Reply to South Arlington elementary school boundary adjustments 2019

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I just don’t see much diffence between Barcroft and Randolph...
Other than Randolph posters don’t like the idea of their school excluding higher needs children in their neighborhood. Barcroft posters seem to not consider[b] the farms kids currently attending Barcroft as part of their neighborhood.[/b]
Intersting dynamics at play.[/quote]

Well, many of them are not residents of our neighborhood. Either you are unfamiliar with the Civic Association or you are being deliberately obtuse. The students residing in Buchanan Gardens are residents of our neighborhood. The students in the Barcroft Apartments are in the Douglas Park neighborhood and those from Arlington Mill do not reside in our neighborhood, but rather live in the Arlington Mill neighborhood. And the students who will eventually reside in Gilliam Place will be residents of Alcova Heights. These areas are part of the current school community because of current boundaries, boundaries that are about to change, and who knows whether any or all of those students will continue to be zoned to Barcroft. I was making the point that within the known walk zone, the area that will never be zoned to any school other than Barcroft, there are many children whose families do not like the year-round calendar. If what APS is doing is trying to encourage more walking and fewer bus routes, they should be trying to determine how to keep the kids living within the Barcroft walk zone at their neighborhood school. And they dynamics are quite "interesting" when you look at the transfer report and note that the majority of families are transferring their children to other diverse schools: 44 to Campbell, 16 to Barrett, 2 to Carlin Springs, 78 to Claremont, 10 to Drew, 9 to Key, 15 to Long Branch, 49 to Randolph. It's not like they're all transferring to Discovery (1), or even ATS (39).

Clearly the calendar has had driven out more families than it has attracted. It's not a good use of limited resources. [/quote]

[b]How many of those transfers out are families living within the BArcroft neighborhood and your "known walk zone"? [/b] How does that compare to the percentage of students in each of the other neighborhoods you cite?  Cause, relative to the Barcroft neighborhood, there really aren't that many "outsiders" from Alcova Heights, and a lot of them have opted out of Barcroft for Immersion, Montessori, Campbell, and the handful or less of ATS-ers and private schoolers.  [/quote]

I only have "anecdata" for that, but I personally live in the walk zone in the neighborhood itself and there are a lot of kids living here.  Not very many go to Barcroft, and the most often cited reason is the calendar. Are they all lying? I don't know. Why give them an excuse? And as another PP has pointed out, many families who move in already have their kids in a private or option school before moving here, so that suggests to me that there isn't some huge demand for this calendar from outside the neighborhood.

For myself, I can say that at the time we moved in we didn't have kids, and we didn't know whether we would live here until we did. Then when we did and the oldest was about to start K, we tried to keep an open mind as we toured schools.  But the calendar was a real negative. I think that if we had stuck with it, we might've "gotten used to it" or "dealt with it" but we decided it was easier to accept the spot at an option school instead.

Other posters have pointed out that school performance is a consideration. I won't deny that's true for many. But that also suggests to me that this unique calendar isn't a positive in that regard. In other localities there are "magnet" schools with different calendars, and families opt into those schools, usually from a lower performing neighborhood school. Not because they love the calendar, but because they prefer a "better" school. But Barcroft isn't even an option school, it's just a neighborhood school that could maybe accommodate a handful of transfers.

So I've been told that this unique calendar isn't meant to be a draw, isn't meant to improve educational outcomes (as measured by test scores), and isn't meant to provide free summer care. So, what is it for? I need a real reason, and some data to support that reason. I think I understand why it was started, but I'm asking does it really make sense to continue it? When there are streets that are walkable to Barcroft that have multiple ES kids taking buses to three or maybe even more different ES outside the neighborhood?

[/quote]

It was meant to improve educational outcomes.

While test scores may not reflect success in that regard, there are many factors contributing to that.  First, the calendar has never had 100% support from Superintendent Murphy or APS.  As another poster suggests,[/b] it would have been stronger if other schools in the system also adopted the calendar.  But teacher contract issues based on the traditional calendar and district-wide teacher training conducted in August means a lot of substitute teachers at the very beginning of the year when students are trying to get used to their new teachers, classrooms, and rules; and very much takes away from some of the main benefits of a modified calendar.  [b]

I would also suggest that anticipated test score increases may be based on data from schools with different demographics.  There is a very high %age of ELL students at Barcroft.  So, it might have been worthwhile for APS to do some long-term analysis (something APS never bothers to do) to see any impacts on longer-term ELL students' performance by reducing summer learning and language proficiency losses over time, for instance.   Also, the calendar could be more effective if all the students actually come to school when the school year starts.  Many students still don't show up until september.  People new to the school aren't always aware of the different calendar.  There are various little things like these that all contribute to the situation.

Regardless, anyone who expects the calendar change to magically make test scores on par with our top test-scoring schools  is naive and is dismissing all the other potential benefits of such a calendar.[/quote]

They are never going to do it the "right way" if they haven't managed to do it in 15 years, and there is no way the whole system is moving to this calendar. The neighborhood deserves a neighborhood school with a calendar that mirrors all of APS.

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