Reply to APS Elementary Location Working Group 4/12

Forum Index » Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)

Reply to "APS Elementary Location Working Group 4/12"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We don't need option schools to alleviate overcrowding. We could simply eliminate them and redistribute the kids to all neighborhood elementaries.  I get so tired of people saying we need these schools. We don't. They screw up capacity issues, enrollment, projections.  For what?  Maybe I see the value of immersion, assuming that a high percentage of them go on to continue with spanish immersion in middle and high. But how many do that?  Option schools are a luxury an overenrolled school system can't afford. [/quote]

You know that the kids in option schools will still exist and will have to go to school somewhere, right? Push them back to their neighborhood schools and that just leaves those schools even more overcrowded. They won't just disappear. The ES option schools aren't like HB. They aren't being built smaller on purpose even though there's a seat shortage. Two of the option schools are just as big as the largest ES we have, and the other three have been growing, too, over the last five years as countywide enrollment has surged. They are on pace to be bigger than many of the neighborhood schools and won't likely shrink back ever, even if neighborhood school population levels off. They happen to be in smaller buildings, which they have maxed out and they have trailers, even if it's not the max preferred. They aren't demanding [i]more[/i] consideration than a neighborhood school.

The problem is that we have more kids than seats. That's not because of option schools; option schools are being made into a scapegoat. I know you're mad about possibly being moved. I am, too, but it's not because of the option schools. It's because they built another neighborhood school right in the middle of a bunch of other neighborhood schools. No matter what, whether your school becomes an option program or not, if you live in this quadrant of the county, your current school probably won't be your school come 2021. And that is not the fault of option schools. In fact, the original plan was for Reed to be an option school to avoid having to redo ALL the surrounding boundaries. But the feedback during the last boundary change made them take that idea off the table, because we said that wanted a neighborhood school here. The numbers, if they are accurate, and that's a big IF, don't bear out having this many neighborhood schools all in one area. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics