Reply to S/O - Potential defector from ACPS to APS, how does the gifted program work?

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Reply to "S/O - Potential defector from ACPS to APS, how does the gifted program work?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I hate the "all schools have capacity challenges" poster. Here's how one APS household sees the situation in Arlington.

1) the last two substantial parcels of land are under discussion for acquisition.  In the current proposals a Carlin Springs lot will very likely be used for bus depot (schools and public transit) and Buck site almost certainly for first responders. As someone concerned that there is NO site identified for a fourth comprehensive high school, I see this as another nail in that coffin.
2) the county is claiming in the absence of land (and there are no other readily available lots left in the county), they will pursue options like shift schedulling and distance learning to meet capacity challenges. That's right, your tax dollars could go to pay for your child to essentially have NO seat in a school.
3) the county is making their problems worse by approving high rise construction with high density population. They don't have seats for the students ALREADY in the county, but everyone loves their developer fees and no one has ownership over how the schools will competently educate its students in 7+ years.

No other school system has this toxic mix of shortsightedness and land constraints. People who are happy today appear not to have awareness of how the APS system will look in 10 years. [/quote]

They've identified three potential sites for a fourth high school, and the current plan is to create a new high school. Whether it will be a comprehensive high school or a choice program is still up in the air, but it's simply untrue that there are no options for locations for the fourth high school.
[/quote]

Huh? I follow this issue pretty closely and this is not true at all. The last CIP included funding to add 1300 more high school seats-- which is *not* a full high school and *not* enough seats to get us past 2022. Even with that funding, the only spots they came up with are the office building on the WL parking lot (for 700 seats) and an addition to the existing Career Center (for another 700 seats). Now, maybe you have never been to any of those sites, but they are not "fourth high school" locations--- they do not have any field space and it is unclear that they will even have space for a gym/auditorium. These will be spaces where extra classrooms can be housed, but the kids will be going back to the other three comprehensive high schools for all sports and activities (and in the case of the Ed Center @ WL-- possibly for lunch and gym class). The County has not yet identified any space capable of housing a full-size 2200 seat high school, which is what we need post-2022 to deal with the influx of kids currently in elementary school and below when APS is projected to hit 40,000 kids.

The limitation in APS is not funding-- it is land. We can't buy our way out of this pickle. This is also why not every ES can "hire more teachers" to keep the class sizes small-- for many of the schools that are already pushing 5-6 classes per grade, there isn't any room to add more trailers. We already have at least two elementary schools in this county with no field space left due to the trailers.[/quote]

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