Reply to 50%+ FARMS schools in Arlington

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
On the Barrett comment, yes Barrett is what I was referring to. The Buckingham THs though will number under 150, so they want make up for the demographics resulting from the protected garden apartment complexes. The school is likely to remain majority low-income for some time, and I believe it is also Title I. I don't buy the anecdotes, given that I know so many people convincing themselves that a medicore learning environment is "good" for their own personal justification. [/quote]

The only low-income apartment complex that feeds into Barrett is the recently renovated Gates of Ballston. And the portion of low income housing in the neighborhood is much, much smaller than it was ten years ago, when virtually the entire neighborhood was low income. Ballston Park across Glebe is market rate and feeds into Long Branch. The buildings south of Pershing are condos for the most part.

Gates of Ballston was the only protected area of low-income housing, and there was a long drawn-out battle to keep those apartments far below market rate.

The demographics have changed dramatically at Barrett over the past ten years. In the 80s it was majority white; in the 90s it became mostly poor and Hispanic; and over the past 5-10 years it has become very popular with the young families moving into Arlington Forest. The trend over the past few years is a shrinking poor and Latino population and a growing white population. As the school's middle/upper middle class population has grown, it's test scores have dramatically improved, and looking at past threads on this forum one can see that Barrett has developed quite a good reputation. It may not satisfy everyone, but as a neighborhood school, many if not most Arlington Forest parents send their kids there.

One can deduce from the demographic data on the APS website that in about two years, Barrett will likely be below 50% low-income. In fact, according to that data, all North Arlington elementary schools are actually becoming less-diverse, and have a shrinking low-income population.[/quote]

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