Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have never understood the obsession with walkable schools. My kids have gone to both walkable and non-walkable. Particularly in elementary school, getting bused is awesome. Great community at the bus stop. I built more neighborhood community doing that than being a walker. Very convenient in the mornings in particular if you work. My kids loved the bus. Walkable schools when they're young and need to be accompanied on the walk and you're on the outer part of the walkable area is a pain in the ass.

+1
I'll let you in on a secret, though: it isn't about being able to walk to school. It's about being entitled to whatever you want, where you want it, when you want it, how you want it. And, more critically, what you don't want and what you purposely planned and paid to avoid. It just sounds nicer under the banners of "walkability" and "efficiency."

Transportation costs money, wastes time, and is bad for the environment. “Car free diet”, remember?

Just a few short years ago the county was complaining about a shortage of bus drivers and reducing bus costs. Now they want to force buses and cars all over the county. Specifically, on to hilly roads with poor line of sight, built 70 years ago and not fit for the purpose. People have died on Little Falls Street within sight of Nottingham. We only just got 4 way stops, and only after much complaining. I guess that’s entitlement for you, that we don’t want our community members dying in pedestrian incidents.

It’s a neighborhood area that needs less cut through traffic, not more. And APS hasn’t said boo about that in all 200+ pages of its “analysis”.

I guess that’s entitlement to you. Sorry you have lower standards. Some of us expect better for the money spent.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can’t imagine they are actually going to close Nottingham. Once the wealthy Nottingham parents start fussing about it (and they already are), the school board will back down for sure. You don’t mess with the rich, white elementary schools in Arlington, do you?

I guess you missed when they closed McKinley.

True, but they moved all of McKinley together to a brand new building at Cardinal. That’s different from what they are proposing here.

Except for the neighborhoods that were rezoned to Ashlawn.

Those zones could have stayed at Cardinal, except APS was trying to empty Notting and put those kids at Cardinal. Those families were sent to Ashlawn because of APS's plan to close Nottingham, not because of the school move.

What? No Nottingham kids were impacted with Cardinal coming on line. Nottingham was not touched during that boundary adjustment. Tuckahoe kids were moved.

What happened is too many Nottingham families went private during covid and didn't come back and now Nottingham has the least robust enrollment.

The Nottingham neighborhood has a lot of demographic turnover in the last few years. People are moving here specifically for the school. APS’s data and projections don’t seem to be accounting for that, and they are going to find themselves flat footed at the first economic downturn when people can’t swing $50k/year tuitions anymore. They were off by 20 kids at Nottingham for 2023 alone. Multiplied over the NW schools you go from underenrolled to over capacity just like that.

Not this argument again!

When they redid boundaries for McK back before it moved, there was a Nottingham realtor with the same argument saying that anything other than overcrowding McK would make Nottingham too overcrowded in the future b/c demographics were changing. So, they moved the Tuckahoe kids to McK, overcrowded it and left Nottingham with a small school........which I guess eventually backfired.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Build new facilities in South Arlington, where the county needs them, already!

Stop messing around with boundaries and whatnot to try to alleviate crowding in the south by moving kids north. Please.

And I live in North Arlington.

So the County should spend tens of millions of dollars to build new elementary schools and leave some half empty. Um, no.

It’s not great, but when all the population growth is in South Arlington but the underenrolled schools are in North Arlington, the County is going to have to redistribute the kids every few years over and over to keep moving kids north if they don’t build more facilities in the south, where the kids are!

IN THE MEANTIME.....
You do realize it takes ten years to get a new building (1) sited (2) planned and (3) built?
You can't share your space and sacrifice a little so others don't have to endure disproportionate burden? Oh, sorry. I forgot - your kid having to go on a bus or a little farther away is disproportionate burden to a bunch of other kids having classes in hallways and closets, lunch at 9:45, and no running during recess.

We authorize hundreds of millions of dollars in CIP debt every two years. We are not strapped for cash.

No one has to “sacrifice” anything, except our free time to make sure it’s money that is being well spent.

You have zero idea what you are talking about. The County's debt ceiling is shared between County and APS and in fact, it is tight to meet all the needs of the entire County. There are other things going on in this County besides APS.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For the Hamm people complaining, what is your proposal to fill Williamsburg then? Who should get bused over there? Not your children. We’ve got that.

Question: why is APS so bad at calculating seats/future needs? Are less families moving to WMS/DHMS? Is this driven in part by the exodus of North Arlington families to private school? Does APS track or publish that information?

Just my observations watching this over many years.

1. Covid definitely impacted things.
2. In past boundary adjustments, the School Board responds to the people screaming in their faces right in the moment. This was the case with the boundary adjustments when Hamm was opened. Hamm never had enough kids and Swanson had too many. People screamed about not leaving Swanson. Same issue with Cardinal. The McKinley community screamed and yelled to stay together and give it a couple years that school will be overcrowded. The problem is this thread. What's going on right now. Listening to current families over what makes sense longer-term.

Right, I don’t disagree with you. But I still would be very curious about the covid impact. How big was it? Is it here to stay? What are the current numbers?

APS does not give two wits about the kids leaving for PS, I know, which is one of the reasons they are leaving. But it’s impacting neighborhoods/neighborhood schools in N Arlington communities in a way that is new and different. It would be useful to understand it. Especially when APS appears to be absolutely abysmal at forecasting seating/buildings.

+1. APS seems to be awful at predicting what it is going to make sense for the long term. In the face of a global pandemic that’s completely upended what we thought we knew about school growth (which was hard learned in the face of being repeatedly wrong before), you’d think some humility would be in order.

And I disagree threads like this are the problem. We are right to question half-baked assumptions and poke holes in flawed methodologies. The fact that the school board keeps buckling in the face of opposition shows they have little faith in staff’s analysis and the assumptions don’t stand up to scrutiny.

Schools are meant to serve the educational needs of students, and APS seems to have completely lost sight of this chasing the Syphax wishlists of the day. APS may be happy to see these parents go, but we all know what happens when people with money and influence lose faith in the public school system. The whole system benefits when the entire community is engaged and invested. Take a look at ACPS for an example of what happens if when UMC and MC parents disengage.

I don't like most of the boundary decisions APS has made. However, I don't believe they put things like this out without a lot of thought and considering numerous aspects of different scenarios. Transitioning a school like Nottingham makes sense in the long run. If we ever need to close a school entirely, it should be one that is not geographically convenient to 90% of the County. Our schools are horribly located from a strategic geographic perspective and there's nothing we can do to correct that now.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For the Hamm people complaining, what is your proposal to fill Williamsburg then? Who should get bused over there? Not your children. We’ve got that.

Question: why is APS so bad at calculating seats/future needs? Are less families moving to WMS/DHMS? Is this driven in part by the exodus of North Arlington families to private school? Does APS track or publish that information?

Just my observations watching this over many years.

1. Covid definitely impacted things.
2. In past boundary adjustments, the School Board responds to the people screaming in their faces right in the moment. This was the case with the boundary adjustments when Hamm was opened. Hamm never had enough kids and Swanson had too many. People screamed about not leaving Swanson. Same issue with Cardinal. The McKinley community screamed and yelled to stay together and give it a couple years that school will be overcrowded. The problem is this thread. What's going on right now. Listening to current families over what makes sense longer-term.

Right, I don’t disagree with you. But I still would be very curious about the covid impact. How big was it? Is it here to stay? What are the current numbers?

APS does not give two wits about the kids leaving for PS, I know, which is one of the reasons they are leaving. But it’s impacting neighborhoods/neighborhood schools in N Arlington communities in a way that is new and different. It would be useful to understand it. Especially when APS appears to be absolutely abysmal at forecasting seating/buildings.

+1. APS seems to be awful at predicting what it is going to make sense for the long term. In the face of a global pandemic that’s completely upended what we thought we knew about school growth (which was hard learned in the face of being repeatedly wrong before), you’d think some humility would be in order.

And I disagree threads like this are the problem. We are right to question half-baked assumptions and poke holes in flawed methodologies. The fact that the school board keeps buckling in the face of opposition shows they have little faith in staff’s analysis and the assumptions don’t stand up to scrutiny.

Schools are meant to serve the educational needs of students, and APS seems to have completely lost sight of this chasing the Syphax wishlists of the day. APS may be happy to see these parents go, but we all know what happens when people with money and influence lose faith in the public school system. The whole system benefits when the entire community is engaged and invested. Take a look at ACPS for an example of what happens if when UMC and MC parents disengage.

After observing the McKinley/Key/ATS/Cardinal boundary process up close and looking at all the data from all sides in depth, I began to really question this often repeated narrative. Sorry it's inconvenient, but APS staff is capable of making good recommendations with the best information they have and often times parents really don't have the full picture. Who is more self-interested? Them or you?

I just think the narrative that APS stuff constantly sucks and is incompetent is unfair. Do they make mistakes and get things wrong at times? Yes. Are they plotting against you? Probably not. My opinion is the parent communities can just be insanely obstinate. There is no reasoning with people who want what they want and are used to getting their way.

The issue is that APS does not acknowledge the uncertainty and limitations of its own data, dismisses community concerns as being “emotional” (seriously Kadera?!), and is seemingly chasing goals outside of those known to promote learning among students like active and engaged school communities.

We have accepted overcrowding and routine disruption as the cost of educating our children in Arlington. This is unheard of in other districts. Other districts do not spend $150m+ to build two new schools in an area due to overcrowding, and then shut down a third school in the same area due to being under capacity, all within the same decade. We are right to question assumptions and point out when important factors have been given short shrift. I don’t have faith APS is making the best decisions for my neighborhood, not one bit.

And I’m sorry that people that bought cheap in Southie but don’t actually want to send their kids to school there have a problem with it. I support you improving your schools. I want every kid to have what we have here. But we don’t get better by wrecking everything good.

I missed when she said this as a School Board member but she is right and how would she know? She was one of them! Led one of the most irrational and emotional reactions ever to proposed changes when she was McKinley PTA president.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For the Hamm people complaining, what is your proposal to fill Williamsburg then? Who should get bused over there? Not your children. We’ve got that.

Question: why is APS so bad at calculating seats/future needs? Are less families moving to WMS/DHMS? Is this driven in part by the exodus of North Arlington families to private school? Does APS track or publish that information?

Just my observations watching this over many years.

1. Covid definitely impacted things.
2. In past boundary adjustments, the School Board responds to the people screaming in their faces right in the moment. This was the case with the boundary adjustments when Hamm was opened. Hamm never had enough kids and Swanson had too many. People screamed about not leaving Swanson. Same issue with Cardinal. The McKinley community screamed and yelled to stay together and give it a couple years that school will be overcrowded. The problem is this thread. What's going on right now. Listening to current families over what makes sense longer-term.

Right, I don’t disagree with you. But I still would be very curious about the covid impact. How big was it? Is it here to stay? What are the current numbers?

APS does not give two wits about the kids leaving for PS, I know, which is one of the reasons they are leaving. But it’s impacting neighborhoods/neighborhood schools in N Arlington communities in a way that is new and different. It would be useful to understand it. Especially when APS appears to be absolutely abysmal at forecasting seating/buildings.

+1. APS seems to be awful at predicting what it is going to make sense for the long term. In the face of a global pandemic that’s completely upended what we thought we knew about school growth (which was hard learned in the face of being repeatedly wrong before), you’d think some humility would be in order.

And I disagree threads like this are the problem. We are right to question half-baked assumptions and poke holes in flawed methodologies. The fact that the school board keeps buckling in the face of opposition shows they have little faith in staff’s analysis and the assumptions don’t stand up to scrutiny.

Schools are meant to serve the educational needs of students, and APS seems to have completely lost sight of this chasing the Syphax wishlists of the day. APS may be happy to see these parents go, but we all know what happens when people with money and influence lose faith in the public school system. The whole system benefits when the entire community is engaged and invested. Take a look at ACPS for an example of what happens if when UMC and MC parents disengage.

After observing the McKinley/Key/ATS/Cardinal boundary process up close and looking at all the data from all sides in depth, I began to really question this often repeated narrative. Sorry it's inconvenient, but APS staff is capable of making good recommendations with the best information they have and often times parents really don't have the full picture. Who is more self-interested? Them or you?

I just think the narrative that APS stuff constantly sucks and is incompetent is unfair. Do they make mistakes and get things wrong at times? Yes. Are they plotting against you? Probably not. My opinion is the parent communities can just be insanely obstinate. There is no reasoning with people who want what they want and are used to getting their way.

The issue is that APS does not acknowledge the uncertainty and limitations of its own data, dismisses community concerns as being “emotional” (seriously Kadera?!), and is seemingly chasing goals outside of those known to promote learning among students like active and engaged school communities.

We have accepted overcrowding and routine disruption as the cost of educating our children in Arlington. This is unheard of in other districts. Other districts do not spend $150m+ to build two new schools in an area due to overcrowding, and then shut down a third school in the same area due to being under capacity, all within the same decade. We are right to question assumptions and point out when important factors have been given short shrift. I don’t have faith APS is making the best decisions for my neighborhood, not one bit.

And I’m sorry that people that bought cheap in Southie but don’t actually want to send their kids to school there have a problem with it. I support you improving your schools. I want every kid to have what we have here. But we don’t get better by wrecking everything good.

