Anonymous wrote:This is fake news, APE spin. Enrollment is up over last year.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1000 students down from 2019. And...? Why is that a problem? We don't have crowded schools and boundary changes will be trivial. APS always projected a leveling off, just not because of a pandemic. Also, Arlington housing prices are through the roof -- this is not a community in decline. What's the problem here?

They want to feel missed. They even want APS to *reach out* to them.

APS projections were never great, but were better than nothing. The pandemic affected many things in Arlington and threw off prior assumptions.

People moved. Some went private. Lower numbers aren’t inherently a bad thing, just a reflection on how life has been changed by the pandemic.

enrollment has tanked because of APS's handling of the pandemic ***fixed it

Haha. This is great spin. You people's minds are impenetrable. Reminds me of Iraq war supporters' unfailing support for Bush in the mid-2000s.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1000 students down from 2019. And...? Why is that a problem? We don't have crowded schools and boundary changes will be trivial. APS always projected a leveling off, just not because of a pandemic. Also, Arlington housing prices are through the roof -- this is not a community in decline. What's the problem here?

They want to feel missed. They even want APS to *reach out* to them.

APS projections were never great, but were better than nothing. The pandemic affected many things in Arlington and threw off prior assumptions.

People moved. Some went private. Lower numbers aren’t inherently a bad thing, just a reflection on how life has been changed by the pandemic.

Anonymous wrote:1000 students down from 2019. And...? Why is that a problem? We don't have crowded schools and boundary changes will be trivial. APS always projected a leveling off, just not because of a pandemic. Also, Arlington housing prices are through the roof -- this is not a community in decline. What's the problem here?

Anonymous wrote:That's a good point. In fall 2014, APS projected over 29k students by fall of 2019. Actual fall 2019 enrollment was 1000 lower. APS enrollment overestimation was cascading pre-pandemic, getting worse the further out APS went. It doesn't make any sense to use pre-pandemic projections as a benchmark to assess current enrollment. Yet, the actual enrollment drops matter. As an absolute number, enrollment has dropped by about 1000 students from Fall 2019 (~28k) to Fall 2021 (~27k). That's real.

Anonymous wrote:I think schools should be open and always did. But I don't see it. Where is the 2k drop? Maybe I'm just missing it or don't understand what the poster is saying.

9/30/16 enrollment = 26,152
https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Sept-30-Membership-2016-17-1.pdf

9/30/17 enrollment = 26,941
https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Sept-30-Membership-2017-18.pdf

9/30/18 enrollment = 27,436
https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Sept-30-Membership-2018-19.pdf

9/30/19 enrollment = 28,020
https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/2_Sept-30-Membership-2019-20_U-MEM_281_Revised.pdf

9/30/20 enrollment = 26,895
https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/U_MEM_281_Summary_10_6_2020.pdf

8/30/21 enrollment = 26,932
https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/arlington/Board.nsf/files/C6PUD66FF9BF/$file/F-1%20Start%20of%20School%20Update.pdf

drop from 2019: 28,020 - 26,932 = 1,088. That is a real drop all on it's own. I don't understand why there's a need to inflate it to 2,000 or 3,000 or whatever. Or I don't understand the point being expressed by the poster.

Anonymous wrote:That's a good point. In fall 2014, APS projected over 29k students by fall of 2019. Actual fall 2019 enrollment was 1000 lower. APS enrollment overestimation was cascading pre-pandemic, getting worse the further out APS went. It doesn't make any sense to use pre-pandemic projections as a benchmark to assess current enrollment. Yet, the actual enrollment drops matter. As an absolute number, enrollment has dropped by about 1000 students from Fall 2019 (~28k) to Fall 2021 (~27k). That's real.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

+ 1000

Grades 2-8 are down approx. 1,500 students from when the same kids were in Grades K-6 in the 2019-2020 school year. PK-1 enrollments are also down 250 kids each from the 2019-2020 school year. That doesn't count the projected additions in the PK-1 enrollments during that time.

But this is all "fake news."

I can’t believe this actually needs to be explained to adults, but the reason why the PROJECTIONS are irrelevant now is because all of the pre-covid assumptions and drivers that went into those projections are now irrelevant.

A lot has happened with Covid - beyond what happened with APS.

The PROJECTIONS just completed in February 2019 are so wrong, that APS and the County still used them for budgeting purposes. Plus, the PROJECTIONS are partially based on watching 10+ year trends, by watching senior classes each year be replaced by kindergarten classes of 500-600 kids. You can do so yourself on APS' enrollment website. They also look at births too, which are 5+ years in advance.

The post above just identified 2,000 kids who are no longer in the system. Classes in grades 2-8 don't typically just shrink by 10% from the time they were in grades K-6.

Hilarious how this information is so triggering. It's why you see the last fallback argument above is "f*** those parents who didn't want schools closed."