Reply to What do you expect from APS staff (option/neighborhood) on 4/30?

Forum Index » Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)

Reply to "What do you expect from APS staff (option/neighborhood) on 4/30?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm going to paraphrase/cross-post what I just posted on the ATS to IB thread, because I think it's very relevant to this discuss as well but I realize most of the people here aren't looking at that thread. All of the sniping going on is just noise and details, but there is a really big core decision that needs to be made regarding our priorities as a community. There's no point in sniping about whether Nottingham should be the option site in NW until the bigger decision was made.

Leaving aside the exact details of where, the choice presented in the second draft analysis is essentially this: Is it more important that we maintain/improve neighborhood school proximity and reduce crowding in South Arlington, or that we maintain/improve access to choice programs while also improving the diversity balance across elementary schools?

Moving immersion to ATS and ATS to another school in NW (Nottingham or otherwise) will reduce access to ATS from South Arlington and make it less diverse overall. This will for a few reasons, namely that the new location will make VPI less accessible to ED families, it would increase applications to ATS from that corner of the community, and it would reduce applications from South Arlington. The transfer report on ATS makes it pretty clear that proximity to the program is a big part of who attends. On the plus side, keeping both of these option programs in North Arlington means more neighborhood seats in South Arlington, so more families there can be in close proximity to less crowded neighborhood schools.

On the other hand, keeping ATS where it is and moving immersion to Barcroft means maintaining greater access to ATS for South Arlington, making immersion even more accessible, and potentially breaking up the poverty clusters around Carlin Springs and Barcroft (and possibly cascading to Randolph as well) if APS were to start busing kids across 50 (Ashlawn will have tons of excess capacity after Reed, and busing across 50 means no crazy boundaries there anymore). The resulting shift in boundaries could do a lot to improve socioeconomic diversity generally in the elementary schools. The downside to all of this increased access to option schools and improvements in diversity is that South Arlington would have fewer neighborhood seats (how many fewer would depend on how the moves affected applications to choice programs from North Arlington), and many families may lose proximity to their neighborhood schools. Since ED families generally face the greatest challenges from losing proximity to neighborhood schools and from overcrowding, this is no small consideration.

That's a really big decision to make on policy/priorities, and it's not an easy one. Until we decide where we fall on that, the rest of this debate is just a waste of our time.[/quote]

Staff can certainly try to draw boundaries and focus on proximity to neighborhood schools in SA,  so as to reduce crowding, but it's not something they can directly control. Henry didn't get super crowded because it has a huge boundary or particularly dense housing. It got crowded because it was more attractive than other SA neighborhood schools. Oakridge is a bit of a diff story, but there's an element of that too. People sort themselves out. None of the lower performing schools are crowded, by Arlington standards anyway.[/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