Hyperbole much? Also, if people in Southie aren’t using the schools why are they the overcrowded ones? Nobody down here wants your precious Nottingham. But we do want them to use the excess seats you have up there! Frame it like this: Nottingham was acting as the swing space for Northie while they built Discovery and Cardinal. Now they can use that swing space for other areas that don’t have the luxury of excess seats.

Anonymous wrote:I can’t imagine they are actually going to close Nottingham. Once the wealthy Nottingham parents start fussing about it (and they already are), the school board will back down for sure. You don’t mess with the rich, white elementary schools in Arlington, do you?

Many Nottingham families went private, hence the low numbers.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Build new facilities in South Arlington, where the county needs them, already!

Stop messing around with boundaries and whatnot to try to alleviate crowding in the south by moving kids north. Please.

And I live in North Arlington.

So the County should spend tens of millions of dollars to build new elementary schools and leave some half empty. Um, no.

It’s not great, but when all the population growth is in South Arlington but the underenrolled schools are in North Arlington, the County is going to have to redistribute the kids every few years over and over to keep moving kids north if they don’t build more facilities in the south, where the kids are!

You're acting like children from N Arlington and S Arlington can't go to school together and it's some mountainous border. As a taxpayer it's ludicrous to leave empty capacity and build more so kids don't have to cross Rt 50. This County is physically very small. Nothing is very far.

No, I’m acting like people in South Arlington want good neighborhood, walkable schools too. Not to be bussed north, unless they have closed that as an option school.

Okay, well that's not worth the County spending 55million+ to build a new school when there are schools with a lot of capacity.

This. Also, they just have to move more kids into the buildings that have capacity, like Drew. They punted because of community uproar, but it’s irresponsible and wasteful to leave all those empty seats while also insisting a new school be built.

Oh, I'm sure the north Arlington parents would have clamored to fill a "Drew" in their neighborhoods. Yeah. Right.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You will like Williamsburg though. Great school.

I've heard nothing good about it. No thanks.

I haven’t heard anything good about Swanson lately though.

I'm pp and we're zoned for Hamm

I saw that. It was disappointing how many kids right by Taylor/hamm will now be moved to Williamsburg.

And it was the Taylor families who fought so hard to reopen Stratford as the new middle school, now Dorothy Hamm. Only a very small section of Taylor families along Langston Blvd will remain at Dorothy Hamm.

Also with the draft boundaries, the middle schools will become even more segregated with Williamsburg becoming more wealthy and white. Lower income students will be further concentrated in all the other middle schools. I realize demographics will not factor into any of these boundary changes, but the proposed boundaries run counter to the diversity the Arlington community claims to value.

Every boundary process during the 18 years I've been an APS parent has "run counter to the diversity the Arlington community claims to value." Where have you been?!

I can't with these arguments that people trot out when it's convenient for them. School segregation is due to housing and zoning policies. If you fought Missing Middle and many of you did, you are a hypocrite if now you're acting like you give a crap whether your school is wealthy and white. Busing kids to create the perfect diverse school and not having neighborhood schools doesn't work for a lot of reasons. It's not what anyone wants, including the communities you are "helping" if you bother to ask any people in these communities. Lots of research out there on this.

If you actually care about these things and not just when it's going to affect where you go to school as a talking point to scold other people, get involved in County zoning and housing issues.

Best example of misunderstood nuances around MM and reasons for opposing. I'm a south Arlington APS parent - title I schools all the way through. Strongly support socioeconomic diversity in schools. Opposed MM because I don't believe it's going to magically make neighborhoods - and thereby schools - socioeconomically diverse when you still need to be able to afford a $1M+ home.

Agree about getting involved in housing, however. To insist on CAFs in far north Arlington and geographically distributed AFFORDABLE (not missing middle affordable) housing. To push against concentrated low-income housing, concentrated low-income neighborhoods - and thereby concentrated low-income/high FRM schools.

People wanted ranked choice voting to increase the representation of minority viewpoints. I want ranked choice school admissions to create socioeconomically diverse schools. 'cause the housing ain't gonna happen to create naturally economically diverse schools.

People want what they have and don't want change. If people moved here into an existing ranked choice school system, they wouldn't care so much because it wouldn't be a change they had to endure....it's just what it is. It's also easier to adjust and accept when EVERYONE has to do it. That's why these boundary things are so frought - it's "us" and "them." Change-up the whole system and EVERYone is equally impacted, equally "burdened," and equally "unfairly treated."

