Reply to APS Families--Pls email county and school boards by Tues. 5/24!!

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Do we know if the only options are either a fourth high school or attending high school in shifts. I don't think so. On the W-L PTA survey I supported the 9th grade academy. Is that still in play?

I agree that the county and the school board need to work together on this issue. [/quote]

The draft proposal from the superintendent has a number of smaller fixes including 300 additional seats at Yorktown and Wkaefield, some redistributing and other small improvements. The total seats however is still only 1,200, far shy of the needed amount. [/quote]

How does a 9th grade academy solve this?  Do we really want all the ninth graders to be at a different site?[/quote]

Ninth grade academy offers several benefits IMO. It immediately relieves crowding at all existing high schools. It reduces the amount of boundary redrawing that would be necessary if a new high school were opened (and that process is such a PITA). It can be implemented immediately upon completion of the building, without any of the headaches involved with shifting kids to a new high school; beginning the next fall, all 9th graders would go there. (By contrast, if a whole new high school were built, we would either need to switch kids to a new high school in the middle of their high school experience, or we would have to phase in enrollment, so that the first class to enter the new high school would be all freshmen, leaving the building three quarters empty the first year, then half empty the second year, then a quarter empty, and finally a full functioning high school when the first entering class were 12th graders.) And a 9th grade academy eases neighborhood concerns about traffic, since most kids would be bused in and none of them would be driving.

Downsides are that most 9th graders will spend more time traveling to and from school, and some extracurriculars will require students to travel back to their home high schools. However, if the 9th grade academy operated on the same schedule as middle school, there would be plenty if time for kids to take an afternoon bus back to their neighborhood high schools.[/quote]

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