Reply to Please explain how Henry parent position on CC makes sense

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]NP. I’ve been following relatively closely but am confused by one thing. When the SB announced the hybrid solution — which I agree 100% was/is stupid, poorly thought out, and poorly articulated, and that Kenmore was/is the right choice for a 4th comprehensive HS — I read it entirely as choice seats for the CC site. I recall the presentation saying something about needing to settle on the educational focus, or whatever the lingo, for those seats. Fast forward 9 months or so, the neighborhoods in question are now rejecting inferior neighborhood seats (fair) *but also* rejecting additional choice seats. So how are we to read this as anything other than the neighborhoods making a grab for their own 4th comprehensive HS (which was basically already rejected as an option by the SB last year) and then throwing a hissy fit when they’re told that isn’t going to happen? Am I misremembering how we got here? Again, I completely and totally agree that this sucks and is stupid, but I don’t see how these neighborhoods truly expected some other outcome. Arl Heights poster and others in the know, what’s the answer?

And please, I’m on the 22204 list serve and am by now familiar with the talking points. Yes, it’s unfair to have inferior neighborhood seats. Yes, no other site has so many choice seats. I’m trying to figure out if I’m really missing information, or if the advocates have just wholly bought into their own spin. [/quote]

Here is my memory for how it went down (Arl Heights poster).  Henry community wanted Henry to be expanded.  APS said no, that property is off the table.  Okay, so we thought all along, there was a master plan to make the Career Center site a 4th High School.  I understand that the County Board told the school board that it would never give a use permit to build on Kenmore because there are so many problems with traffic in that area and Fairfax will never give Arlington egress out the other side of the property.  There are not very many (if any) decent sized lots at that time already owned by APS.

So, we went to the SB and said, Kenmore says no, we'll say yes.  Build your 4th high school here.  School board went with the hybrid plan so that they could get HS seats online faster, but then the high school projections were way higher than the 1400 that they were building for.  So, SB created the Career Center working group for figuring out how to create a 4th high school by a phasing in process.  Again, from the very beginning (and before the school board voted on the hybrid), we had a resolution saying that we opposed inequitable HS seats.  But, we were okay with starting with 800 neighborhood seats (so long as the facilities were in place or walking distance) and then building up to a true urban high school 2400+ students.

So, in a nutshell, we never read the hybrid option as entirely choice seats--and we don't think there was ever a serious plan for those to be option seats.  If that were necessarily true, we could have built onto Henry, and there would have been no need for the working group at all.  We could have went straight to building level planning, a la how they are adding 600 seats at the ed. center.    And to your question about "expecting another outcome"--I guess I never expected APS to propose the seats they are proposing now.  Like I said, in hindsight, I would have encouraged NIMBY-ism.

Another thing is, I guess I don't get all the hate for supporting (or "making a grab") for a 4th high school here.  Kenmore gets its fair share of hate because it blocks a 4th high school, and we get our fair share because we supported one.

I hope this answers your question.   
[/quote]

Oh, and p.s. at the working group, they told us from the very beginning that the decision between neighborhood vs. choice seats would be made by ANOTHER advisory group after this working group.  So, APS never said one way or another until it about 2 weeks ago at one of the working sessions where the Superintendent's plan first lists them as neighborhood seats. [/quote]

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