Reply to APS Boundary tool--anyone get it to work yet?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Q: Is APS trying to make Wakefield and Yorktown more diverse by relocating certain planning units?

A: Demographics is [b]one of six criteria[/b] to be considered but the [b]reason for this refinement process is to address overcrowding[/b] at Washington-Lee and balance the enrollment among the three comprehensive high schools.[/quote]

I have been looking at the numbers around the planning units surrounding Wakefield and WL. Even if we select the ones that people have been pushing for, it looks like the huge numbers are in the final year 2020.  I'm guessing this cohort (currently 11 years old) may be a huge population?  (One of my coworkers had mentioned a cohort born before my kid 2010 required additional K classes to be added.)

Anyway, if APS means what it says about addressing overcapacity first and taking into account all 6 criteria, I am less convinced all of the western planning units by the Pike are sacrosanct.  Obviously, this is not the comprehensive boundary change that will start in 2020 for the freshmen entering HS in 2022 (and I for one, support revisiting the Yorktown Island and perhaps creating a replacement one in the west), and the families with kids who will be in HS 2017-2021 will be most impacted, but it doesn't seem to make sense to have so many students will at WL with the suggestions of many on this board.  It will be interesting to see which what the SB ultimately does.[/quote]

If those units get moved to Wakefield in this process, they will never be moved back or to another HS in the future, because it's too disruptive. The whole thing hinges on this: if they move the west pike planning units to Wakefield, they are going to destabilize one of the three comprehensive high schools. Will they do it? Maybe. They've shown themselves to be completely incompetent in many other ways. But this process needs to be looked at holistically. Pushing the FARMs rate to 65%, not including the economically disadvantaged kids who will be generated from the hundreds of new units of affordable housing underway in the Wakefield boundary, at a school that is poised to demographically equalize (on its own, without some intervention by APS), would just be stupid. Let's move the fewest number of students that we can now without totally altering the demographics of two schools, so that the fewest number of students are affected by the changes. Give Wakefield Arlington Forest and give YHS some of the eastern Pike. And everybody else is status quo. W-L will still be slightly larger than the other two schools until the 1300 seats come online somewhere and the boundaries shift again. And Wakefield will be smaller temporarily, as it should be, with the number of disadvantaged students it's responsible for educating. We can relieve some overcrowding at W-L without totally altering the balance of demographics or forcing many more walkers onto buses. Reasonable compromise, no? Better than screwing Wakefield just to get W-L to exactly 100% capacity and not a student more. [/quote]

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