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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’m confused. The Langston program is filled with kids who are bullied but also adult men who are bullies and teens with children?

Who are we protecting from whom?[/quote]

Arlington Tech parents don’t want any of this around their own kids. They don’t care about others. [/quote]
It’s not easy to get that type of alternative placement, they don’t just hand them out. The students who are at Langston  need to be there and for some of them it might be a safety issue that could impact a larger community but is well controlled while there. I have an eighth grader who applied to Arlington Tech. It does not seem like this plan is well thought out and I’m not sure I want to send them in the first year of an experimental program in a new building. 
[/quote]

I have a kid at AT and it's not an experimental program but rather one being actively built. Currently, there are kids, probably some who are 21, who are there. But we had 21 yr olds at my high school. Very few. Here's the thing. The CTE kids stay to themselves. The teen moms stay to themselves and the AT kids are frankly, academically oriented in STEM. 1/2 of them are in robotics club! It's going to have great facilities and hosts a wonderful group of committed teachers. I hope your kid gets inand that they love it. If you must worry about the Langston people, worry that they are not getting their "choice" school.[/quote]
I don’t think Arlington Tech is experimental, I think having an alternative high school co-located with what’s is essentially a regular high school is experimental. Especially because they can’t quite clarify how it will be run at this point and we are getting pretty close to the new school year for them to still be figuring that out (if this move happens.) [/quote]

I’m an old timer Millennial, but there is nothing “experimental” for having all of your programs under the same roof. My HS had thousands of students and hosted honors programs, special needs programs, regular learner programs, select vo-tech programs, and discipline/alternative programs, all under the same roof. You had to be an extraordinarily special case medical or discipline wise to get a full day placement elsewhere because the district had to pay out the nose for it.

I’d venture to say that hosting most services under one roof is the norm in cost-constrained districts. [/quote]

One other impact this could have is on an enthusiasm for Arlington Tech, when you were collocated with a Neighborhood high school people did not have a choice to not attend other than moving. APS is desperately trying to grow enrollment AT, and it’s unclear this may dampen growth[/quote]

They are not desperately trying to grow enrollment. They are planfully growing enrollment with a 180+ person waitlist for the incoming Freshman class.[/quote]

They plan to grow this program to 1100 to 1300 students. A 180 person waitlist is cute but will be gone in a year. They need to stoke demand to fill the much larger school, but part of the interest has been because it was a SMALL school. [/quote]

I’m kind of getting fed up with the desire for “small” programs. We are a large district and we have to serve a lot of kids. If the interest is there for what AT offers, Arlington should meet the need. If there is little interest to the point that it’s not earning its keep, then drop the program.

The rest of the portfolio needs to go where there’s space with an eye toward reducing as much administrative overhead as possible. For the life of me I can’t figure out why these alternative programs for older learners are not being held after hours in existing schools. [/quote]

There is huge demand for HBW but they keep it small.  I don’t know why they didn’t expand it.

Part of why APS parents want small is the neighborhood high schools have gotten so large on small crowded campuses.  They all have 140+ students per acre and WL is only rivaled by ACPS in size. The county’s refusal for a 4th comprehensive high school is barreling APS towards ACPS dynamics.  WL is 3000 students now.

AT might have had demand as a TJHS style academic program, but it’s definitely got the perception of a vocational program, at best as a feeder to VT not CalTech. Lumping it with other non-academic focused programs just enforces that. [/quote]

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