent students is a huge time savings.

We will be angry in two years, angry in 5 years, and likely will STILL campaign against the stupid “bus half the walkzone away” decision in perpetuity.

Kids will waste so much time waiting for and riding a bus needlessly. So this fight will only be over in December if the school board does the right thing, and moves Immersion to the school with the greatest capacity and uses the plan that minimizes bus costs and staffing. That is probably moving it to WMS, but math whizs are welcome to prove otherwise.

Haven't you read your own posts? It doesn't matter how far away MS is located because parents NEVER have to go there and MS students are 100% fine taking the bus by themselves. Transportation isn't an issue by MS, right? That's what Taylor parents are posting.

APS changes boundaries roughly every year. If anyone bought not knowing that, then they should have done more research. It's not exactly a secret.

It’s about independence and wasting time on a longer than necessary bus ride. Taylor students are almost universally ridiculously close to Hamm, and busing to WMS takes a circuitous route through neighborhoods.

It’s okay for option because that is part of the deal which you can always walk away from, to coin a phrase.

People who chose neighborhood prioritized proximity and short commutes to school. They don’t have a fallback.

And boundaries shouldn’t be changing every year, if they would just invest appropriately in facilities rather than blowing the budget on slides and award winning urban schools.

Boundaries don’t change every year. And boundaries changing this time has zero to do with past buildings having amenities you don’t approve of.

Doesn’t even make any sense.

DHMS opened in 2019, 4 years later we are RADICALLY redrawing boundaries. Maybe not “yearly” but incompetence and misguided investment. They should have made HBW bigger when they blew $100M, or maybe enlarged the other middle schools and built them a standard building for $50M.

OMG! There WAS an option to build Hamm larger to accommodate 1300 students instead of 1000. The neighbhorhood around Hamm rejected it and the board listened and voted it down. Now this same neighbhorhood doesnt' want to be moved away because, wait for it, Hamm is too small. So there you are, you are living with the consequences of your OWN actions.

Don’t be obtuse. Hamm is ALREADY at the LARGEST capacity middle school. They should have expanded the other middle schools, especially HBW, which blew all the money on their award winning building.

The affected families are less than 500 ft from the school, if they made Hamm 1300 seats, they would have moved Immersion there and still kicked out the walkzone.

How exactly am I being obtuse? There was the option to build Hamm at 1300 at the time of the renovation. Your neighbhohood lobbied against it and won. Sorry you don't like the consequences.

Because you see they are important people so the school should be not too big and not too small and not too fancy but just nice enough and not too crowded either and it's for THEIR kids. Not any other kids. They bought their house and this was the understanding that came with the house.

See? We are simply advocating to be treated like other schools, and you insult and put out personal attacks.

Go through the thread. At no point have any Hamm parents called someone crazy, entitled or mocked them.

No, you aren’t advocating to be treated like other schools. That is the whole point of this thread. APS has been doing boundary shifts forever which always impacts someone negatively. Again, you aren’t that special.

They have never bused away half a walkzone

Bellevue Forest.

Hamm to Lorcam (the proposed boundary is 400 ft. BF is 2000 ft and across military road from Taylor. Pretty egregious, but if you make the Hamm boundary 2000 ft radius, I think a lot of Taylor would be mollified.

So this is unprecedented. Just look at the middle school boundary maps. None have their boundary steps from the school.

How do you not know how to spell Lorcom Lane? Don’t you live right there?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I bet they delay it for another year or two. People in pretty much every middle school were furious about having to move, and that eventually is inevitable. But it's easier to just kick the can for a few years.

I haven't heard that much furor. The loudest are a few Taylor parents who don't think their kids should have to move to WMS, but that will likely be ignored as ridiculous. And two Ashlawn PUs that don't want to be carved off the rest of the elementary school, but I think that can pretty easily be fixed. No one else has posted a significant number of comments.

I agree with this. It's really not that big of a deal. The Hamm people are just nuts.

What are they doing that is nuts?

Suggesting that the County's middle school immersion program should move to the opposite corner of the Couty from its current location and bulk of current students. Oh also that part of the County has extremely limited native spanish speakers nearby pretty much ensuring the program will ultimately fail. Behaving as if the option schools should just take whatever crumbs are left and like it and they have no right to complain or advocate as neighborhood schools are the priority. I don't even have kids in an option school and most of the arguments are both ignorant and entitled.

Yes, making suggestions… a clear sign of an unhinged mind.

The unhinged part is persisting when your suggestion is a terrible idea solely because it serves your self-interest.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I bet they delay it for another year or two. People in pretty much every middle school were furious about having to move, and that eventually is inevitable. But it's easier to just kick the can for a few years.

I haven't heard that much furor. The loudest are a few Taylor parents who don't think their kids should have to move to WMS, but that will likely be ignored as ridiculous. And two Ashlawn PUs that don't want to be carved off the rest of the elementary school, but I think that can pretty easily be fixed. No one else has posted a significant number of comments.

I agree with this. It's really not that big of a deal. The Hamm people are just nuts.

