Reply to Another choice school in N Arlington?

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[quote=Anonymous]As a non-affluent North Arlington parent with a kid at ATS, the actual underprivileged kids in South Arlington already do get better odds in the lottery - through the VPI preschool program. (which will have 2 preschool classes next year – 32 kids, about a third of the class.)

But if you completely fill ATS with underprivileged kids, you would create a Title I school that would then have to serve fewer kids because Title I schools have smaller class sizes.  So you'd shrink the population actually served by 20%.

You'd also end up turning ATS into an average school; we have enough of those.  ATS's test scores are so high because  the middle class white kids (from both S and N Arl) whose parents are very active and involved are pulling the scores up.  If the bulk of kids were poor and/or ESL, you would see scores more similar to those of Barcroft, Randolph or Carlin Springs, not Jamestown, Discovery or Nottingham.

You'd also decimate the PTA and the activities that make it a close-knit community; I see the same parents volunteering at every event and they are not the poor parents or the ESL parents.

The parents who call for changes to ATS are not the parents of underprivileged kids; they're the white middle class folks who wanted a better house than they could afford in a good North Arlington school district.  They either didn't do their research or they shrugged off demographics to which others paid attention.  If you moved into the county 4 years ago when you had a kid and started thinking about schools, nothing has changed dramatically since then.  I bought in 2011 and looked at some seriously awesome houses in various South Arlington neighborhoods.  But when I saw that a school was 70% Hispanic and 60% FARMS, I assumed those numbers would not decrease.  Those houses were more affordable because the schools were considered lesser.  So instead I bought a lesser house in a better school district, assuming I would use our home ES.  By sheer random luck, I got one of 22 spots for new non-VPI families in a year when 289 families applied.  Our home school was fine, but I loved ATS when I visited.  I loved what it stood for.  I also loved that it had more diversity than our home school.   I think it’s sour grapes when families who have a similar or higher HHI than mine gripe about North Arlington families in ATS.

Perhaps a similar program could be started in South Arlington that gives preference to South Arlington families.  I doubt North Arlington parents would protest.  Or passionate parents willing to put in the time could make a concerted effort to replicate the success of the program in an existing South Arlington school.  More affordable housing in the Northern parts of the county will have an effect, too.  Moving the program to Madison, at the very northern edge of the county, would only punish the South Arlington kids and their parents by making them cross the entire county; at least the current location is a bit more central, and fairly well served by buses.)

The demographics of ATS don’t include a lot of AA kids because the county doesn’t have a lot of AA kids.  Only 9.3% of ES students in Arlington are AA; ATS has 7.5% AA population.  (15% hispanic, 14% asian.)  AA families are less likely to settle in the county than in other parts of the area, probably because they’d have to spend a buttload on a house for their kid not to have many AA friends.

Sorry this was long.
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