Reply to APS: Think the "no move" campaign is going to work?

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Reply to "APS: Think the "no move" campaign is going to work?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Staff is doubling down on Proposal 1. They were respectful about the community created maps and explained why each one wouldn’t work.
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yep - that was loud and clear 
done deal[/quote]

I really hope so! But I won’t be convinced until the board actually votes. Surely there’s still time for some press stunts or matching t-shirts.

When they decided not to send S Fairlington to Drew, did staff change their minds? Or did the board overrule staff? It sounds like that will be rectified with the new boundaries, I can’t remember how it all went down.[/quote]

I think the SB was not willing to go there and Staff was willing to wait and see how bad the utilization discrepancies would be, knowing they’d get another bite at the apple this year. As it turns out, both Claremont (which draws a lot of kids from Abingdon) and Abingdon itself are bursting, and Drew is adjacent and under capacity, so something has to give. It’s not a reasonable position not to use the space we already have, given the budget constraints. I don’t know that it will be South Fairlington, but some non-walk zone Abingdon PUs will have to be reassigned. One of the community proposals for the no-move scenario actually showed a very reasonable Abingdon boundary that didn’t make any walkers bus riders and also didn’t assign the most disadvantaged PUs to Abingdon. Don’t have the data regarding number of students in those PUs, but it just might work. Hopefully, Staff will look into it further. 
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Yes, that is basically how I remember it too. It’s important to remember Abingdon consists of more than just Fairlington, and many of us, while acknowledging Abingdon may (and it did) become overcrowded, wanted to address it when ALL boundaries were being considered- not just some of the SA elementary schools.

I know there’s some people who just can’t wait until some of Abingdon’s PUs are reassigned to Drew,  but like PP mentioned, it very well could be other non-walk zone PUs, not necessarily South Fairlington. [/quote]

If you’ll recall, the initial proposal that staff floated was to move Columbia Forest, which consists of non-walk zone Abingdon PUs, to Drew. The map looked terrible, non contiguous and it was obviously an attempt to see if people would accept creating a school even more impoverished than Carlin Springs — the FRL estimate for that scenario was around 83-85 percent. And Rhe reality would have been even higher, just like Drew’s current FRL is higher than estimated. It was pushback to creating such a high poverty school with ridiculous boundaries that put South Fairlington under consideration. And, history lesson for those who didn’t know, but in the early 60s south fairlington was bused to where Oakridge is now for elementary school. So, you either move SF or you create a 90 percent FRL school at drew. Those are the choices.[/quote]

I’m not the PP. But, I did know all this. The part of Columbia Forest that was grabbed in that scenario was an issue, because it included PUs that have apartments along Columbia Pike where a number of fr/l eligible students reside. If they only took PUs with SFHs or townhouses from Columbia Forest and maybe Claremont, without creating an island or making the Abingdon boundary non-contiguous, it would work just as well (demographically) as taking South Fairlington. I think one of the community maps shows this is possible. South Fairlington remains tricky, because of the Abingdon walk zone extending to its border. I think that will still be a sticking point for the SB and they won’t be as likely to make an island out of South Fairlington. They can add Abingdon students to Drew without increasing their fr/l rate. It might cause Abingdon’s fr/l rate to increase slightly, however. It’s at 43% now, would 47-49% be a deal breaker if it meant Drew dropped down under 60%? That’s reasonable to me. [/quote]

Actually the initial proposal kept the lowest income areas in Columbia Forest at Abingdon; the planners split the neighborhood on Frederick so that the apartment buildings on the west side (including Columbia Hills) would remain at Abingdon. They also zoned the wind gate condos off south Walter Reed to drew. And the FRL estimate was still 85 percent.  Prob didn’t help that a sliver of Barcroft Apts was also zoned to drew in that plan.[/quote]

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