Reply to HB Admissions are rigged

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Reply to "HB Admissions are rigged"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

I don't think my behavior is awful, and I think I'm pretty nice. I'm just tired of paying [b]this program that we can't afford [/b]where some kids are more equal than others. It's bad enough when admissions are fair, but if it's not fair, it's unacceptable. I think most people would agree with me. [/quote]

How much more is H-B per student than other MSs/HSs?

Costs aside, there should be more fairness and transparency around the lottery/admissions.

[/quote]

Bump to ask again: How much more per student does APS spend for HB students? [/quote]

Budget for each school is in the annual budget book, available under Finance tab on the APS website. This stuff is not secret.

Busing costs for choice programs are hard to parse out because one bus driver may be scheduled to drive a neighborhood elementary route, then an HB route (which is middle and high school), then a middle school dismissal route, then a late bus. Its not just how many x additional buses. [/quote]

PP said we can't afford it. PP should back that statement up. 
[/quote]

I'm not the PP who said we can't afford it, but I agree with that statement. We're spending $100+M to build HB a new facility in Rosslyn without increasing the capacity of the school. APS has a limited amount of bond funding available to it for school construction, due to the County's debt capacity limit (which we are already close to meeting-- google it if you don't believe me). Meanwhile, we're facing an unprecedented seat shortfall, particularly at the high school level. As a point of comparison, the School Board only has $146M allocated to build the 1300 new high school seats scheduled for 2022-- that money has to cover construction of 700 additional seats at the Career Center and 600 additional seats at the Ed Center (or whatever combo they finally decide). Nancy Van Doren stated in the School Board meeting in June that these 1300 seats need to be built as cheaply as possible to make the money stretch. Meanwhile, no corners are being cut on the HB construction-- which could have been designed to hold more seats, but the HB PAC protested that this would destroy the character of the school program and prevailed on getting the School Board to keep it at the current size. I suspect that most of the Arlington community would not be so opposed to HB if they had been willing to add capacity as part of the new construction. But they did not, and now many in the community (including those without kids) view the new HB building plans as another example of APS spending money on gold-plated objects that only benefit a small number of lucky children. There is a well-documented trail of all of this info if you have the time to watch School Board videos from the past 1 1/2 years. As the other PP said, none of this stuff is a secret.[/quote]

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