Reply to APS - Bye TJ

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]What if Arlington and Alexandria considered opening a joint program. Could help with crowding and creating a specialized program that is easier for both [/quote]

That would be even more expensive.  Remember this is about budget cuts.[/quote]

Yes the whole point is that Fairfax already has the whole set up, [b]the only extra cost to us is transportation to Fairfax (we are paying to educate our kids either way)[/b]. Setting up a new school, or adding more advanced classes for a very small number of students, would be a new cost for APS.

And, as has already been said, you can't pay tuition to attend a governor's school, and you can't charge for transportation (unless you charge all high schoolers, which we don't), or decline to offer it (unless we don't provide it to any high schoolers, which again, is not our policy). [/quote]

While that's how it's supposed to work in theory, in reality it costs APS more than just transportation costs to send students to TJ.  APS basically sends to FCPS the entire cost per pupil for each APS student who goes to TJ.  Most of the per-pupil costs are effectively fixed rather than variable costs, though, because the small number of students APS sends to TJ doesn't move the needle on how many teachers are needed, how many high school buses are needed, how big the high schools need to be, etc.  So APS sends the full per-pupil cost to FCPS for those students but doesn't see any drop in its own operating budget accordingly, which means those students effectively cost APS twice as much as students who stay in the APS system.[/quote]

True, but we never know how much the marginal cost is for any kid in APS or how that compares to the system per pupil costs. Some kids need buses, some don't. Some kids are in band or sports, some aren't. Some kids have IEPs and need a lot of supports, some don't. It isn't fair to say that because we pay Fairfax the full per-person cost of those students but APS costs' aren't reduced by the same amount that it "costs" us to send kids to TJ -- for all we know we are coming out ahead on some of those kids. (Unlikely, but possible.)

Of the more than half a billion dollars that APS spends, $300,000 to send our best science and math students to the #1 science and math high school in the country seems like a pretty good deal. [/quote]

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