Reply to Who said there isn't a North-South divide?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Contrary to the wide belief espoused here, Aps in general is not racist and is not trying to segregate kids by economic means.  Boundaries are largely made based off of geography— they draw logical circles around each school.  In a few cases, drawing a logical circle is not possible (Ashlawn for example), and the boundary looks less logical.  But I genuinely believe that they are trying to do the best with the constraints they have.  It is not their fault that Arlington itself is segregated.
There was an amazing opportunity for them to really improve the quality of schools by moving the option schools.  That was squashed because people were afraid of change, and so here we are.   They could have put immersion carlin springs and Barcroft.  Since 50% have to be native English speakers, that would likely have changed the demographics at those schools.  Ashlawn could have gone south of 50, keys new boundary could have gone south of 50, long branch could have gone south of 50.  The people fighting that (keep key on key, the Nottingham folks) were short sighted.  [/quote]

The Nottingham folks weren't opposed to change generally, they felt the data produced by the staff, if honestly evaluated, showed that Nottingham was a poor choice for an option site rather than a strong one. Further, moving an option school to Nottingham wouldn't have done anything to address socioeconomic segregation. If anything, it would probably have made it worse (a point the staff basically conceded) because of the tendency of option schools to draw disproportionately from their surrounding neighborhoods.[/quote]

Cascade effect not good for south Arlington. Not like any of them care. Moving the option schools in general would have benefited students elsewhere in the county. Again, they give zero f’s.[/quote]

How would moving ATS (the only school they could move, as confirmed by staff) to Nottingham help South Arlington? Please explain the cascade of effects that would improve schools like Barcroft and Carlin Springs. Back up your rhetoric with substance if you want to be taken seriously.[/quote]

In the case of Carlin Springs, it would have ceased to exist as a neighborhood school, then the kids who are almost exclusively bus riders anyway to Carlin Springs would've been bused slightly further to a different school. I'm assuming they were thinking of moving either Claremont or Key to Carlin Springs, and then making the former locations neighborhood school.[/quote]

They could have done that without moving ATS to Nottingham. ATS and Campbell stay where they are, in locations that are more accessible to SA families and don't encourage even more 22207 families to apply. Immersion programs go to Carlin Springs and Barcroft. Ashlawn reaches across 50 to pull a bunch of the displaced Carlin Springs and Barcroft units north, helping to improve SES balance while also resolving the issue of excess seats in NW.

How does ATS -> Nottingham improve on that?[/quote]

I would support Claremont immersion moving to Carlin Springs and Claremont becoming a neighborhood school - that makes perfect sense from every direction.  But making both Carlin Springs and Barcroft option schools is a bad idea.  CS, Campbell, and Barcroft all being option schools leaves only Randolph as an accessible, walkable neighborhood school in the entire west end of Columbia Pike.  That's really not fair.  Despite what recent exchanges on this forum have espoused, Barcroft is not the most desperate school in need of a demographic re-balance.  Its FRL% has been heading downward - and hopefully will continue to do so with some consistent and strong leadership leading MC families to attend rather than opt out.  But breaking up the low-income and very high ELL % community at Carlin Springs would be a very significant step in de-segregating schools.

ATS could move to an allotment-per-school or a seat set-aside admissions policy and relocate to the future Reed site - promises to Westover about a neighborhood school or not.  Then Key could move to ATS.  That makes the two immersion schools close enough to each other for whatever purported cooperation and collaboration they say would be of use and also locate both programs geographically to draw more Spanish-dominant applicants as well as English-dominant, without crowding out all possibilities for a neighborhood school on the Pike's west end.[/quote]

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