Reply to Who said there isn't a North-South divide?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]No it doesn’t. It’s one county. S Arlington is approximately 1/3 of the size of N Arlington.[b] It’s an Arlington problem. [/quote][/b]

One that can't be addressed countywide without "busing." You can nibble at the edges with boundaries across 50, but not too much, and you will still probably end up with more schools closer to 50%. As I said before, this would be better than the current state of a couple of school (one of which IS in North Arlington) continuing to have poverty levels above 65%. Look at a map. You push SFH from Ashlawn into Carlin Springs, then you have to move some of the high density CAFs near Columbia Pike to an adjacent school. What are the adjacent schools? Barcroft (59%) or Abingdon (47%). I think it would have to be Anbjngdin if we're doing this for fr/l balancing. So, then you move some kids from Barcroft to Barrett? Well, the closest PUs to Barrett are the wealthiest part of Barcroft. So maybe you then push a few of the Buckingham PUs to Long Brach, bringing Barrett's fr/l percentage down from 65%, probably not all the way to 50% though, and Long Branch goes up a bit. But back to Barcroft, now who do you move into Barcroft to fill it? Can't move Alcova, they are already in the zone, for now. What else is adjacent? If you take some of Arlington Forest N to Barcroft, that takes higher income families out of Barrett. Then there's  Randolph. Okay, so that's not going to help Barcroft with fr/l numbers. There is no way to move the kids around to adjacent boundaries that would get the numbers to the countywide averages, and if you're waiting for countywide busing, it'll never happen. I still say aiming for 50% for the current highest poverty schools is better than accepting a few outliers. 50% gives your school Title 1 money, plus 50% of the kids from non-disadvantaged homes. This is a good position to be in, and definitely better than a school that's around 80% fr/l with no PTA. If you want North Arlington to be part of this conversation, go to the CB and advocate for Affordable Housing in N Arlington outside of Buckingham, Courthouse, and Rosslyn. That's the only way this changes. [/quote]

Why don't we just stop building CAFs entirely? They aren't going to be built north of Lee Highway, so at this point we're just working on building ghettos. [/quote]

Its an industry that is totally baked into our local politics. Its a system, not a line item. I'm not saying it's corrupt but a lot of people's livelihoods depend o  it. It's totally institutionalized.
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That was hard for me to understand when I first moved here. Many young families are naive and assume their neighborhood school is going to naturally improve as more familes with kids move into Douglas Park, Alcova etc... as you become educated to the Arlington Way, you come to understand why that will never happen.
North Arlington homeowners are much more savvy when it come to this. That’s why Lee Highway has take so long to develop. They know what they are doing.[/quote]
...so how do we fix it?

I mean, I am probably one of those naive people you are talking about. For every CAF though, more market rate housing is being built. I can't imagine everyone buying 1million + townhouses is going private...[/quote]

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