Reply to Is Nottingham going to be the new option school in Arlington or its still being decided?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm so torn about this whole process.

In hindsight, it became clear that the decision to build Discovery was the wrong one.  The resulting boundaries were a mess, caused great inequities in school size and placed 3 neighborhood schools really close to each other.  APS should have built at Reed where they plan to now (instead of on the hill) and the schools would have been spread out enough that the boundaries wouldn't have been so weird (I mean, look at McKinley through Tara-Leeway/HP-OK).

But, they didn't do that.

Now, they need more seats and, instead of just staying with the status quo, they decided to take a look at the whole system.  Where would they put neighborhood seats if none were already classified?  Key/ASFS kicked this off, but it had been a long time coming.......basically since the Discovery ribbon cutting and the McK/Tuck/Nott boundary debacle.  If someone came in and looked at the map with fresh eyes, where would they put an option school?  I think that's what they are trying to do.  [/quote]

You could not be more wrong about Discovery. Tuckahoe and Nottingham were so over capacity at the time that the excess capacity from those schools alone could fill nearly 70% of Discovery. We needed another school up there and have had no trouble filling them since because the student population up there just keeps growing. The three schools collectively are over capacity now, because while Tuckahoe and Discovery are both under capacity by 4 and 5 students respectively, Nottingham is over capacity by more than that. And if you look at the current boundary around the three schools together, it is very compact, so no Ashlawn/McKinley-style boundaries were needed to fill them.

We can talk about whether Reed was a mistake, but Discovery was very much needed.[/quote]

They are only over capacity because Tuckahoe PUs go all the way to Westover.  If Tuckahoe/Nottingham/Discovery only pulled students from above Lee Highway and EFC you would understand how much capacity is up there.[/quote]

If we didn't have Discovery and Nottingham and Tuckahoe only drew from north of Lee Highway, those two schools would be McKinley-style overcapacity, if not worse. If that's okay with you, I guess you're saying that the current McKinley situation is acceptable?[/quote]

But we do have Discovery - so deal with it.  And we will have Reed sooner or later.[/quote]

I don't understand your point, I'm the person saying Discovery was needed, and haven't argued that we don't need Reed (I just said we could talk about it if people felt there were truly too many schools going into NW).[/quote]

If we need all these schools to be neighborhood schools in NW put on your big girl pants and show us a map of what the boundaries would look like. Take away the  PUs from Tuckahoe and Nottingham for Reed and McK.  Fill up Tuckahoe, Nottingham and Discovery.  By the end of this exercise you are going to be looking for kids in McLean and Falls Church because there will be so many empty classrooms in Tuckahoe/Nottingham/Discovery.[/quote]

To be fully transparent about my interests here, we are a currently Nottingham family that, based on the new walk zone maps, will probably move to Tuckahoe even if Nottingham stays a neighborhood school, so my interests do not totally square with those of the families who live right around Nottingham. I actually do think we should have an option program in NW based on the population and seat distributions, I just think Nottingham is the wrong choice. I think it's the wrong choice because even if you take out the overlapping walk zones, it's still more walkable than half the schools in NW, which means increased busing needs and slashing funding elsewhere to pay for it. It's also the site able to take the most trailers in NW, which means it's a critical part of managing future student population growth and overcapacity in NW (no matter which school you take, NW will be over capacity from day one afterward). It is almost as removed as you can get from South Arlington, which means the program you move there will become significantly less accessible to low-income families, so the net effect of moving an option program to Nottingham would be to worsen the overall diversity balance rather than improve it. The only thing the staff can point to is "boundaries will be hard," but that's not the only place boundaries in NW will be hard, so they're just prioritizing one "hard" over a different "hard" with no apparent benefit to choosing this one. There is no school in NW that is a slam dunk, all of the relevant considerations point to some schools and cut against others, but pretty much all of them cut against Nottingham as a good option site. [/quote]

Let's look at some numbers.  [b][u]Tuckahoe and Nottingham will lose 274-379 students[/b][/u]  once Reed opens.  Where are we going to find these students?

Should be Reed/McK

16061	66
16060	41
16050	42
16130	41
16070	84
____ 274

Could be Reed/McK

16140	14
16110	54
16040	37
____105

Discovery can't really expand East/South.  [b][u]So NW Arlington isn't looking good unless Jamestown becomes the Montessori.[/b][/u]
[/quote]

Wow 274-379 open seats between Tuck/Not/Disc.  If Jamestown and Taylor get a few planning units from Discovery with the Key/ASFS changes we could have an empty school in NW.[/quote]

Which brings us full circle back to the reason why the NW quadrant is being eyed for an option elementary school.  [/quote]

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