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

Forum Index » VA Public Schools other than FCPS

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

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][quote=Anonymous]I’m sorry, but moving key does benefit south Arlington.  Not sure why you would think otherwise.
Immersion would give a leg up to the esl kids in south arlington because they would learn math in spanish.  That’s the whole point of immersion.   It would bring very affluent north Arlington kids to a south Arlington elementary school because a lot of the kids at key aren’t from its immediate area.  
You can’t have it both ways— say you do t want segregated schools but then say that hosting option schools is unfair (especially in the case of immersion that would pull traditionally low performing kids out of the neighborhood school) [/quote]

Moving Key to ATS doesn't move it south, it moves it west. And moves ATS north, making it less accessible for people in the south. Kind of the opposite of what you say the south needs.[/quote]

Dp- You haven’t listened to South Arlington posters at all. Not at all.[/quote]

Then explain it, because clearly I haven't grasped it from reading all of these threads. How will it be better for South Arlington families when lots more Nottingham-area  families flock to ATS because it's walking distance and edge out more of the SA families?[/quote]

There's no geographic preference, so I don't think S Arlington families would be "edged out." They may not apply to that program if they lived very far into South Arlington, but there would be a different strong option for families that would be closer. I don't really care where or if ATS were to move. The main issue should be getting immersion closer to Spanish-speakers, and either Carlin Springs or Barcroft or even ATS would do that (it's closer to Buckingham than Key). I only think the Nottingham stuff came up because of the Reed school and too many seats/overlapping walk zones once it's built. I don't think anyone would be talking about an option school anywhere in that quadrant if it weren't for that one issue. [/quote]

The neighborhood around Nottingham has an enormous walk zone. A whole lot more people from that neighborhood will apply to ATS than currently do if it’s a choice between walking to ATS or being bused to Tuckahoe or Discovery. More applications from that area means that even with a random lottery, that neighborhood will get a larger percentage of the ATS seats than they do (Nottingham, Tuckahoe and Discovery currently send proportionally fewer students to ATS than most other APS schools), which would leave fewer seats for South Arlington families.[/quote]

Meh, can't have it all I guess. It's not ideal, but as long as VPI still got guaranteed spots, I could live with it better than moving Immersion or something there. Right now the majority of students at ATS are from North Arlington, and there are more kids from the PUs closest to the current location. And if I remember correctly, those PUs had similar or higher densities of students than the ones around Nottingham, so I don't think it would be that drastic a change. Again, I don't think Nottingham should become an option school per se, but I understand why it was included as a possibility and I think it is neither the best, nor worst, idea presented.

Again, the only reason Nottingham or Tuckahoe were ever in this mix is because of the overlapping walk zones with Reed, and the boundaries that will have to be drawn if they don't move an option school to that quadrant. I guess we'll see what these boundaries look like and whether or not they are preferable to moving option schools around. [/quote]

And again, what I’m saying is that we could address the excess seats while also potentially helping South Arlington if we went with the staff’s second scenario from round two, put immersion at Barcroft and Carlin Springs, keep ATS where it is, and use up the excess NW seats by sending the Ashlawn boundaries across 50. The only goal achieved by making Nottingham an option site would be making the staff’s job of drawing boundaries easier. It does nothing else to APS, and would create new challenges to replace the old ones (e.g., where are you going to put excess students in the region, which NW would have after Reed if you made one of the other schools option, when Tuckahoe can only take four trailers and McKinley has to load up on six to manage the rest even though it’ll put them at something like 150% of their cafeteria capacity and they’ll have no playground because no one else can take trailers?).

That anyone in the community thought that was a good idea continues to baffle me. The entire NW would get flucked, and no one but the staff would benefit from it.[/quote]

I think moving Immersion to Carlin Springs is a no-brainer. It's not a walkable school, it's on a major road and can handle lots of buses. It's centrally located between N/S, and it's close to a very densely populated Spanish-speaking community, and it is closer in capacity/size to the current Immersion school populations.

The issues I see with making Barcroft the other Immersion school are: it's in the middle of a neighborhood on a small street with a very narrow turning radius for buses and a very small parking lot/bus loop plus parking issues throughout the neighborhood due to the National Guard and Foreign Service centers using the neighborhood streets for their overflow parking lots; its capacity (without trailers) is significantly less than the current Immersion programs at either Claremont or Key, and even with trailers is too small. I don't like the idea of shrinking the programs, or of making a deliberate plan to cram too many kids into a smaller building. Barcroft's size could better accommodate a smaller program, but not the buses without some sort of infrastructure project.

Someone upthread asked what it would take for me to send my kids to Barcroft. I'd prefer a calendar that jives with the rest of the county, and improving test scores, in particular for our demographic. And a the fr/l rate not to go any higher due to a boundary change. I don't expect miracles. I'm willing to take a chance on a higher than average fr/l school as long as it's doing well for all the students it serves, even those who aren't the neediest of the bunch. [/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