Sure you can call us names, but delaying won’t end end the outrage. The angriest people are those with little kids at Taylor who bought a home walking distance to an elementary and middle school, usually two working parent households where having walkable and independent students is a huge time savings.

We will be angry in two years, angry in 5 years, and likely will STILL campaign against the stupid “bus half the walkzone away” decision in perpetuity.

Kids will waste so much time waiting for and riding a bus needlessly. So this fight will only be over in December if the school board does the right thing, and moves Immersion to the school with the greatest capacity and uses the plan that minimizes bus costs and staffing. That is probably moving it to WMS, but math whizs are welcome to prove otherwise.

Haven't you read your own posts? It doesn't matter how far away MS is located because parents NEVER have to go there and MS students are 100% fine taking the bus by themselves. Transportation isn't an issue by MS, right? That's what Taylor parents are posting.

APS changes boundaries roughly every year. If anyone bought not knowing that, then they should have done more research. It's not exactly a secret.

It’s about independence and wasting time on a longer than necessary bus ride. Taylor students are almost universally ridiculously close to Hamm, and busing to WMS takes a circuitous route through neighborhoods.

It’s okay for option because that is part of the deal which you can always walk away from, to coin a phrase.

People who chose neighborhood prioritized proximity and short commutes to school. They don’t have a fallback.

And boundaries shouldn’t be changing every year, if they would just invest appropriately in facilities rather than blowing the budget on slides and award winning urban schools.

Boundaries don’t change every year. And boundaries changing this time has zero to do with past buildings having amenities you don’t approve of.

Doesn’t even make any sense.

DHMS opened in 2019, 4 years later we are RADICALLY redrawing boundaries. Maybe not “yearly” but incompetence and misguided investment. They should have made HBW bigger when they blew $100M, or maybe enlarged the other middle schools and built them a standard building for $50M.

OMG! There WAS an option to build Hamm larger to accommodate 1300 students instead of 1000. The neighbhorhood around Hamm rejected it and the board listened and voted it down. Now this same neighbhorhood doesnt' want to be moved away because, wait for it, Hamm is too small. So there you are, you are living with the consequences of your OWN actions.

Don’t be obtuse. Hamm is ALREADY at the LARGEST capacity middle school. They should have expanded the other middle schools, especially HBW, which blew all the money on their award winning building.

The affected families are less than 500 ft from the school, if they made Hamm 1300 seats, they would have moved Immersion there and still kicked out the walkzone.

How exactly am I being obtuse? There was the option to build Hamm at 1300 at the time of the renovation. Your neighbhohood lobbied against it and won. Sorry you don't like the consequences.

Why should just Hamm be 30% larger than ALL other middle schools while HBW complains it can’t enlarge a smidgen because of its “philosophy”. So because Hamm advocated to be in line with other middle schools, it gets penalized by nuking its walkzone?

There was a time when HB could have been larger back when it was on its old site. But then that neighborhood lobbied HARD to kick HB out and move it to a tiny, tiny site in Rosslyn. And you got the larger site for Hamm. This means HB can't expand, there's no room to. That site can't take trailers. For some reason you also lobbied against making the Hamm building larger. So again you got what you asked for - now deal with the consequences.

That’s BS. The Heights site was slated to be a 1300 seat neighborhood middle school. They could have expanded HB at Heights to 1000 no problem.

I'm not so sure about that. HB is not the only program at that site. The Shriver program has part of the building. There are significant space requirements for the program that serves the most disabled kids in APS. But I doubt you care.

I accounted for Shriver by saying they would go to 1000; as neighborhood school it was slated for 1300. I think space for 300 seats is appropriate.

The Shriver program takes up a lot more space than typical middle school students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hamm is bigger than WMS and Swanson FYI.

Those schools were not undergoing a reno. Would have been easy and cost effective to make Hamm bigger at that time. But YOU didn't want that for your snowflakes. And the result is they have to go to WMS. Sorry you don't like the results of what you yourself wanted.

Cost effective is an empty phrase when they blew $100M on the Heights for 700 students. Carve off $40M and they could have expanded WMS and Swanson and the Heights would still be the nicest middle school.

anything to justify your position against expanding Hamm...and I see why you're trying so hard.... because it sure came back to bite you in the you know where.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I bet they delay it for another year or two. People in pretty much every middle school were furious about having to move, and that eventually is inevitable. But it's easier to just kick the can for a few years.

I haven't heard that much furor. The loudest are a few Taylor parents who don't think their kids should have to move to WMS, but that will likely be ignored as ridiculous. And two Ashlawn PUs that don't want to be carved off the rest of the elementary school, but I think that can pretty easily be fixed. No one else has posted a significant number of comments.

I agree with this. It's really not that big of a deal. The Hamm people are just nuts.

What are they doing that is nuts?

Suggesting that the County's middle school immersion program should move to the opposite corner of the Couty from its current location and bulk of current students. Oh also that part of the County has extremely limited native spanish speakers nearby pretty much ensuring the program will ultimately fail. Behaving as if the option schools should just take whatever crumbs are left and like it and they have no right to complain or advocate as neighborhood schools are the priority. I don't even have kids in an option school and most of the arguments are both ignorant and entitled.

