Reply to APS DHMS walk zone nuclear option

Forum Index » VA Public Schools other than FCPS

Reply to "APS DHMS walk zone nuclear option"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Why don’t they just let the Hamm walk zone stay at Hamm and bus everyone else to Williamsburg?  Wouldn’t this keep everyone happy? [/quote]Yes.  And it's consistent with APS diversity goals.  [/quote]

I don’t see how recreating the Rosslyn Island to Williamsburg is fine but moving immersion to Williamsburg is a nonstarter. It’s the exact same issues. [/quote]

No, it's not. Immersion is a countywide program and you need to get students to Williamsburg from all over the County. Rosslyn island to Williamsburg is just a few buses of kids from the NE quadrant to the NW quadrant. Also, those Rosslyn students would be assigned to WMS; whereas immersion students have to choose to continue in the program and many have a far more convenient default and therefore more likely to opt-out....defeating the purpose (alleviating crowding in south Arlington) of moving the program.[/quote]

Immersion runs busses all over the county no matter where it’s located. Also, why should we care that immersion students have to choose between an inconvenient special program and a more convenient neighborhood option? It’s optional! We should be prioritizing the default. It’s not like Gunston is convenient for people who live near Rosslyn and Courthouse but according to the map they still attend. Williamsburg is projected to be at 65% in a few years. We could just move immersion there and be done without adding bus runs for walk zone kids or creating islands. [/quote]

OK. Go ahead with that plan and see how it works. I'll put my money down on "it isn't going to play out the way you think it will."[/quote]

Yes, we already heard this. “Moving Key will kill the school. Families won’t be willing to travel to a new location.”

And yet. 92% of the students moved to the new location. Of the 49 that didn’t, 20 moved out of the county entirely. If the program is truly strong and valuable, people will follow it. 
[/quote]

It’s not just about current families moving to a new location.  It’s about needing native Spanish speakers for the model to work moving forward.  Been to Williamsburg lately?  How do you think that will work out?

For those of you rabid to put a stop to any change, this idea isn’t it.[/quote]

If Spanish speakers don’t want to enroll their children in Immersion, moving to closer won’t work either. I have heard exactly 0 parents IRL say the reason they don’t want Immersion is location. And even telling them that their children’s outcomes will be better isn’t doing the trick. Maybe they don’t want the program? And it’s a bit patronizing to try to make them want it because it’s for their own good.

Option programs need to go where there is space and that’s that. The rest of the county shouldn’t be shuffled around and disrupted for an OPTIONAL program. [/quote]

APS is not going to run option programs in a way in which they are likely to fail because you don’t want your kid to take a bus.  You don’t think there’s a whole contingent of people that will surface to speak up against that if APS staff is dumb enough to suggest it?

Some of these arguments are just such a waste of time.  It’s like toddlers tantruming.

[/quote]

If moving a program across a 5 mile wide county is its demise, it never had strong support. It just makes sense to put option schools where we have capacity — that’s how they actually got started back in 70s when APS had empty schools and thought of using them for options. The only contingent to speak up will the white parents in immersion using the program to avoid their neighborhood schools — they wanted a convenient “better” school rather than actual commitment to immersion.

Calling people “toddlers” — I see you ad hominem attack. [/quote]Gunston and WMS are 1 hour and 9 minutes apart by public transit, at a minimum.  The majority of immersion students live in the Gunston boundaries.  [/quote]

Why in the world are you talking about public transit?  They will be taking school buses.  These are middle school kids, they take the bus home or they take the late bus home.[/quote]

DP  But everyone keeps citing the difficulty for parents - and the poor parents -  to get across the County to pick up their kid, meet with the teacher, attend school events, etc. Parents without cars would have to rely on public transit.[/quote]

MS is not like ES.  There are very few reasons to go to the MS as a parent.  My son just finished MS and even this year there was a remote option for conferences. I don't think this argument works as well for MS.  Sure there are times when you have to pick up a sick kid but the older they get the fewer and farther between these times become.  MS parents don't get invited to classroom events during the day.  The birthday celebrations, class parties, skit/shows are left behind in ES.

In response to some other posters my son went to Key and one of the reasons he did not continue in immersion was distance.  Gunston is just too far.  The bus would have been before 7am. My son ended up going to Hamm and he could walk, ride his bike, take the school bus, or public bus.  The bus picked him up at 7:23 and he was at school 5 min later.  My kid needed that extra 30 min of sleep. Our family is not the only one that left the program due to distance.  It is hard to say with certainty but my son might have continued if the program were at WMS.

Someone also commented that GMS was full of white immersion parents tying to escape their neighborhood school. That makes no sense unless per this thread you are implying that were trying to avoid WMS.  Most families we knew would have been DHMS, TJ, Kenmore, or Swanson, but I am sure there would have been some WMS too, but not enough to fill the entire English speaking part of the program. 
The families I know, who stuck with immersion did so b/c they valued an immersion education over other benefits such as a walkable middle school.

As for whether or not the kids in the walk zone walked to DHMS, I believe most did.  They are middle schoolers so they biked or walked. Again this is not the same as ES where some walkers were dropped off by parents on their way to work.

I do feel for the families who will go from a walkable MS to the bus but it is what it is.  APS loves messing with boundaries.  [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics