APS Construction - Never believe their schedules

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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

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

Nah, I don't buy your premise. Glebe currently has 580 kids and Nottingham has only 442, but from what I hear and observe Glebe is much tighter. Smaller doesn't mean closer. McKinley is about the same size as Glebe at 605 kids but again, Glebe has much more parental involvement, it's just a closer, more tight-knit community. It has nothing to do with the size of the class, but I can see why you'd argue that because it appears to be your mission to mobilize DCUM to get APS to let the Tuckahoe and Glebe kids transfer to underenrolled schools. Are you the Tuckahoe parent who posted here a month or two ago asking if such transfers were possible?

Also, try looking further than ONE YEAR into the future. In two years Nottingham is expected to be at 104% capacity, and in three years it is expected to be at 109% capacity -- that's 44 students more that its building should hold compared to McKinley's 24. Similarly, Glebe isn't projected to fall below 105% capacity through 2020. Seems like those schools are doing their parts. You can't solve the capacity problem one year at a time. You're being even more shortsighted than APS has been, historically, and that's an accomplishment!

[Anonymous]

1. Glebe has been doing an auction for many years and they have one each year. It is a tradition. You can't really compare that to schools that only have them once every other year or those that only recently began having them as a fundraiser.

2. You can't solve the problem one year at a time, but you can prevent doing colossally stupid things like putting a school under construction at 712 kids by waiting a year to initiate a boundary change.

3. APS can be proactive by not only allowing transfers, but by providing transportation. If they really care about seats shortages, they would be doing something for the kids who are in school now, not just the hypothetical kids of the future.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Also, try looking further than ONE YEAR into the future. In two years Nottingham is expected to be at 104% capacity, and in three years it is expected to be at 109% capacity -- that's 44 students more that its building should hold compared to McKinley's 24. Similarly, Glebe isn't projected to fall below 105% capacity through 2020. Seems like those schools are doing their parts. You can't solve the capacity problem one year at a time. You're being even more shortsighted than APS has been, historically, and that's an accomplishment!

So, you can the boundary changes then. How is that not obvious? If I have family coming and am short one bedroom, I don't more my kids into the same room months before the guests arrive.

[Anonymous]

Aren't the individual classrooms only on a three month delay, meaning all of the kids will be moved into their homerooms in December or January? You don't cancel a family trip because someone has to sleep on an air mattress for a night.

If parents want to complain and make the school board delay the moves for a year, that's okay with me. As I said earlier, I actually think that it's this sort of bonding experience that brings kids together, so I'm not getting worked up over three months. But if other parents are concerned, I won't fault them for trying for a delay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Aren't the individual classrooms only on a three month delay, meaning all of the kids will be moved into their homerooms in December or January? You don't cancel a family trip because someone has to sleep on an air mattress for a night.

If parents want to complain and make the school board delay the moves for a year, that's okay with me. As I said earlier, I actually think that it's this sort of bonding experience that brings kids together, so I'm not getting worked up over three months. But if other parents are concerned, I won't fault them for trying for a delay.

The 3 story addition is on a delay. That includes individual classrooms, the art and music rooms and, most annoyingly, the gymnasium. The fields and parking lots aren't expected to be done until April. Even then, fields can't be played on for a year after construction unless APS ponies up the money for sod and watering. A 3 month delay is best case scenario. Look at the subject line of this post!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: Nah, I don't buy your premise. Glebe currently has 580 kids and Nottingham has only 442, but from what I hear and observe Glebe is much tighter. Smaller doesn't mean closer. McKinley is about the same size as Glebe at 605 kids but again, Glebe has much more parental involvement, it's just a closer, more tight-knit community. It has nothing to do with the size of the class, but I can see why you'd argue that because it appears to be your mission to mobilize DCUM to get APS to let the Tuckahoe and Glebe kids transfer to underenrolled schools. Are you the Tuckahoe parent who posted here a month or two ago asking if such transfers were possible?

Also, try looking further than ONE YEAR into the future. In two years Nottingham is expected to be at 104% capacity, and in three years it is expected to be at 109% capacity -- that's 44 students more that its building should hold compared to McKinley's 24. Similarly, Glebe isn't projected to fall below 105% capacity through 2020. Seems like those schools are doing their parts. You can't solve the capacity problem one year at a time. You're being even more shortsighted than APS has been, historically, and that's an accomplishment!