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Build new facilities in South Arlington, where the county needs them, already!

Stop messing around with boundaries and whatnot to try to alleviate crowding in the south by moving kids north. Please.

And I live in North Arlington.

So the County should spend tens of millions of dollars to build new elementary schools and leave some half empty. Um, no.

It’s not great, but when all the population growth is in South Arlington but the underenrolled schools are in North Arlington, the County is going to have to redistribute the kids every few years over and over to keep moving kids north if they don’t build more facilities in the south, where the kids are!

IN THE MEANTIME.....
You do realize it takes ten years to get a new building (1) sited (2) planned and (3) built?
You can't share your space and sacrifice a little so others don't have to endure disproportionate burden? Oh, sorry. I forgot - your kid having to go on a bus or a little farther away is disproportionate burden to a bunch of other kids having classes in hallways and closets, lunch at 9:45, and no running during recess.

We authorize hundreds of millions of dollars in CIP debt every two years. We are not strapped for cash.

No one has to “sacrifice” anything, except our free time to make sure it’s money that is being well spent.

Anonymous wrote:I have never understood the obsession with walkable schools. My kids have gone to both walkable and non-walkable. Particularly in elementary school, getting bused is awesome. Great community at the bus stop. I built more neighborhood community doing that than being a walker. Very convenient in the mornings in particular if you work. My kids loved the bus. Walkable schools when they're young and need to be accompanied on the walk and you're on the outer part of the walkable area is a pain in the ass.

+1
I'll let you in on a secret, though: it isn't about being able to walk to school. It's about being entitled to whatever you want, where you want it, when you want it, how you want it. And, more critically, what you don't want and what you purposely planned and paid to avoid. It just sounds nicer under the banners of "walkability" and "efficiency."

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For the Hamm people complaining, what is your proposal to fill Williamsburg then? Who should get bused over there? Not your children. We’ve got that.

Question: why is APS so bad at calculating seats/future needs? Are less families moving to WMS/DHMS? Is this driven in part by the exodus of North Arlington families to private school? Does APS track or publish that information?

Just my observations watching this over many years.

1. Covid definitely impacted things.
2. In past boundary adjustments, the School Board responds to the people screaming in their faces right in the moment. This was the case with the boundary adjustments when Hamm was opened. Hamm never had enough kids and Swanson had too many. People screamed about not leaving Swanson. Same issue with Cardinal. The McKinley community screamed and yelled to stay together and give it a couple years that school will be overcrowded. The problem is this thread. What's going on right now. Listening to current families over what makes sense longer-term.

Right, I don’t disagree with you. But I still would be very curious about the covid impact. How big was it? Is it here to stay? What are the current numbers?

APS does not give two wits about the kids leaving for PS, I know, which is one of the reasons they are leaving. But it’s impacting neighborhoods/neighborhood schools in N Arlington communities in a way that is new and different. It would be useful to understand it. Especially when APS appears to be absolutely abysmal at forecasting seating/buildings.

+1. APS seems to be awful at predicting what it is going to make sense for the long term. In the face of a global pandemic that’s completely upended what we thought we knew about school growth (which was hard learned in the face of being repeatedly wrong before), you’d think some humility would be in order.

And I disagree threads like this are the problem. We are right to question half-baked assumptions and poke holes in flawed methodologies. The fact that the school board keeps buckling in the face of opposition shows they have little faith in staff’s analysis and the assumptions don’t stand up to scrutiny.

Schools are meant to serve the educational needs of students, and APS seems to have completely lost sight of this chasing the Syphax wishlists of the day. APS may be happy to see these parents go, but we all know what happens when people with money and influence lose faith in the public school system. The whole system benefits when the entire community is engaged and invested. Take a look at ACPS for an example of what happens if when UMC and MC parents disengage.

After observing the McKinley/Key/ATS/Cardinal boundary process up close and looking at all the data from all sides in depth, I began to really question this often repeated narrative. Sorry it's inconvenient, but APS staff is capable of making good recommendations with the best information they have and often times parents really don't have the full picture. Who is more self-interested? Them or you?

I just think the narrative that APS stuff constantly sucks and is incompetent is unfair. Do they make mistakes and get things wrong at times? Yes. Are they plotting against you? Probably not. My opinion is the parent communities can just be insanely obstinate. There is no reasoning with people who want what they want and are used to getting their way.

I don’t understand how this happens so often and the seats are so off. That’s where I see the ineffectiveness. DHMS has operated for what four years? They need to completely upend the boundaries of a school they just opened?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Build new facilities in South Arlington, where the county needs them, already!

