Reply to Discussion Boundary Map out for APS- elementary schools

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Ugh, you all. Find the middle ground. I agree that we should have public schools people want to go to. I agree in theory that option schools could be a tool to help with that. But it's also 100% clear that option schools in Arlington now just serve to give people an out from an "undesirable" neighborhood school.

It was eye-opening last year to see Drew's FARM rate go up 20% (or whatever) when they showed actual attendance vs. boundaries.

Plus the busing costs a ton. Plus when you have schools with super high opt out rates its impossible to predict attendance with high confidence. These are real problems, and large ones.

[b]I think if we dumped option schools we probably could get all schools to under 50% FARMs. [/b]And that would be a really good thing for everyone. You might have to draw some weird boundaries, but at least you could, because you could predict where the kids actually were.

More importantly, it would make everyone invested in solving this. Will some people go private? Yes. And that's fine. But it won't be everyone.

And before you complain about others being "entitled" to the school they "paid for" think about how you are coming across as being "entitled" to anything other than a neighborhood school. Guess what? You aren't entitled to your option school any more than anyone else is entitled to go to their closest school. [/quote]

Not without really “creative” boundaries. Drew’s actual fr/l rate hasn’t been publicized, but there was never a 20 point swing from the attendance zone vs. actually enrolled, it was 9 (66% vs. 57%).

The only school that moved down significantly and to 50/50 was Barcroft, and only with Alcova Heights included and with Gilliam Place going to Fleet; Randolph was about a 5% difference, Carlin Springs would be less. Barcroft is the outlier here.

The option schools aren’t making it any hard to draw economically balanced boundaries. Our County Board made it impossible. APS can’t draw anything approaching a neighborhood boundary and wind up with all schools in South Arlington at 50%. And it doesn’t matter because this isn’t what’s happening anyway. They aren’t going to do squat about segregation, so plan accordingly. [/quote]

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