Reply to Discussion Boundary Map out for APS- elementary schools

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm thinking it might be a helpful exercise to actually start with the middle schools and try to balance those for enrollment and demographics. Then you could set up elementary schools to feed into the middle schools. Maybe just as a thought exercise. But I would love to see APS not separate small groups of students as they go through levels.

One more thought: It's so clear looking at this map that Key should be a neighborhood school.[/quote]

Yes!! This would hopefully help them avoid another situation where the schools are left with giant capacity imbalances immediately after the boundary is drawn. And, would hopefully help them avoid misaligning a handful of planning units, or moving an option program out of convenience rather than for an instructional reason.

First, they need to decide what the MS options are going to be, then decide which locations make the most sense for those options (not just plop a program somewhere based on available capacity and it’s the easiest thing to do, but base it on INSTRUCTION). For instance, Kenmore would be a good candidate for the arts program, since they already have the nicest arts facilities. I think Spanish immersion could work here as well, given the population. It could also work at Jefferson, and it dovetails with IB, like they plan for the new IB ES). Montessori could go to Hamm or WMS or Swanson, or stay at Gunston. Maybe they might consider where the ES program will eventually relocate and move the MS Montessori close to that. Then they count how many spaces they’d like to make available to the MS option lottery, and then move that exact number of kids out of each the zoned boundaries, plus however many they need to balance capacity somewhat equally. Then work the ES boundaries based on that plan, to minimize the alignment problems. [/quote]

Or as new facilities and additions are built, the option programs become self-contained in preK-8 facilities.[/quote]

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