Reply to Tuckahoe by the numbers - how can it stay a neighborhood school?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]they are advocating not to eliminate their school. is there a theory under which that is wrong? how is it different than a school advocating to address its overcrowding? [/quote]

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with a PTA advocating for the best interests of its school, but there are a couple of issues here:

1) They shouldn't pretend they aren't advocating for a resolution that would come at the expense of others. Keeping Tuckahoe as a neighborhood school [b]means not relocating an option program from another community that also may need more neighborhood seats, and maintaining an arrangement of neighborhood vs. option schools that requires greater busing [/b]means taking school funds that could have gone to other needs and applying it to transportation instead. There still may be good arguments for keeping Tuckahoe a neighborhood school, but those arguments need to address why that's a better solution for the system as a whole rather than taking a "screw everyone else, I want mine" approach.

2) The PTA needs to make sure that the position for which they're advocating actually represents the interests of the full Tuckahoe community rather than just a small subset. There are a lot of Tuckahoe families who currently are bused to Tuckahoe but that could be walkers to other schools, and many of those families would prefer to walk to their actual neighborhood schools rather than be bused further away. By advocating for keeping Tuckahoe a neighborhood school that necessarily would include those families, the PTA is ignoring their needs and interests. This issue is why, for instance, the Nottingham PTA has stopped taking positions on boundary issues (it provides information/updates, but does not advocate or encourage parents to advocate for a particular position). It knows that different families will have conflicting preferences and since it can't properly represent everyone's preferences, it's not going to represent any of them.[/quote]

None of the option schools want to move to Tuckahoe, and the cost to bus countywide to Tuckahoe would surely not be any less than to their more centralized current locations. The ONLY reason Tuckahoe makes any sense as an option is that there might be too many neighborhood seats in the NW quadrant after Reed opens. Moving an option program to Tuckahoe could address that issue, but it creates other issues. It certainly won't be less expensive to bus kids to that location from all across the county. And it could harm existing programs. [/quote]

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