Reply to The demise of McKinley ES (APS)

Forum Index » Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)

Reply to "The demise of McKinley ES (APS)"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Look, I am not saying to go after Nottingham-- that was not the intent of my post. I am just saying that the excess capacity is north of Lee Highway, and you can't fill that without crazy boundaries. If you don't want to believe me, that's fine, but if you look at the planning units and the data it isn't as easy as you think when you eyeball it. Per your example, the two planning units in the overlapping Nottingham/Discovery walk zone that are currently going to Nottingham are 17020 and 17030. It sounds like you live up there, so I don't have to tell you that 17020 is literally directly across the street from Nottingham. You think those parents are going to be okay when it comes time to draw boundaries and they are told that they can't go to the school that they literally stare at from their front porch?

But even if you go with the tough love approach and move them, you still have a math problem because McKinley holds 684 kids and Tuckahoe and Nottingham are a lot smaller buildings (545 and 519). By the time you shift everyone northward (and Tuckahoe families westward to Reed), you will end up filling Tuckahoe with a majority of current McKinley and Ashlawn kids-- and those students are going to drive right past the McKinley building to get to Tuckahoe. That doesn't make sense.

Drawing boundaries for this proposal is going to be a CF and a lot more kids are going to end up getting moved in the end. Everyone needs to realize that. Again, just look at the middle school boundary process if you don't believe me. We are reopening all those boundaries AGAIN immediately after we draw these boundaries because they have to get more kids into Hamm and Williamsburg. 
[/quote]

So then what are you advocating for? You can't just say "Not McKinley" without putting forth a more reasonable alternative.  Your alternative proposal may be to move an option school north of Lee Highway, but then own it rather than doing this song and dance so there can be an actual discussion.  Make the case for why your proposal is better when you look at all of the considerations, not just the narrow subset that favors your preferred outcome.

Also, in addition to 17020 and 17030, 17031 and 17034 are currently zoned to Nottingham but are within the 1-mile walking boundary for Discovery and could also be designated as walk zone.  They were considered last time, and while they weren't put on the short list at that point, those short lists were deliberately kept shorter than necessary to make it easier to justifying moving planning units between schools even if they were technically within the one-mile walk zone (if you're going to be bused to Discovery, it's just as easy to bus you to another nearby school).  As for 17020, while a handful of houses are across the street from Nottingham, most are not.  Some are actually closer to Discovery than to Nottingham.

As for the whole "people will ride past McKinley to their neighborhood school," so what?  Some kids ride past Campbell to get to Carlin Springs and past Claremont to Abingdon, does that also offend you?  If we have option schools, some kids will ride past those option schools on their way to neighborhood schools, so the only way to address this concern is to disband all option programs.  Is that what you're advocating?[/quote]

So to be clear, I am not in the Save McKinley camp. But I am in the camp that wants to see these boundaries drawn right the first time so we don't have to reopen them in two years when we realize Reed, Ashlawn, and Glebe are still bursting at the seams. Rip the band-aid off and do it right. There is no way to make sure you do that though unless you draw boundaries in conjunction with making decisions about where option schools move. This process is not going to lead to a good result if it is all done piecemeal and doesn't allow for growth in the schools where we know more kids are going. And yes, that may mean that another NW school ends up being the option school-- I don't really care, because my kids are out of elementary school by then anyway. But as a taxpayer, I am tired of paying money for new school construction like Discovery and Hamm that then sit under-enrolled while other schools are crammed in trailers. That's not good for the kids or the teachers. I am advocating for good planning and this process is not that.

[/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