Reply to Post-ATS Education - Middle and High School

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It’s not a question of picking apart any one program, but rather looking at what works and implementing it system-wide, to the extent possible. If Montessori is so amazing, then why is it so limited? If ATS has an ideal learning environment, why is it only at one school?

They just eliminated the year-round program at Carlin Springs because of cost, why don’t they look at other programs for lessons learned and stop all of this inter-county transfer nonsense.

[/quote]

The modified calendar was at Barcroft.

But I otherwise generally agree with your sentiment.  The problem with IB, however, is the expense.  If APS wants to commit to making every HS an IB school, then that's one thing.  But as long as a small %age of students opt to take the program (full-time), that's a program that makes more fiscal sense to retain at one location.  It requires specially trained teachers, actual in-person teachers for languages, and a yearly fee to the IB organization of about $10K.

The main take-away from ATS that's needed at every school is high expectations and some degree of structure.  All elementary schools should also be using the same curriculum and instructional methods.  APS says they are; but that's not completely accurate.[/quote]
So each school bus that is unnecessary (from bussing walkers to a different school for "equity") is around 90k.  I live in the Innovation walk zone but am bussed to asfs.  For my neighborhood (all of which is in the innovation walk zone), there are 7 buses.  That's over 500k that is being spent unnecessarily because they didn't want to bus Rosslyn to Long Branch or Taylor (those kids are already on a bus to innovation, but it would be a longer bus ride to another school).  I'm glad we stayed at asfs personally because we were looking to buy a house in the neighborhood around there, so I'm not complaining because I care or because I think when they revise boundaries they should move us to save money.  In fact I think people would be really upset if they moved us to innovation at this point since starting over with an entirely new community at asfs was hard this year after coming back from the pandemic for most of the neighborhood kids and the idea of doing it again in two years is slightly ridiculous.  But, hearing you complain about 10k for a reputable IB program when you compare it with things like how much money is spent bussing people for the sake of bussing them is slightly ridiculous.  To put it in perspective, I think one of those videos APS puts out to pat itself on the back (the back to school videos, etc) are probably 10k.  This is in the noise![/quote]

First of all, I wasn't complaining.  I was just offering a perspective as to why keeping some programs at select locations might make sense.
Second of all, I understand  what so many people on these complaint boards apparently can't - that it's not actually possible to balance enrollment systemwide at all the neighborhood schools without some students going to a school that isn't the absolute closest to their home.  So sometimes what seems like a wasted and unnecessary bus really isn't.  ASFS/Key now Innovation have always been a mess in terms of walking to the neighborhood school.  And you seem to think it's fine for others' kids to have unnecessarily long bus rides so yours doesn't get bussed at all because you can walk to a different school.  And, even your reasoning suggests they aren't just bussing for the sake of bussing, as if they redistricted you now it would be hard on the kids because of the "community" factor.  Well, other kids have "community factors" too.  People like you just can't see how the things in your own school/neighborhood/area impact things in others' school/neighborhood/area.  That's why APS makes these decisions and not individual neighborhoods or parent groups.  Unfortunately, APS listens too much to neighborhoods and parent groups when making their decisions.[/quote]
So this is an example of how people shouldn’t talk about things they don’t know.
There are over 200 kids in my neighborhood that can walk to innovation.  My neighborhood was the only part of Asfs to stay at asfs this year.  Instead of allowing us to walk to school (less than 500 ft for over 100 kids btw, it is literally across the street), we are bussed to asfs.  Conversely, parts of Rosslyn that are 0.9 miles from innovation and 1.2 miles from asfs respectively are bussed to innovation because of a desire to maintain a contiguous boundary and because they didn’t like the optics of bussing them past a school to another one.  So instead of giving those kids a two minute longer bus ride, they are spending over a half a million dollars in bussing. They also didn’t just move everyone from asfs to innovation because the school was projected to open over capacity.  It opened at under 2/3rds capacity (less than 400 kids)!  There is no way you can objectively look at this situation and say that this was well planned.

Now the damage has been done, I am not ok with my second grader having to switch school communities again because aps screwed up.  When school started, we figured out that there were no kids from asfs in her class.  Literally not a single one.   According to other parents, there are only a handful in each other class, the school is mostly kids who came from taylor and Ashlawn.  So no I’m not ok with her having to move communities again because aps screwed up.  You cannot look at this objectively and say this is best for the county! It’s so badly managed![/quote]

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