Reply to Fleeing APS schools for FFX County

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]APS has also renovated and built additions to existing schools in addition to building new schools.  Their biggest fail IMO was not building the HS's bigger when they had a chance.[/quote]

Which is really hard to understand. The DMV probably has more demographers than any area of the country, and they couldn't find an accurate estimate of what their capacity needs would be? Or is it that they got the right advice, but simply disregarded it? [/quote]

I think you need to look back at the history of APS over the past few decades to understand it. APS enrollment peaked in in the early 1960s around 26,500 students and then began a period of decline marked by enrollment increases for a year or two followed by several years of declining enrollment. During this time, APS closed several schools that simply weren't needed anymore and turned those parcels over to the county so that APS didn't have to carry the maintenance expense of buildings it wasn't using. School enrollment finally bottomed out in the 1980s, during which time it bounced up and down around 15,000, a decrease of over 10,000 students from its high 20 years earlier. There wasn't a single dedicated school bond referendum from 1974 to 1987 because there was no need for major construction projects.

Around 1990, school enrollment started to rise again, peaking at around 18,000 students in 2001/2002. During this period of increase, voters (especially those whose children had already aged out of APS) resisted the idea of putting too much money into expanding school capacity because history told them enrollment was just going to fall again and they didn't want a lot of tax money wasted on creating new school seats that wouldn't be needed in a few years. Therefore, the school board (who also couldn't be certain enrollment increases would continue) only planned and requested bond funding for more modest projects, because they didn't want to risk having a bond fail.

Sure enough, after 2001/02, school population started to fall again, confirming for those voters that we shouldn't be putting money into expanding capacity. As recently as 2006, the Yorktown renovation was very controversial because, among other reasons, people felt it was a waste of money to spending $115k expanding a high school when school enrollment was declining. That turned around the next year, though, and since 2007 we have seen enormous increases every year in enrollment. Voters initially still resisted the idea that we needed more school seats because history told them enrollment was just going to fall again so we should make due with trailers in the meantime.

But regardless of voter support, keeping up with the pace of growth over the past decade simply wasn't feasible. APS enrollment has increased by nearly 10,000 students in the past ten years (a more than 50% increase over that period to a record high of about 27,000 students), the equivalent of about 15 elementary schools, 10 middle schools, or 4-5 high schools; roughly an entire school's worth of additional students each year. That is extremely aggressive growth for any school system to manage.[/quote]

Zzzzzzz....[/quote]

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