I’m pretty sure it’s Kenmore parents advocating for immersion to be moved somewhere besides their school. They are (understandably) opposed to losing their neighborhood seats.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I bet they delay it for another year or two. People in pretty much every middle school were furious about having to move, and that eventually is inevitable. But it's easier to just kick the can for a few years.

I haven't heard that much furor. The loudest are a few Taylor parents who don't think their kids should have to move to WMS, but that will likely be ignored as ridiculous. And two Ashlawn PUs that don't want to be carved off the rest of the elementary school, but I think that can pretty easily be fixed. No one else has posted a significant number of comments.

I agree with this. It's really not that big of a deal. The Hamm people are just nuts.

Sure you can call us names, but delaying won’t end end the outrage. The angriest people are those with little kids at Taylor who bought a home walking distance to an elementary and middle school, usually two working parent households where having walkable and independent students is a huge time savings.

We will be angry in two years, angry in 5 years, and likely will STILL campaign against the stupid “bus half the walkzone away” decision in perpetuity.

Kids will waste so much time waiting for and riding a bus needlessly. So this fight will only be over in December if the school board does the right thing, and moves Immersion to the school with the greatest capacity and uses the plan that minimizes bus costs and staffing. That is probably moving it to WMS, but math whizs are welcome to prove otherwise.

Haven't you read your own posts? It doesn't matter how far away MS is located because parents NEVER have to go there and MS students are 100% fine taking the bus by themselves. Transportation isn't an issue by MS, right? That's what Taylor parents are posting.

APS changes boundaries roughly every year. If anyone bought not knowing that, then they should have done more research. It's not exactly a secret.

It’s about independence and wasting time on a longer than necessary bus ride. Taylor students are almost universally ridiculously close to Hamm, and busing to WMS takes a circuitous route through neighborhoods.

It’s okay for option because that is part of the deal which you can always walk away from, to coin a phrase.

People who chose neighborhood prioritized proximity and short commutes to school. They don’t have a fallback.

And boundaries shouldn’t be changing every year, if they would just invest appropriately in facilities rather than blowing the budget on slides and award winning urban schools.

Boundaries don’t change every year. And boundaries changing this time has zero to do with past buildings having amenities you don’t approve of.

Doesn’t even make any sense.

DHMS opened in 2019, 4 years later we are RADICALLY redrawing boundaries. Maybe not “yearly” but incompetence and misguided investment. They should have made HBW bigger when they blew $100M, or maybe enlarged the other middle schools and built them a standard building for $50M.

OMG! There WAS an option to build Hamm larger to accommodate 1300 students instead of 1000. The neighbhorhood around Hamm rejected it and the board listened and voted it down. Now this same neighbhorhood doesnt' want to be moved away because, wait for it, Hamm is too small. So there you are, you are living with the consequences of your OWN actions.

Don’t be obtuse. Hamm is ALREADY at the LARGEST capacity middle school. They should have expanded the other middle schools, especially HBW, which blew all the money on their award winning building.

The affected families are less than 500 ft from the school, if they made Hamm 1300 seats, they would have moved Immersion there and still kicked out the walkzone.

How exactly am I being obtuse? There was the option to build Hamm at 1300 at the time of the renovation. Your neighbhohood lobbied against it and won. Sorry you don't like the consequences.

Because you see they are important people so the school should be not too big and not too small and not too fancy but just nice enough and not too crowded either and it's for THEIR kids. Not any other kids. They bought their house and this was the understanding that came with the house.

See? We are simply advocating to be treated like other schools, and you insult and put out personal attacks.

Go through the thread. At no point have any Hamm parents called someone crazy, entitled or mocked them.

No, you aren’t advocating to be treated like other schools. That is the whole point of this thread. APS has been doing boundary shifts forever which always impacts someone negatively. Again, you aren’t that special.

They have never bused away half a walkzone

I could see APS changing the proposal so that the PUs that are closest to Hamm (and likely actually walk) remain at Hamm and more PUs that already takes a bus are shifted to WMS. Are there specific PUs that make more sense to shift?

They will do what they did with cardinal. Initially the PU that abutted Cardinal was not proposed to go there. They subsequently included it in later proposals after everyone freaked out. Likely APS staff knows this is their concession point back to the community to put a few of these walkable PUs back to Hamm. And Hamm will be very full (as Cardinal is now). But whatever these walker people will be happy.

Isn’t the plan for all middle schools to be full, because Gunston is overcrowded

In order to appease these folks, I bet they'll leave Hamm so that on paper it's closer to 100 percent capacity which leaves very little margin for error and a school that full feels crowded typically. Swanson feels overcrowded and it's not even over capacity on paper.

Moving immersion anywhere doesn’t matter, APS was going to maximize DHMS enrollment, after leaving it under enrolled not hitting 100% would be a risk of that happening again and even more embarrassment

Dhms can’t take trailers so they won’t overfill it.

[Anonymous]

The psychodrama going on in this thread involving Hamm is fascinating but to get back to the initial post, when will we actually get the revised proposal?