Reply to APS Elementary Location Working Group 4/12

Forum Index » Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)

Reply to "APS Elementary Location Working Group 4/12"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Campbell would lose 60 percent of its student or more if moved that far north. No longer title I. No nature center curriculum. It would be a total waste of a school. I have a kid there and without the wetland and nature center the curriculum would be trashed. Aps might as well eliminate the program if they move it. I would pull my kid because it would have no value as an option school. I know others would too, and not just the majority of low income families. The wealthier families chose the school for a reason.[/quote]

Isn’t Campbell Title I because of the large number of VPI students that are guaranteed to continue?[/quote]

So here's part of the issue with moving any option school that far north: what VPI-eligible families live anywhere near there? Option schools are all supposed to have VPI classrooms, so where are they going to find VPI kids near Nottingham? [/quote]

Good point. Any option school they move to Nottingham would become much paler and more affluent, which isn’t a good look. The only thing that makes Nottingham at all compelling as an option site is the difficult of filling all of the seats at Tuckahoe after Reed opens. But for that, Nottingham would be effectively off the table.[/quote]

And if they make Nottingham option, they are going to have to fill McKinley with kids North of Lee Highway. So those kids will bus past Reed.

It is infuriating with the criteria staff presented that Reed isn’t being considered as an option site. [/quote]

You can’t ask a community to give a year of their lives to planning a school under the promise that it will be their neighborhood school and then go back on your word. It would destroy community trust in the school board and people would be rightfully outraged at having been taken advantage of like that.[/quote]

You are hilarious!  What about the years and years the Nottingham community has spent planning things for its school. And hasn’t it had a promise of a neighborhood school for much longer?  Reed’s promise was recently. But that doesn’t mean other schools didn’t have that same promise. The promise should be irrelevant and it should be looked at just like everyone else. [/quote]

Simmer, you're talking to another Nottingham parent here. Yes, lots of us have given many hours and resources to Nottingham over the years, but we did/do those things because our children, as students there, benefit from our efforts immediately. If Nottingham becomes an option school, I'll take my volunteering to our new school and my kids won't miss out on the benefits of my effort. Westover, on the other hand, was asked by the School Board to volunteer time and create committees for the specific purpose of planning a school to fit that community where the benefit wasn't going to be seen by anyone from years. Pulling that out from under them only after they've done their part but before they've received any of the promised benefit would be truly bad faith.

Further, no one promised us anything about Nottingham staying a neighborhood school. You may argue that the promise was implied by the fact that it's historically been a neighborhood school, but that same argument applies to every single neighborhood school in APS. Clearly that's going to change for someone, and Nottingham has no special claim of promise or of neighborhood status beyond any other neighborhood schools. Westover, on the other hand, has had an explicit promise from the SB that after the community's work is done, Reed would become a neighborhood school for them.

Look, I'd just as soon see Nottingham stay a neighborhood school because I know the change would be disruptive and who wants disruption? But if I take a step back and try to look at it all objectively, thinking about what's best for APS as a whole without bias toward any particular school, I can see the arguments for Nottingham becoming an option school very clearly. There are arguments against it as well and people should feel free to make them, but I'm not going to make any argument that basically amounts to, "Screw the rest of you, I only care about me and mine." Let's be better than that.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics