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]The truth on the high school issue is somewhere in the middle of all of these posts. Even if some posters think the sites are less than ideal, the plan is to create 1,300 new high school seats, [b]whether spread over a couple of expansion sites or through the construction of a new neighborhood high school building. [/b]The school board is still seeking land for an additional 2,200-seat high school. Lack of land space is a significant issue, but the county has options on some other properties that may become available in the next few years, and is constantly looking for new opportunities to acquire land. They can't make land appear out of nowhere, though, as pp pointed out, and the county has many competing needs that shouldn't be dismissed (first responders? mass transit? let's not pretend they're looking to build another artisphere on these parcels). Part of the rational for using expansions for those 1,300 seats is that it preserves options for creating another, larger high school down the road.

As for the high-rise development, that's simply not a huge driver of the school-aged population increase. If it were, Discovery wouldn't have built where it was to relieve the massive overcrowding in Nottingham and Tuckhoe and McKinley wouldn't have gotten the big expansion; all of those resources would have gone to where the high-rise development is. The vast majority of the people moving into that new high rise development do not have school-aged children, and they tend to move out before their children are school-aged. In the meantime, the additional tax revenue from those buildings provides revenue that can be used for, among other things, additional school infrastructure. For that to happen, though, the county board needs to do a better job of acknowledging and funding the needs of the school-aged population, and the parents of the school-aged population need to accept that part of the reality of living in a semi-urban area is that their schools won't all be placed on sprawling grounds will acres of green space. [/quote]

That vote already happened, and they decided to spread the seats to two existing schools. There will not be a new neighborhood school. It has been decided.

Also, while the majority of students are not being generated by high rise dwellers now, there are more kids than expected coming from them in the R-B corridor and we can't know that high risers will continue to move away once their kids are school-aged. I know a few people who have gotten "stuck" in their condos for longer than expected. They liked their zoned school and could not afford SFHs in the same neighborhood and didn't want to move farther away from their jobs, so they decided to stay put. So far they are sticking it out half-way through ES. Will they stay in those condos through HS? Likely not, but their plans are to save up and hopefully be able to afford a home in the same zone by that point. It's plausible that more families could make that same choice rather than move. In addition, AH that is geared towards families is having an affect on schools. Not a reason not to build AH, but it has to be taken into consideration when forecasting the number of students. As you said, the vast majority of  crowding is currently being driven by SFHs, from tear downs, where much larger homes are replacing smaller homes, or where tear down lots are subdivided and more new homes are being built. Bigger and more SFHs= more students. All of this must be taken into consideration. As must the fact that most kids who are in the system now are not going to magically disappear at some future point.

As to parents' expectations of sprawling campuses, I don't think that's fair. It's not as is there are opportunities for these new urban-style school of which you speak either. I was on the working group to site the newest ES. It was made very clear that those pushing for office building space had no idea of the challenges. For one: no such building is on the market for anything close to what the school system can afford. The ONLY reason Fairfax was able to accomplish this was a building went into in default and FCPS bought it for a song. There are no such properties in Arlington, and the person who heads up acquisition for the county has no expectation of such an opportunity arising here. And they would never lease a building (too costly not to own it). Some sort of field/green space is a must for every school. Does every HS need a stadium and pool? Maybe not, but if it's going to have lesser facilities, than it had better not be built in a neighborhood where the majority of zoned kids would be on fr/l, because that's REALLY bad optics for a school system that doesn't need any further bad optics. If it's going to be different than all the other neighborhood HS, it can't be a zoned school, and it will have to be an option school. I think many would be fine with making that trade-off, assuming the focus is a popular one (like H-B). [/quote]

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