Reply to South Arlington elementary school boundary adjustments 2019

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There is a powerpoint presentation from that work session online now.

I'm a new poster to this thread, and have read the previous posts. As a preface, our house is zoned for Drew, and that's fine. We've lived here for 6 years and while I'd have preferred to have sent our kid to Montessori at Drew, he probably wouldn't have gotten in anyway. He's in a private Montesori school now and it's becoming clear that APS Montessori only accepts a handful to none of those students as kindergartners or 1st graders. So Drew it is, for the time being.

I'm aware of how bad the graded program scores are at Drew, and so redrawing the boundaries can only improve a school that's had like, 5 principals in six years, one of them a drunk. I'm optimistic, in that regard. I'm not sure what the standards are, but it seems to me that absent an influx of MC students to fill the void left by Montessori leaving Drew, it could be in danger of losing accreditation? I mean, the scores must be truly atrocious, when you consider that the Montessori program is 2 or 3 times larger than the graded program and the combined scores are still the lowest in the county by large margin.

I'm curious where APS thinks it's going to find such MC families nearby that won't pitch a fit at the prospect of getting rezoned to the worst performing school in the county. The scores are not just bad relative to other Arlington elementaries; they are really bad, period.

I guess there's that triangle currently zoned to Henry that is bordered by Glebe, Walter Reed, and the Pike, which seems a likely candidate. Is that enough? I've also heard Abingdon and Oakridge. It seems to me that moving Oakridge students to Drew is probably the top priority, because of overcrowding. The cynic is me thinks what'll probably happen is that the SB will cave to MC and UMC Oakridge parents who don't want to roll the dice on Drew, and so will draw a boundary east of 395 to include basically rental housing, and no owner-occupied housing. I'm probably being too negative, but the Arlington Forest/Wakefield episode is a precedent.

What's the consensus here on Drew's future boundary?
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My kids went to Drew for 10 years (we lived in boundary but they did Montessori) and my sense, from the kids they played with at extended day, is that a lot of the kids in the graded program lived in rental housing and moved frequently. My kids complained every year that their friends did not come back to school, and I think that contributes a lot to the low scores--if the teachers don't know anything about the kids they are teaching each year, they have to spend the first couple months each fall just figuring out their strengths and weaknesses or filling in gaps in their knowledge. You also can't build balanced classrooms they way they do in other schools, where the principals and teachers from each grade make sure there is a mix of kids with different personalities and strengths in each class. I would be very concerned that the SB would draw the new boundaries to include more rental housing--but I bet you're right and the easiest thing for them to do would be to pull Oakridge kids from the Drew side of 395, meaning all those apartments there at Glebe and 24th. Maybe those families are more stable and don't move frequently, but I think it would be better for the school if the boundary included more SFH like Douglas Park. [/quote]

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