Reply to APS Engage Update Pre-CIP Report

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]For the Hamm people complaining, what is your proposal to fill Williamsburg then?  Who should get bused over there?  Not your children.  We’ve got that.[/quote]

Question: why is APS so bad at calculating seats/future needs?   Are less families moving to WMS/DHMS?   Is this driven in part by the exodus of North Arlington families to private school?   Does APS track or publish that information? [/quote]

Just my observations watching this over many years.

1.  Covid definitely impacted things.
2.  In past boundary adjustments, the School Board responds to the people screaming in their faces right in the moment.  This was the case with the boundary adjustments when Hamm was opened.  Hamm never had enough kids and Swanson had too many.  People screamed about not leaving Swanson.  Same issue with Cardinal.  The McKinley community screamed and yelled to stay together and give it a couple years that school will be overcrowded.  The problem is this thread.  What's going on right now.  Listening to current families over what makes sense longer-term.[/quote]

Right, I don’t disagree with you.   But I still would be very curious about the covid impact. How big was it?  Is it here to stay?  What are the current numbers?

APS does not give two wits about the kids leaving for PS, I know, which is one of the reasons they are leaving.  But it’s impacting neighborhoods/neighborhood schools in N Arlington communities in a way that is new and different.   It would be useful to understand it.  Especially when APS appears to be absolutely abysmal at forecasting seating/buildings. [/quote]

+1. APS seems to be awful at predicting what it is going to make sense for the long term. In the face of a global pandemic that’s completely upended what we thought we knew about school growth (which was hard learned in the face of being repeatedly wrong before), you’d think some humility would be in order.

[b]And I disagree threads like this are the problem. We are right to question half-baked assumptions and poke holes in flawed methodologies. The fact that the school board keeps buckling in the face of opposition shows they have little faith in staff’s analysis and the assumptions don’t stand up to scrutiny.  [/b]

Schools are meant to serve the educational needs of students, and APS seems to have completely lost sight of this chasing the Syphax wishlists of the day. APS may be happy to see these parents go, but we all know what happens when people with money and influence lose faith in the public school system. The whole system benefits when the entire community is engaged and invested. Take a look at ACPS for an example of what happens if when UMC and MC parents disengage. [/quote]

After observing the McKinley/Key/ATS/Cardinal boundary process up close and looking at all the data from all sides in depth, I began to really question this often repeated narrative.  Sorry it's inconvenient, but APS staff is capable of making good recommendations with the best information they have and often times parents really don't have the full picture.  Who is more self-interested?  Them or you?

I just think the narrative that APS stuff constantly sucks and is incompetent is unfair.  Do they make mistakes and get things wrong at times?  Yes.  Are they plotting against you?  Probably not.  My opinion is the parent communities can just be insanely obstinate.  There is no reasoning with people who want what they want and are used to getting their way.[/quote]

The issue is that APS does not acknowledge the uncertainty and limitations of its own data, dismisses community concerns as being “emotional” (seriously Kadera?!), and is seemingly chasing goals outside of those known to promote learning among students like  active and engaged school communities.

We have accepted overcrowding and routine disruption as the cost of educating our children in Arlington. This is unheard of in other districts. Other districts do not spend $150m+ to build two new schools in an area due to overcrowding, and then shut down a third school in the same area due to being under capacity, all within the same decade. We are right to question assumptions and point out when important factors have been given short shrift. I don’t have faith APS is making the best decisions for my neighborhood, not one bit.

And I’m sorry that people that bought cheap in Southie but don’t actually want to send their kids to school there have a problem with it. I support you improving your schools. I want every kid to have what we have here. But we don’t get better by wrecking everything good. [/quote]

Hyperbole much? Also, if people in Southie aren’t using the schools why are they the overcrowded ones? Nobody down here wants your precious Nottingham. But we do want them to use the excess seats you have up there! Frame it like this: Nottingham was acting as the swing space for Northie while they built Discovery and Cardinal. Now they can use that swing space for other areas that don’t have the luxury of excess seats. [/quote]

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