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VA Public Schools other than FCPS
APS Closing Nottingham
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Anonymous
I don’t think APS will ever ever ever take over a community center. I think they think schools get more than their fair share of the budget, and that other demographics deserve amenities like parks, community centers, and pickleball courts. Esp pickleball courts. |
Anonymous
| ^. Sorry meant to clarify that I think the County thinks schools already get enough. That is the “they” above in “they think.” |
Anonymous
Yes, it was originally a school. It's one of the schools APS gave to the County for community center use. I personally think it's inefficient to retrofit it back to a full elementary for swing space; but there is already art space and small gym space and County preschool program. There at least used to be a playgroup co-op there, too. So it's already ready for pre-K and maybe some kindergarten classes. Moving those classrooms out of the most crowded nearby elementary schools could help alleviate the existing and expected continuing crowding in the south until an additional elementary is built. But that still doesn't provide swing space for getting the major renovations across the district done. |
Anonymous
Trailers were always supposed to be temporary. But APS became dependent on them and many have essentially become permanent. However, the County actually regulates things like trailers and is not keen on continually extending APS' expiration dates on them. APS needs to stop relying on them. IMO, if the County doesn't want to continue allowing them, the County needs to cooperate on land use for more schools regardless of the current level of crowding or under-enrollment. Everyone should know by now that enrollment rises and falls. Arlington (County and Schools, not just APS) needs to plan and be prepared according to highest need, not any snapshot-in-time enrollment. The County wants to increase density, so it needs to cooperate in increasing school capacity. |
Anonymous
Yes, another proposal that north arlington school parents would be outraged over if it were them. If, however, it's just used for preK and kindergarten, I'd think libraries could be siphoned of the books for those levels in the interim. And why not arrange a sharing system like the County library system? I'm sure the schools in the north will be happy to offer a good portion of their collections, if it means keeping all their schools open and under-enrolled. |
Anonymous
Yes. And they are correct. Our community centers are heavily used. Time for the County to ante-up with expanding the community centers (so they can be split-use like our high school facilities are) or commit to giving APS the land or other options and assistance it needs. |
Anonymous
Again, this isn't just about being moved to two other neighborhood schools. Sorry you can't comprehend this. |
Anonymous
Yep, I’m with you. Was just pointing it out. There’s no point to start asking for community centers, as there’s no appetite for the request. |
Anonymous
And you anti-Nottingham people apparently don’t take the time to read and are prone to fabulous misquoting when it serves your bias. I am proposing that Fairlington CC be used as a “swing space”. That the students there TEMPORARILY use something like a bookmobile, limited library, or branch library in lieu of having their own Library of Alexandria FOR ONE YEAR. That the 1 teacher who might bike to the location invest in some body wipes instead of a full bike shower. (That was a “must have” on the amenities list btw). When the swing space needs are done, which I expect will be soon since they are SO URGENT, the fine students of Fairlington would have whatever 3-story open atrium LEED Gold masterpiece of a library will fit on the site. Does that help? Or do you have another “gotcha” in your bag? |
Anonymous
Our community centers are heavily used, but they are “nice to haves”. The state constitution says the county has the responsibility to provide a free and appropriate public education. It is one of their core responsibilities. Art centers, playgroup space, fitness facilities - those are all nice to have and some people feel entitled to them, but there is no constitutional responsibility for the county to provide any of that. It is not a core duty. Moreover, we are not short for any of these things in Arlington in the private sector or even in the public sector that we couldn’t let 1 CC go. |
Anonymous
No, it doesn't help, it actually hurts because you're not listening to what the actual problem is and you're spending unnecessary funds on a swing space. The actual problem is that the 22207 schools are so underenrolled in the North as to be underutilized and wasteful, running way below capacity and wasting resources, so that if the less than 400 students at Nottingham can be transferred to other under capacity schools and free up that building as a temporary swing space (or whatever else APS wants to use it for), that would save money and be useful to APS. Not spending more resources that APS doesn't have to make Fairlington CC into a swing space. Honestly, can't you just read some of the other comments in here? |
Anonymous
| If someone besides me would look at the actual stats, you will see that no elementary school is desperately in need of additional space right now, except maybe Key, and that's an option school. A few schools are technically over capacity but nothing that a trailer or two can't manage, and nothing like the amount of necessary trailer space we were seeing 7 years ago. It doesn't really seem like we need a huge redistribution of kids, just an elimination of one of the underutilized northern elementaries on a temporary basis. But folks from the south, please chime in if I'm missing significant overenrollment. |
Anonymous
Are you talking about FAPE? That’s a law about students with disabilities. |
Anonymous
I’m pretty sure VA law requires a certain library space per child for a school (but not necessarily a program, which is why the adult high school has a library but the career center did not). I think people generally like to throw out ideas, but remember APS is constrained on what it can do—even “temporarily.” Also, I’ve been in plenty of meetings with the older population of Arlington—their heads would explode if you take away any amenity. They generally have the attitude that they built Arlington and their own kids had classes of 50 kids and so APS can figure it out. |
Anonymous
According to APS, we need a swing space to do renovations. According to South Arlington, we need capacity in South Arlington. This was never framed as an “APS is broke and we need to start shutting down schools to make budget” discussion. Read the pre-CIP report. Whatever our speculations on this thread, that’s the official word from APS. |