PP- I'm not a Tuckahoe or Glebe parent. I'm a McKinley parent. But I've got current and upcoming kids in younger grades who are going to spend their entire elementary school experience in a 700+ kid school. Those of us with many years left at McK may have a different perspective than parents who only have a few more years left. And Discovery is under capacity until the 2020-21 school year, so obviously those past "rebalancing" numbers from APS weren't exactly accurate. Why not delay the boundary changes for a year to allow the McK construction to finish, and then over the course of the next 12 months, APS could also do a boundary refinement process to shift a few more kids up to Discovery. Now that the kids who will be entering APS in 2020/21 are actually ALIVE, maybe we could get some more accurate projections of what those numbers look like 5 years out. Right now, we're sacrificing the well-being of current students based on projections for hypothetical kids who haven't been born yet. Honestly, nobody knows what enrollment in ANY elementary school is going to look like more than 5 years out, especially with the County affordable housing discussions which will have a huge impact on ES enrollment. And yes, I do think McK parents who are still in it for the long-haul need to complain to the School Board because many of us were not in the APS system yet and not part of the PTA conversations when all these decisions were made two years ago.

[Anonymous]

12:07 - I hope you have success with getting other McK parents to speak up. Don't expect it to happen w/o working on it yourself. The PTA does not like to make waves. That's one of the things people love about McK (no petitions or threatening to sue over trailer placement), but it does make getting results harder. Please reach out to parents who are willing to do something.

[Anonymous]

From McK's principal: It's only a "slight" delay people. This is a quote:

"Last week the APS Facilities Office announced that the construction project would see a slight delay. The new schedule is as follows: Phase 3 – Three Story Addition, Substantial Completion November 27, 2016,
with Final Completion December 28, 2016; Phase 4 – Administrative Addition, Substantial Completion August 12, 2016, with Final Completion September 23, 2016; and, Phase 5 – Fields and Parking Lot, Substantial Completion April 15, 2017, with Final Completion April 29, 2017. I see this as a minor setback and look forward to transitioning from the relocatables prior to the winter break."

[Anonymous]

12:53 - You didn't tell us anything that wasn't already in this thread. The reason people are upset is b/c the boundary changes are still happening, making the school a 700+ student school when there are nearby buildings with plenty of space.

[Anonymous]

Wow. After I posted, I kept reading:
The School Board adopted its FY 2017 proposed budget totaling $581,941,859.

That's a half billion dollars to serve 26K kids. that can't be right. What am I getting wrong?

PP: This is 12:53. I was using sarcasm about the "slight delay". I have a K kid at McK and am not surprised at the delay. I am delighted with how the school manages but can't imagine them not delaying the new students. I'm a lobbyist and we ask for a 12 month delay all the time and usually, the feds are happy to give it to us since change often requires discomfort and things take more time than expected.

[Anonymous]

Don't you think that Discovery is going to be overenrolled in a few years despite predictions because everybody moving to North Arlington wants to send their kids to that school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Don't you think that Discovery is going to be overenrolled in a few years despite predictions because everybody moving to North Arlington wants to send their kids to that school?

no. The thing about Discovery is that it is in an area where not a lot of multi-family housing can be built which limits its expansion. Ashlawn and Glebe are in areas where multi-level housing can and is being built.

I should admit that I am very new to APS so I only trust my own post about 80%

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Don't you think that Discovery is going to be overenrolled in a few years despite predictions because everybody moving to North Arlington wants to send their kids to that school?

Not really. Ask around about families leaving to go back to Nottingham because they aren't happy. Also, there is a greater barrier to entry in that housing market. That said, since no one at APS can actually predict enrollement more than about a year or two out, they shouldn't be making decisions based upon a 5 year prediction.

Originally, McKinley was going to send 2 planning units to Ashlawn. Ashlawn's numbers came in higher (no surprise there, really), so they changed the plans based upon ACTUAL numbers. It did happen. It could happen again if the planners weren't stone walls.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don't you think that Discovery is going to be overenrolled in a few years despite predictions because everybody moving to North Arlington wants to send their kids to that school?

no. The thing about Discovery is that it is in an area where not a lot of multi-family housing can be built which limits its expansion. Ashlawn and Glebe are in areas where multi-level housing can and is being built.

I should admit that I am very new to APS so I only trust my own post about 80%

You are right. Unless the county approves multi-family dwellings up there, the school won't grow at the same rate as others.

[Anonymous]

But I think people without kids are probably selling off their property for huge profits at a faster rate by Discovery than anywhere else, because families want to move there more.