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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Thanks for all the replies.  Yes, we are one of the handful of families who have Cunningham Park as our base school, with Archer and Jackson AAP centers, followed by Marshall HS.  I don't think there's another school in Vienna that follows that track.  Unfortunately for my daughter, she is the only girl among the 5 kids from Cunningham Park who will (in theory) go to Jackson.  Of those 5 kids, only 2 will then go on to Marshall.  The very few girls from the other schools that would feed into Jackson are apparently going to Thoreau, so that's where my concern lies.  She'll lose all of her current friends (yes, I know she will see some of them at dance, etc., but it's not the same as being with them all day long), then after 2 years at Jackson, she'd lose all of her friends again because she would be the only girl going on to Marshall.  I know kids are resilient and, as a foreign service child, I know what it's like to make new friends every year or two, but she's also a child with quite a bit of anxiety who is extremely averse to change and it makes me nervous to put her into a situation where everything (and everyone) is an unknown.  The more I think about it, the more I wonder if maybe we should just send her to Thoreau.  I'm not sure how well that would go over either, though, as she considers herself pretty different from her "old friends" at Cunningham Park.  Presumably she'd make new friends there, though, since so many elementary schools feed into Thoreau.

Please tell me more about what you've heard regarding AAP coming to Thoreau!  I thought that idea got shot down last year, but I hope I'm wrong.  That would solve our problem![/quote]

What has been shot down repeatedly is the idea of placing an AAP [i]center[/i] at Thoreau. I heard from an FCPS middle school teacher (not at Thoreau) last week that Thoreau will be getting some kind of MS version of "local level 4" AAP. I did not know that local level 4 applied to MS (as it does to ES) but I guess it does--? If this happens, families who still want their children to have the AAP center option will still need to send their children to Jackson for that. If I were you I would definitely press for a lot of details about what's different between "local Level 4" and centers so you can make a really informed choice. One other thing -- in your shoes I would want to know exact details of how any new AAP program, just getting started, would train teachers (or bring in trained teachers), what would be different about the curriculum compared to Thoreau's current honors curriculum as well as compared to AAP centers etc. I am not dissing the idea of AAP at Thoreau, which would please many people. I'm only noting that it's worth asking questions since it would be a new program. I'd also want to know if there would be enough kids there, that first year, to have full AAP classes or if they will be somehow mixed in with other levels of classes. Thoreau does have new facilities so that should help.[/quote]

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