Reply to Let’s Talk APS High Schools: 4th one or no?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
I live really close to the Career Center. I agree that the whole site should be overhauled, but I'm not sold on the fact that it needs to be a comprehensive high school. I recognize there is a shortage of HS seats, but I also remember that Wakefield was not at capacity. I think a 2nd HB would be great, given the popularity of the program, but will that result in a North HB and a South HB? Or will all kids who apply be evenly distributed? If the Career Center becomes a 4th comprehensive, I don't see how it will have all the same amenities, without the EDC property being used, and even then, I don't think it works unless it's a 6 story plus building -- with a roof top pool? As great as it would be for the kiddos to go to a new school, it only works if its a choice school or we shift the boundaries, to take pressure off W-L, and I think that will result in groups jockeying to go there and stay out of Wakefield, leaving Wakefield full of FARMs. You'd have to make the Career Center a neighborhood school and Wakefield an option school to prevent segregation or something. As much as my neighbors want their own HS, it just doesn't seem reasonable.

Given the size of Arlington, you'd be better off telling HS kids to find their own way to school (via public transit or cycling) and randomly assigning them or putting a grade at each of the presumably 4 locations.[/quote]

I can only assume you haven't spent any time looking at the projections data. Otherwise I cannot imagine how you could say all of this with a straight face.[/quote]

I have. South Arlington is exploding with kids. What I am worried about is that we will end up with a bifricated school system, worse than now. Seems like we're trying to get a UMC South high...[/quote]

What's your priority here, is it more important to have enough seats for all of our high school students or that the schools have more balanced diversity? Does diversity provide such a benefit that it won't matter if some of the students won't see it because they've been pushed into doing high school online from home? If they've had to put high schools on swing schedules so that at any given time a quarter of the student population is on break? If students pushed into expansion programs are effectively forced to drop extracurriculars because of the travel time involved in getting back to a base high school for those activities? These are the kinds of things being discussed to manage the high school capacity crisis if we don't get a fourth high school. I want our schools to be more diverse, but I don't see the benefit of that if we have to destroy the high school experience for a whole lot of kids to do that. After all, it's not the Yorktown kids who are going to be affected by this, they'll be fine. It'll be W-L getting a million trailers to take on extra kids. It'll be W-L and Wakefield students pushed into the expansion programs because they're physically closer. It'll be the lower-achieving students (who are disproportionately ED and/or racial minorities) who will be pushed into online programs while in-school space is reserved for AP and IB classes.[/quote]

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