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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]So, if Barcroft and Carlin Springs are gone as a neighborhood schools, Randolph and Barrett (maybe) rises even further in FARMS. Ashlawn gets some more FARMS. If all Barcroft is sent to Randolph, APS can claim it only has one high FARMs elementary school.

I see that as a win win![/quote]

Sending Barcroft to Randolph isn't realistic in the least. Forcing Randolph, a high-poverty school (at 74% FARMs) to be even higher poverty AND overcapacity is not just mean-spirited, its downright cruel. It's also pretty good grounds (rightly so) for litigation. I sincerely hope you're joking. [/quote]

I actually think they're going to break up Randolph a bit, too, not just move all the ED kids there, especially if Claremont becomes a neighborhood school. Barcroft neighborhood, with the exception of Buchanan Gardens, has very few ED students. If they take half the neighborhood to Randolph, they'd actually be adding MC families to that school zone.

And there are no ED students in the N half of the neighborhood, so moving them N to Barrett does the same thing. If they are doing this to break up segregated schools, then I have to believe they would move some of the less walkable PU's in Buckingham to Long Branch. They aren't walkable to either school, so bus them east instead of west.

I don't think they're going to do this unless they can decrease concentration of ED students at all the surrounding schools. [/quote]

Makes sense in theory, but I don't see this working in practice. If there are so few ED kids living in the Barcroft neighborhood, [b]why is the school high-poverty?[/b] Yes, a big chunk of the UMC families choice out, but the other half of the equation is that are still a lot of poor kids there. So where will the ED students go? With Campbell and Carlin Springs as option schools, that doesn't leave many neighborhood schools on the table. They can't all be absorbed by Claremont, especially with Carlin Springs becoming immersion. And they won't all want immersion. First generation Spanish speaking families have demonstrated repeatedly that Spanish immersion is not what they want. If you put them at Randolph, that exacerbates Randolph's poverty level. There is simply not a lot of neighborhood schools to "play" with here.

Similarly, many (all?) of the UMC families in the Barcroft neighborhood that DO attend Barcroft are walkers. Moving those families anywhere requires putting them on a bus. There goes that efficiency. And as long as those kids have to bus anyway, to schools with even HIGHER poverty rates no less (Randolph or Barrett) why wouldn't they join their brethren who have already abandoned ship (via option or private)?

Moving immersion to Barrett puts a lot more strategies to break up poverty on the table.

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The Arlington Mill APAH complex was zoned to Barcroft after it was built. It's carved out of the Carlin Springs boundary and it's not actually in Barcroft. Those students are bus riders to Barcroft and not in the walk zone. There's also a large part of the Barcroft Apartment complex that is currently zoned Barcroft, but it's not in the Barcroft neighborhood and those students are given bus service, because they are on the other side of Columbia Pike, which is not safe for kids to cross.

The UMC kids who've gone option aren't coming back to Barcroft [i]unless[/i] it's their current program that is moved there. It's the future families you need to think about. Those who might've taken a bus to Immersion or ATS in another neighborhood could instead be walkers to an option school at Barcroft. But yes, I suppose it will put some UMC families who live in Barcroft proper on buses. But I think they have crunched the numbers, and there aren't enough walkers to be a compelling enough argument against.

I don't disagree that Immersion to Barrett is a bad idea, but it's not one that is on the table. And I understand why they're looking at Barcroft. It's really close to a lot of other schools and it's making it really hard for them to draw boundaries that don't overlap and don't further increase segregation.

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