Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just watched the public hearing.
I honestly feel like people are way overwrought about needing to go to middle school with their elementary school friends.
Do these people never move? This is a transient area.
I'm curious if these hysterical parents plan to apply to HB.
My friends changed from elementary school to middle school. My DH moved constantly.
I fully expect that my children will be going to a different middle school than many of their elementary school friends.
While I get that alignment is nice to have- I don't get the overwhelming angst.

I cannot find this. Could you someone please post a link? Thanks!

https://www.apsva.us/post/school-board-meeting-nov-30-2017/

Thank you!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just watched the public hearing.
I honestly feel like people are way overwrought about needing to go to middle school with their elementary school friends.
Do these people never move? This is a transient area.
I'm curious if these hysterical parents plan to apply to HB.
My friends changed from elementary school to middle school. My DH moved constantly.
I fully expect that my children will be going to a different middle school than many of their elementary school friends.
While I get that alignment is nice to have- I don't get the overwhelming angst.

I cannot find this. Could you someone please post a link? Thanks!

https://www.apsva.us/post/school-board-meeting-nov-30-2017/

Anonymous wrote:I just watched the public hearing.
I honestly feel like people are way overwrought about needing to go to middle school with their elementary school friends.
Do these people never move? This is a transient area.
I'm curious if these hysterical parents plan to apply to HB.
My friends changed from elementary school to middle school. My DH moved constantly.
I fully expect that my children will be going to a different middle school than many of their elementary school friends.
While I get that alignment is nice to have- I don't get the overwhelming angst.

I cannot find this. Could you someone please post a link? Thanks!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why doesn't anyone want to go to Williamsburg?

It seems like families are doing everything possible not to go there. Is it the teachers, drugs, gangs? I thought it used to be a good school.

If families were doing everything possible not to go there, the Williamsburg area wouldn't have some of the highest home values in the area. Don't take anonymous internet posters as necessarily representative of the population as a whole.

I suspect that it is mostly about logistics. Williamsburg is out of the way for most families where both parents work, esp if both parents are in DC. Your kid misses the bus-- WMS is a lot of backtracking. And you can easily swing by Swanson or Stratford on the way home and pick up your kid from an afterschool activity or check-in. Not so much with WMS. Also, Swanson and Stratford are accessible via public transport, while WMS is not (or at least not as easily). And with DC traffic, those extra 15-20 min can make a big difference when you are trying to make a morning meeting in DC or a 6pm pickup time.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought for sure that they would do the right thing. I am just shocked at how this process has gone. We are leaving the county. I’m absolutely disgusted.

Cool. Fewer kids in the system is better for everyone else.

A lovely family, with more children then we, is buying our house.

You decided in the last few days to leave the county over this and already have a buyer for your house? That's a load of bullshit.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought for sure that they would do the right thing. I am just shocked at how this process has gone. We are leaving the county. I’m absolutely disgusted.

Cool. Fewer kids in the system is better for everyone else.

A lovely family, with more children then we, is buying our house.

Anonymous wrote:I just watched the public hearing.
I honestly feel like people are way overwrought about needing to go to middle school with their elementary school friends.
Do these people never move? This is a transient area.
I'm curious if these hysterical parents plan to apply to HB.
My friends changed from elementary school to middle school. My DH moved constantly.
I fully expect that my children will be going to a different middle school than many of their elementary school friends.
While I get that alignment is nice to have- I don't get the overwhelming angst.

Snowflake culture. Their children are far too precious to cope with the slightest adversity. Combine that with an unhealthy dose of privilege so that they have no clue what actual adversity looks like, and you end up with people crying at board meetings over which very good school their child will get to go to.

I just watched the public hearing.
I honestly feel like people are way overwrought about needing to go to middle school with their elementary school friends.
Do these people never move? This is a transient area.
I'm curious if these hysterical parents plan to apply to HB.
My friends changed from elementary school to middle school. My DH moved constantly.
I fully expect that my children will be going to a different middle school than many of their elementary school friends.
While I get that alignment is nice to have- I don't get the overwhelming angst.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought for sure that they would do the right thing. I am just shocked at how this process has gone. We are leaving the county. I’m absolutely disgusted.

As evidenced by this thread, there is no objective “right thing.”

The right thing certainly isn't putting one school at 111% capacity while the next one over is at 89%. Disgusting.

Anonymous wrote:I thought for sure that they would do the right thing. I am just shocked at how this process has gone. We are leaving the county. I’m absolutely disgusted.

Cool. Fewer kids in the system is better for everyone else.

Anonymous wrote:I thought for sure that they would do the right thing. I am just shocked at how this process has gone. We are leaving the county. I’m absolutely disgusted.

As evidenced by this thread, there is no objective “right thing.”

I thought for sure that they would do the right thing. I am just shocked at how this process has gone. We are leaving the county. I’m absolutely disgusted.

Anonymous wrote:Why doesn't anyone want to go to Williamsburg?

It seems like families are doing everything possible not to go there. Is it the teachers, drugs, gangs? I thought it used to be a good school.

If families were doing everything possible not to go there, the Williamsburg area wouldn't have some of the highest home values in the area. Don't take anonymous internet posters as necessarily representative of the population as a whole.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Reid is the only who actually cares about all of the students.

What Reid is good at is pointing out flaws without coming up with solutions. Any solution will be flawed in some respect, he's not contributing anything unless he's coming up with ideas for how to improve it.

He's good at pointing out the difference between "nice-to-haves" and that which is actually detrimental to education. For instance, overcrowding and economic inequality are proven impediments to education. Taking a bus to school is no such impediment. Being able to walk to your school rather than take a bus for an additional 10 minutes is a nice-to-have, is clearly a health benefit (when kids actually DO walk), and is better for the environment than driving, though buses are better than each individual child being driven. But the plan leaves us with lopsided enrollment and does nothing to address disparity. They can't do much to tweak the disparity at this point, but they could at least better balance the enrollment.

Well put, although the "you are negative and have no proposals of your own" poster here and on the elementary school thread won't acknowledge that you said it. (But thanks for trying!)

As the poster you referenced, if Reid Goldstein actually puts out a viable alternative proposal to address his concerns, I will give him credit for that. As for the poster you're responding to as a supposed counterpoint, sure, go ahead and bus kids all over the place in the name of whatever goal you'd like. As a Williamsburg parent, I have no problem with them adding more kids to that school. But part of presenting a solution means identifying who you think should be bused. Which of the communities that have specifically said they would rather go to a more-crowded school within walking distance than a less-crowded school by bus should have to move? That's the hard part of the SB's job, and the part that everyone likes to criticize them for but no one's willing to stand up and do themselves, even just to throw out a possibility in a community forum.

Anonymous wrote:Why doesn't anyone want to go to Williamsburg?

It seems like families are doing everything possible not to go there. Is it the teachers, drugs, gangs? I thought it used to be a good school.

It is a very good school, with not-overwhelming problems. People talk a lot of smack due to who knows what motivations, and other people believe that smack. Teachers- mostly great, like any other Arlington middle school; drugs- a few kids, maybe more than other middle schools because of easy money; gangs- no.