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[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]Build new facilities in South Arlington, where the county needs them, already!

Stop messing around with boundaries and whatnot to try to alleviate crowding in the south by moving kids north. Please.

And I live in North Arlington. [/quote]

They can’t.  APS has stated In published reports that they are beyond the point of building their way out of the capacity crisis.  They have to work with the facilities that they have.  Even if they had the capital, it takes 10 years to bring a new school online.  I would expect boundary changes, relocatable classrooms, and potentially leased office space for schools in the future.  They can’t build anything new.  It’s not even worth discussing.[/quote]

It really defies all logic to say Arlington county cannot fix this.  Sure different entities within Arlington county own different parcels of land, but come on.  It is all one county government.

The overcrowding has been an issue for more than a decade.  Poor planning then, and continued poor planning now, makes the problem worse.  Leasing space for schools is a good idea though.  It would be quicker than building a new school.[/quote]

I agree that that they have been terrible planners.  The money spent on HB Woodlawn-  a school in Rosslyn surrounded by current and projected affordable housing units- blows my mind.  Those kids aren’t in the walk zone for anywhere and we could have  had some type of neighborhood school there rather than a fancy option school for rich people.  But I do take APS at face when they say they aren’t building more schools.  I think they are going to try and be creative with existing schools and possibly leading vacant office space.  G_d help us.[/quote]

Do you not know the history? APS wanted to put a neighborhood school there. But the neighborhood around the now Hamm complained and lobbied very loudly, so APS caved, and they kicked HB to Rosslyn and put Hamm on HB's old site. [/quote]

I remember this. The neighborhood around the then HB wanted the site, said their snowflakes couldn't go to school in Rosslyn, so they killed the plan to build a ms in Rosslyn. And we got Hamm.

I don't have a lot of sympathy for people in that neighborhood who now may have to take a bus to Williamsburg to balance capacity. They caused this situation! [/quote]

I’m sure I’ll be sorry I asked, but what is wrong with Rosslyn?  The new HB site is beautiful  see.  That could have been a brand new neighborhood school in a community surrounded by multi family housing and around the corner from a metro stop (ideally it would be walkable for most but I think siting schools near public transit makes sense in our community).

If APS really caved to the parents, shame on them.  I hope they repurpose that brand new school in the heart of Rosslyn as a true community resource. What a waste.[/quote]

Yes HB Heights is amazing. That is NOT what the neighborhood school would have gotten. They were planning to include 300 more students for a 1000 student neighborhood school on the same plot. The airy spacious building would this be turned into a warehouse, with kids bussed from 3 miles away in rush hour Rosslyn traffic.

I actually live in Rosslyn in one of the high rises (my kids are in high school now), and there are very few kids in any of the multi family housing in Rosslyn, at least middle school or high school age. So majority of a Rosslyn middle school would come from near the Stratford site[/quote]

Sure, but some of them would have come from Lyon Village, the neighborhood north of Langston, etc. There would have been walkers.

Meanwhile all the parents who insisted that their kids needed to be able to walk to MS and therefore needed the site on Vacation Lane shifted gears as soon as the decision was made and insisted the site needed to provide convenient dropoff lanes.

My kids would have gone to the Wilson Blvd 1300-student middle school, and I would have been fine with that. [/quote]

Ok now I’m back on your side 🤣.  I wasn’t here for this situation.  But a neighborhood school in Rosslyn a block from the metro in a county that is getting incredibly urban seems like a no-brained.  And yes I agree North Highlands, Lyon Village, and maybe even parts of Lyon Park could have used this school if it were a MS.[/quote]

Do any of you live in the urban bits? There almost ZERO families there. It’s all DINKS and singles. That’s partly why Arlington has such a low percentage of households that have children (19%), because of all these urban households without kids. There almost no 3 bedrooms. Most apartments don’t have any playspace. The only families are in affordable housing, because they don’t have better options. [/quote]

There are a lot of kids in the urban bits even if the percentage per unit is low. Why do you think we did that whole switcheroo thing a few years ago? Apparently they aren’t the kids that you think count as real people with real needs. [/quote]

Sorry I meant middle and high school kids. Even the affordable housing families tend to leave after a decade there for something bigger. [/quote]

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