Reply to APS: Elementary Walk Zone surveys out

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

That would be absurd.  Many of those houses were once zoned for Tuckahoe and rezoned for McK.  Now that there will actually be a school in walking distance you think they'd go back to Tuckahoe?  I would fight like hell against that.

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Then I suggest that you support Tuckahoe becoming an option school.  I'm assuming that APS will continue to require continguous boundaries.  If so- and the need for seats is in the NE, they have to find a way to draw the boundary so as to pick up some of the Key and Glebe units to the Northwest.  Tuckahoe is up against the edge of the county- if its planning units move to Reed, there is no where else for it to draw planning units from.  The units east of Reed are probably safe for at least enough to make a boundary corridor east.  But under the all neighborhood scenario I don't see any way units 16040 16050 and 16060 and 16130 could go to Reed- and they are all within the 1/2 mile walk shed.  I live in one of those units, and think the neighborhood is really misguided to be fighting against Tuckahoe going choice, while fully expecting that we are headed to walkable Reed.[/quote]

All of those planning units are across Lee Highway, which is designated as a road that elementary children may not cross. Making those units walkable to Tuckahoe would require putting a crossing guard at the intersection of Lee Highway and Sycamore, which is never going to happen because it's too dangerous a place for someone to just walk out into the middle of the intersection and expect speeding rush hour cars to stop.[/quote]

precisely- they are not walkable to Tuckahoe- they are current busriders to Tuckahoe.  They are walkable to Reed.  If all of the North West schools are neighborhood schools- those units will have to stay as busriders to Tuckahoe.  [/quote]

Ah yes, I lost track of where this was in the discussion. I agree those units probably stay at Tuckahoe if they don't move a choice program to the NW region, but I don't think it's because they're within the 1/2 mile walk shed, that's irrelevant because of Lee Highway. They'll stay at Tuckahoe because there's no where else for Tuckahoe to draw students to replace them without creating cascading busing needs through Nottingham, Discovery and Jamestown. All of those schools are on the same bell schedule, so they wouldn't even be able to share a bus fleet to reduce the burden on the transportation department.[/quote]

This is why this is such a circular argument: if you can make Reed an almost entirely walkable school and the only argument for sending some of those kids to Tuckahoe is to fill up the school...then Tuckahoe needs to become the option school. 
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I agree with you that there's an opportunity to put a choice school there, but that's not the only aspect of the discussion. We also have to consider which school would move there. Creating new choice programs is not on the table, the SB has been very clear about that, so which existing program could we move to that part of the county (regardless of which school it would be, let's set that aside for a moment) where relocating the school wouldn't have a significant negative affect on the program itself or the school population? I know the SB said they're not going to reach those decisions in the first stage, that the first stage will only be deciding which sites should be neighborhood and which sites should be choice and that which choice programs go where will be the second stage, but we all know they're at least thinking about where schools could move (e.g., they couldn't make Campbell a neighborhood school without consideration of whether there's a suitable alternative location for the Expeditionary Learning program).[/quote]

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