Stop messing around with boundaries and whatnot to try to alleviate crowding in the south by moving kids north. Please.

And I live in North Arlington.

So the County should spend tens of millions of dollars to build new elementary schools and leave some half empty. Um, no.

It’s not great, but when all the population growth is in South Arlington but the underenrolled schools are in North Arlington, the County is going to have to redistribute the kids every few years over and over to keep moving kids north if they don’t build more facilities in the south, where the kids are!

IN THE MEANTIME.....
You do realize it takes ten years to get a new building (1) sited (2) planned and (3) built?
You can't share your space and sacrifice a little so others don't have to endure disproportionate burden? Oh, sorry. I forgot - your kid having to go on a bus or a little farther away is disproportionate burden to a bunch of other kids having classes in hallways and closets, lunch at 9:45, and no running during recess.

Maybe we should stop building more housing and just opening up every lot to multiplexes. Everyone knows that MM is going to mean more kids in the south. But no one wanted to hear about school overcrowding during MM. No one.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For the Hamm people complaining, what is your proposal to fill Williamsburg then? Who should get bused over there? Not your children. We’ve got that.

Question: why is APS so bad at calculating seats/future needs? Are less families moving to WMS/DHMS? Is this driven in part by the exodus of North Arlington families to private school? Does APS track or publish that information?

Just my observations watching this over many years.

1. Covid definitely impacted things.
2. In past boundary adjustments, the School Board responds to the people screaming in their faces right in the moment. This was the case with the boundary adjustments when Hamm was opened. Hamm never had enough kids and Swanson had too many. People screamed about not leaving Swanson. Same issue with Cardinal. The McKinley community screamed and yelled to stay together and give it a couple years that school will be overcrowded. The problem is this thread. What's going on right now. Listening to current families over what makes sense longer-term.

Right, I don’t disagree with you. But I still would be very curious about the covid impact. How big was it? Is it here to stay? What are the current numbers?

APS does not give two wits about the kids leaving for PS, I know, which is one of the reasons they are leaving. But it’s impacting neighborhoods/neighborhood schools in N Arlington communities in a way that is new and different. It would be useful to understand it. Especially when APS appears to be absolutely abysmal at forecasting seating/buildings.

+1. APS seems to be awful at predicting what it is going to make sense for the long term. In the face of a global pandemic that’s completely upended what we thought we knew about school growth (which was hard learned in the face of being repeatedly wrong before), you’d think some humility would be in order.

And I disagree threads like this are the problem. We are right to question half-baked assumptions and poke holes in flawed methodologies. The fact that the school board keeps buckling in the face of opposition shows they have little faith in staff’s analysis and the assumptions don’t stand up to scrutiny.

Schools are meant to serve the educational needs of students, and APS seems to have completely lost sight of this chasing the Syphax wishlists of the day. APS may be happy to see these parents go, but we all know what happens when people with money and influence lose faith in the public school system. The whole system benefits when the entire community is engaged and invested. Take a look at ACPS for an example of what happens if when UMC and MC parents disengage.

After observing the McKinley/Key/ATS/Cardinal boundary process up close and looking at all the data from all sides in depth, I began to really question this often repeated narrative. Sorry it's inconvenient, but APS staff is capable of making good recommendations with the best information they have and often times parents really don't have the full picture. Who is more self-interested? Them or you?

I just think the narrative that APS stuff constantly sucks and is incompetent is unfair. Do they make mistakes and get things wrong at times? Yes. Are they plotting against you? Probably not. My opinion is the parent communities can just be insanely obstinate. There is no reasoning with people who want what they want and are used to getting their way.

The issue is that APS does not acknowledge the uncertainty and limitations of its own data, dismisses community concerns as being “emotional” (seriously Kadera?!), and is seemingly chasing goals outside of those known to promote learning among students like active and engaged school communities.

We have accepted overcrowding and routine disruption as the cost of educating our children in Arlington. This is unheard of in other districts. Other districts do not spend $150m+ to build two new schools in an area due to overcrowding, and then shut down a third school in the same area due to being under capacity, all within the same decade. We are right to question assumptions and point out when important factors have been given short shrift. I don’t have faith APS is making the best decisions for my neighborhood, not one bit.

And I’m sorry that people that bought cheap in Southie but don’t actually want to send their kids to school there have a problem with it. I support you improving your schools. I want every kid to have what we have here. But we don’t get better by wrecking everything good.