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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]"Likewise, if Nottingham's boundaries were redrawn, you AND many (even all) of your near neighbors are going with you."

I'm the PP who mentioned wanting to stay in Neighborhood.  Given that my house is one block from Nottingham, I don't think I'd be moved if a boundary were redrawn, unless Nottingham was on the very outside edge of the boundary.  I'm not sure how familiar you are with Nottingham, but with a school as severely overcrowded as we are, we are still a predominently "walker" school - the actual area we cover is quite small, especially when compared to some of the other schools (Jamestown in particular) that have larger boundaries.  So no, I don't think staying in neighborhood is aridiculous distinction for me.  I live very close to the school, all my kids friends live close to the school, we want to stay with our neighborhood peers.

That said, I didn't argue against redrawing boundary lines, I agree, something needs to be done.  I argued against arbitrarily deciding that one or some small number of kids should go to a different, less crowded school just to ease the burden at your "home" school.  In that case, no, your neighbors would not be moving with you.

[b]To the person who suggested that people might voluntarily move to a different less crowded school, I think current experience is already showing that this is not likely.  People could, right now, ask for transfers to different schools and it's likely that a transfer would be allowed for someone asking to move from a more crowded school to a less crowded school.  However I do not exactly see people lining up in droves to do that[/b].[/quote]

The problem with this, too, is that there aren't really any less crowded schools in N. Arlington - they are all at or over capacity and expected to get more and more crowded in coming years.  So, unless you are will to send your child to S. Arlington for school, I don't think that would work.  Like a PP said, we really need to re-open some of the former elementary schools - Madison Ctr, etc.[/quote]

Trailer would be better. More modern and comfortable and much less expensive. And you wouldn't displace the adult day care and preschools at Madison.

Moreover, you're talking about shifting children from one of the most well-equipped schools (funded in part by PTA donations by their parents) into an archaic building. Unless a reopening came with a hefty budget to rehab the building to equivalent standards, I don't think you're going get a lot of support for this one.

But I don't really fret about class size the way some people do.[/quote]

I don't really mind class size increasing either until you get over about 28 kids per class (I am a teacher).  But this goes beyond class size because the school populations are increasing so rapidly.  For example, there are 104 first graders at Glebe right now compared to 72 5th graders and only 60 4th graders.  You could not just increase class size to deal with that huge growth in population, you need to add 2-3 classes.  If this keeps happening over 3-4 years, each grade will have 4-5 classes - rather than 2-3.  That would be 10-15 extra trailers that are needed.  The grounds of Glebe are actually pretty large so they could probably fit, but a lot of the field space would be gone.  To me, class size is not the issue because it is not even possible to increase class size to solve the problem - unless you are willing to have classes of 30-40 kids!

http://www.apsva.us/cms/lib2/VA01000586/Centricity/Domain/11/2011-12%20Membership/123111.pdf[/quote]

One of the reasons we are in Arlington is because the class sizes are soooo much smaller than Fairfax County.  I was shocked to see the ratios.  I am feeling pretty lucky and I know our Arlington elem school is fighting hard to keep it this way.  We have had 3 meetings on tis subject in the last week.  ASFS is ready to fight this and the block scheduling proposed for middle schools![/quote]

I think it's good that Arlington Science Focus and Arlington Traditional and the other county-wide schools are being made to absorb more students to pick up the slack.

I was really alarmed reading a PTA thing recently from Jamestown in which a fuss was made about "caps" at Arlington Traditional that comply with their "philosophy" -- turns out the info was immaterial b/c the board is already going to be increasing the population of those schools to take pressure off some of the neighborhood schools, but any pushback against the board that divides the schools is going to be ineffective.

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