do you have to go to your neighborhood schools in arlington?

[Anonymous]

this may sound crazy but an arlington parent just told me that if you want your kid to go to school 'X' instead of school 'Y' (Y being your neighborhood school) all you have to do is put them on a wait list? this just doesn't seem rt!...rt? our eldest is only 2 so i can't exactly say she is gifted in say...math and therefore she should go to a school that has a better than avg math pgm. feedback?

[Anonymous]

depends what school they are talking about. Arlington Traditional is a lottery based school and Arlington Science Focus (where I taught pre-kids) takes kids from all over the county as well as neighborhood kids.

[Anonymous]

I think this used to be more of an option than it is now because of overcrowding. Most elementary schools are in a cluster with several other schools and you can apply to go to another school in your cluster if you want. BUT many of these schools are not taking children who are outside of the neighborhood because they are already overcrowded themselves. For example, our school is Glebe and we are in a cluster with Barrett. But we were told we can't apply to go to Barrett because they are not accepting any additional students other than those who are in their neighborhood. There is an exception to this for certain schools - like Key. If you don't want the bilingual school you can go to Science Focus or another school in their cluster because the county cannot force your child to go to a bilingual school.

[Anonymous]

As 14:35 says, the theoretical ability to transfer does not mean that a transfer is a sure thing. Your ability to transfer changes from year to year, depending on capacity.

If you go to the APS website, you can see a list of which schools are accepting transfers, which are accepting transfers only within the team, and so on. That list will of course be different when your dd is ready for school, but it should give you some idea about how much flexibility there is.

[Anonymous]

http://www.apsva.us/154010811517240/blank/browse.asp?a=383&BMDRN=2000&BCOB=0&c=54218

This tells you your options based on your location. Their website is pretty helpful and easy to navigate.

[Anonymous]

op here - thnx for the info!

[Anonymous]

We are zoned ScienceFocus but have the option of KeyImmersion and Taylor Elem. because they are of the same 'team'.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are zoned ScienceFocus but have the option of KeyImmersion and Taylor Elem. because they are of the same 'team'.

Do you automatically get in to either of those schools or is it a waitlist? Just wondering since Taylor has grown so much in the past year or two if they are accepting out of neighborhood transfers anymore. I believe they had 2 more kindergarten classes than they expected this year alone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are zoned ScienceFocus but have the option of KeyImmersion and Taylor Elem. because they are of the same 'team'.

Do you automatically get in to either of those schools or is it a waitlist? Just wondering since Taylor has grown so much in the past year or two if they are accepting out of neighborhood transfers anymore. I believe they had 2 more kindergarten classes than they expected this year alone.

I don't know that it's automatic, but they do try to accommodate parental wishes, as the addition of two classes shows. I think one factor is that if you don't want Key, you are guaranteed Science Focus, but because so many parents want ASFS, it eases the strain to allow kids into Taylor as well.

We have sibling preference for our Taylor transfer, so we're protected from some of the worry.