Reply to Overcrowding at Arlington Traditional School

Forum Index » Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)

Reply to "Overcrowding at Arlington Traditional School"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]ATS has 542 students.  McK has 757.  At least according to APS, ATS has 4 trailers, McK has 8.   It's more than bursting at the seams and[b] lost its field too,[/b] after years of construction.  And didn't gain an extra music or art or gifted teacher to account for the extra enrollment.  Those are facts too.

[/quote]

Ummmm...[b]what field did they lose[/b]? They will lose some field if they get more trailers. The current location of the trailers was an unusable green space.

You do bring up a good question. How many art teachers and music teachers do most schools in APS get?[/quote]

No.  Before construction, there was actually a baseball field at McKinley.[b]  You have to go back in time to find it, though.[/b]  Starting a few years ago, they covered it with trailers for construction with the promise that the field/outdoor space would be restored after construction.  Oops.[/quote]

OP here. To say you have to go back in time to "find" the baseball field is slander. [color=red]McKinley had a baseball field before, [b]and it has one now[/b][/color]. The difference is that APS has effectively "moved in the left field fence" for the main baseball diamond, and the "right field" fence for the secondary diamond.

That changes baseball and softball from a two to a three-dimensional experience. Kids now get to hit the ball off the wall, when they couldn't before. The children experience geometric concepts during PE in a way they never could under the old unplanned field setup. They get to experience a "Green Monster" or "Polo Grounds" experience (for you senior citizen types).

My larger point stands. APS is trying to lard Arlington Traditional with all sorts of kids so that they don't have to listen to people in neighborhood schools complain.

What APS perhaps SHOULD do is relocate ATS to the Discovery physical plant. Then you move Discovery kids to Nottingham, Nottingham ones to Glebe and Science Focus, and Glebe ones to the ATS building. I would be OK with this IFF:

1. Capacity was held to no more than the current student load at ATS. Then we'd have a physical plant that can actually accommodate the students without the relocatables that go against every traditional educational practice.

2. We are able to harvest enough slots from South Arlington schools (esp. FARMS) not wanting to bring their kids all the way North. In doing so, we graciously relieve some of the North Arlington burden by replacing those South Arlington kids with neighborhood kids. Discovery's current neighborhood, of course, should get first dibs on those slots.

3. The VPI slots at ATS get transferred to McKinley just until the new Reed school opens up. That would free up more spaces in ATS, lessening the impact on the current Discovery and Nottingham neighborhoods.

If we can accomplish all those things, then I'd be OK with moving to a proven facility like Discovery. Otherwise, let's reduce the ATS population so we can get rid of the relocatables and get the school we signed up for and deserve.[/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