Reply to Challenge: Can someone explain the Arlington school zoning issues to us w/o being mean?

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Reply to "Challenge: Can someone explain the Arlington school zoning issues to us w/o being mean? "

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[quote=Anonymous]Then there is the high school situation.  APS currently has three traditional high schools - Yorktown, Washington-Lee and Wakefield, and one "lottery" middle/high program - HB Woodlawn.

1.  The traditional high schools are overcrowded. In some cases, APS built new schools that are shiny, but have less capacity than the schools they replaced.
2.  APS stacks the deck in favor of W-L by allowing it to offer both AP and IB, while limiting Yorktown and Wakefield to AP.  So there's a brain drain from Yorktown and Wakefield to W-L that some people resent.
3.  Because HB Woodlawn is so small, it is literally like "winning the lottery" for your kid to get in.  APS spends a lot more per student on those kids than the kids at the other schools, when you factor in the facility costs.
4.  Past redistricting decisions have been made based on what's convenient, vs. what might balance the school demographics. So when W-L got most over-crowded first, wealthy kids were moved to Yorktown, which has the fewest poor kids, while poorer kids were moved to Wakefield.
5.  To address future overcrowding, APS has presented a range of alternatives, none of which are very appealing and most of which depend upon someone else's kid opting or being forced into a non-traditional program that you probably wouldn't find acceptable for your own kids. [/quote]

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