Reply to APS - Who is running for School Board?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Steven = "Oh no, my kid will be moved and I don't like it so I guess I will run for the School Board!"[/quote]
So I know him outside of this context.  I think his post came off badly.  He first became interested in school related issues when the issue with moving key came up in spring of 2018 (2 years ago).  I think he understands why running for the school board now would have no effect on that decision (since theoretically boundaries will be decided by then).  He's been extremely involved in the Key community since then (and before), but he hasn't been one of the people fighting moving the school.  I think the whole enrollments and transfer change, which precipitated the first attempt to move key, which then precipitated the swap, which then precipitated this current attempt to move key.  From an outside looking in perspective, this entire thing has been such a waste of time and energy and money -- APS staff obviously thinks that Key needs to move but the school board keeps squelching any attempt to do so.  If the school board really feels so strongly, they should point blank tell APS staff that they should stop spending time trying to move it.  Either that or revisit some earlier decisions, like the enrollments and transfers policy that turned Key into a pure option school.  Or make Reed into an option school, I'm sure ATS would love to move there.  Strong leadership means being ok with admitting past decisions were wrong, and standing up to angry parents when they are not seeing the bigger picture.  We lack that on the current school board.  I can't say that Steve would do this because I've only interacted with him in non-confrontational contexts, but I don't think characterizing him as a "grudge candidate" is accurate.

He's a really nice guy, and honestly it would be nice to have someone from the north eastern part of the county on the school board.  We have gotten screwed.  There was a priority to build a new school along the R-B corridor over six years ago, that somehow turned into building Reed.  I love Hamm, but it would have made more sense to keep HB where it was, and put a middle school somewhere in Rosslyn (if for no other reason than it offers a little more flexibility since it doesn't have an overlapping walk zone with Williamsburg).  The Yorktown island is a historically bad decision, that we keep perpetuating because its easy.  [/quote]

Any screwing the NE has received has been its own doing.  The community insisted upon a "walkable middle school."  Others fought the HB Woodlawn move; but the NE neighborhood walkers won out.  As for not getting a new school in the RB corridor and it going to Reed instead - that's because there was no readily available site to build another school in NE and Reed is already APS-owned and available.  It should have been built years ago, and it should have been left open to being neighborhood or option depending on the best use when it opens.  That's poor planning; but not screwing NE.

I agree about the waste of time and money.  AGain, if NE hadn't fought moving immersion, and then fought the swap, we wouldn't have wasted so much time.[/quote]
This is besides the point, but any screwing was done by the NW.  Why would the NE (Rosslyn-Clarendon) insist on Hamm which is decidedly not walkable from anywhere East of Kirkwood.  That was the folks around Taylor -- NW arlington -- who didn't want their kids going to an urban school.  The enrollments and transfers came out of issues in South Arlington.  Fighting the swap came from the neighborhood around ASFS (again not the NE, I'm not sure if Ballston/VA square/Cherrydale is in the eastern end of the county), and Key advocates from the NW (the stop the swap signs in Cherrydale and over by Jamestown).  
So many bad decisions over the years.[/quote]

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