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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Over on the school boards (on DCUM) there is a lot of anger about density and its impact on schools in the south.  But the sentiment that seems to accompany many of those posts is that we should put all the AH in the north and should set out to deliberately raise FARMS rates in the N. Arlington schools.  So when I see the posters talk about how you need to bullet vote for Mcmenamin (sp?), I can't help wonder if as a resident of N. Arlington I should just stick with the dems because he's going to fulfill some sort of vindictive agenda advocated by the angry parents in the South to shift all the burdens S arlington always complains about to the north![/quote]

It's not a vindictive agenda. Having more FARMS kids in the North Arlingtons schools (which is where my kids are, we're a Nottingham family) isn't a punishment, and I hope people wouldn't view it that way. It's more a recognition of the increased challenges faced by many FARMS students that typically aren't faced by students from higher-income families, and the increased burden that puts on schools with a disproportionate share of FARMS students. I don't think the quality of my kids' education at Nottingham would suffer if the FARMS rate was bumped from 3% to 13% (13% is just an arbitrary figure, not based on anything concrete or a statement that I wouldn't accept a higher FARMS rate as well), but that could make a difference for both the kids who moved to Nottingham and the kids who stay at the South Arlington schools but whose schools a little more breathing room and aren't so tapped out on resources. Further, no one is talking about shifting all of the low-income housing to North Arlington, that would be impossible given the current distribution. It's simply talking about spreading the low-income housing out in a more balanced fashion that keeps any area from being overburdened.

I have my reservations about some of the proposals for locating low-income housing in North Arlington (a week or two ago I was raked over the coals in the VA schools forum for expressing concern about whether the county will bring sufficient resources like increased public transit coverage to North Arlington to accommodate increased low-income housing), but let's not pretend that the current structure is working just fine and doesn't need to be reevaluated.[/quote]

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