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Anonymous wrote:ATS should mandate 2/3rds of slots for lower socioeconomic and minority students, similar to how Montessori does their prek. I have no problem with ATS existing or being a home for attentive parents. But it should favor disadvantaged every step of the way. And, please don't tell me it's FRL rate is similar or better than other schools, that is truly irrelevant. It's FRL needs to be twice the worst neighborhood school, and it's student demographics needs to flip the stats of U.S. public. Then you know it's really serving those who need it in our society.

ATS parent. I support setting aside more K-5 slots for FRL families.

Btw Montessori pre-k uses that model but the elementary school has a lower FRM rate than ATS.

Colleges can’t even set aside spots based on race. But public elementary schools can?

Who said race? This is FRL.

There are white kids in the VPI classes.

Right, but PP said minorities. Reading comprehension, people. No wonder our kids are struggling.

Oh sorry, did that disadvantaged argument strike a nerve? You people smell of fear. Like maybe your free country day school might actually get redirected to people who really need it. Love it.

Huh? My kids don’t even go to ATS. Just saying you can’t fill a school based on race.

Well, that’s not true. How do you think our schools became (and remain) so segregated? It’s not an accident.

Housing policy (historically) and home prices (currently).

I’m not saying they aren’t segregated. I’m saying APS can’t make a policy that states certain schools must be x percent POC. Universities can’t even do that.

Should there be a greater mix demographically in our schools? I want there to be. Though realistically, how do they do that? Bus kids all over town? And what happens when even more families leave for private school? Take a look at Alexandria. It isn’t so pretty.

The Ashlawn boundary is contiguous to Carlin Springs and Barrett. Innovation has been “picked” to be the North Arlington future school for massive amounts of affordable housing, yet you have Science Focus about a mile up the road and one metro stop away. Would you consider adjusting those boundaries too radical? It wouldn’t require a “bus all over town.” I don’t think most people are aware how blatantly segregated the boundaries are in some instances. It cannot be reasonably explained away.

Are you in favor of eliminating the wrap-around services some of these title I schools offer? Spread the poor kids out between different high-performing schools, dropping them at the door and saying “good luck”?

I’m not sure what the answer is, but I know APS doesn’t have the resources to offer some of those services at EVERY school.

APS and Title 1 aren’t funding those services. The county pays for most of the wraparound services, the stuff like free glasses and social workers. The funding follows the kids, so move them around and the $$ and services follow them. PTAs offer some of the other resources, like donations to holiday or food drives and scholarships to after school activities, so a wealthier PTA with fewer needy kids could provide more for each individual student. There’s a lot of research out there if you want to learn about the affects of poverty on schools, and about how it’s really detrimental for poor kids to be in majority low income schools and neighborhoods. It’s neither here nor there. APS will never do anything about it and often they make it worse when they “adjust” contiguous boundaries because it’s the last consideration on their list, when it should be first. It’s the thing that has the most bearing on education, with tons of evidence and research out there. I am not aware of the same level of research into how alignment affects student outcomes (hint: it doesn’t).

Thank you. And I just want to add that some CAF buildings already require buses to get the kids to elementary school, so those kids are getting bused anyway whether it’s to their current high-poverty school, or another nearby school. There are schools within 1-3 miles of each other that aren’t high-poverty where these kids could go. This isn’t something APS couldn’t fix if it actually cared.

Are the other nearby schools under enrolled? And if not, are you expecting some of their students to swap places into the high-poverty school? That’s a hard sell, and would lead to many families fleeing APS. Again, look at Alexandria.

I have no idea why you keep repeating this statement. Alexandria City High School is a 4400 student high school with similar demographics to Wakefield. Wakefield is ranked over 5000 spots higher than ACHS. We are talking about making the schools even LESS segregated, not more. If we shuffle things around, there will be fewer high-poverty schools in Arlington.

No. Take a look at Alexandria’s elementary and middle schools, not ACHS. A lot of Alexandria residents refuse to use the public schools, choosing private school starting at K, which is why their schools are so 💩 at ALL levels.

Which is my point: No one with means is swapping spaces into a high-poverty school. They’d rather flee APS. And as much as it sucks, we need some of those privileged families to stay. Or YES, we turn into Alexandria, where only disadvantaged families use the public schools at ANY level.

I’m not saying it’s right. But do you really think people would willingly send their kids to a failing school?

DP, and nope, we’re definitely not sending our kids to APS unless they get into ATS. We will move if they don’t get in. We’re in S Arlington. I don’t care if this is an unpopular opinion, but I expect high test scores in the schools my kids attend.

I mean there are plenty of schools with decent test scores in Arlington. Even the schools with bad test scores in Arlington are good compared to a lot of Virginia. Pretty much every school in APS scores higher than the state average in all categories and in all demographics.

This is definitely not true. APS as a whole is above the state average. Some schools are way above, but our lower at performing schools are definitely under.

Okay, yes sorry I take that back. I don't think I realized how low a lot of these schools are! I guess most of them aren't that far off from the state average, but the state average is horribly low. I mean I think overall the state of VA is failing to educate kids properly. I mean shouldn't a state be embarrassed when only 60ish percent of its elementary population is passing state testing. Either there is a failure in the schools or their is a failure in the testing (probably a bit of both).

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Anonymous wrote:ATS should mandate 2/3rds of slots for lower socioeconomic and minority students, similar to how Montessori does their prek. I have no problem with ATS existing or being a home for attentive parents. But it should favor disadvantaged every step of the way. And, please don't tell me it's FRL rate is similar or better than other schools, that is truly irrelevant. It's FRL needs to be twice the worst neighborhood school, and it's student demographics needs to flip the stats of U.S. public. Then you know it's really serving those who need it in our society.

ATS parent. I support setting aside more K-5 slots for FRL families.

Btw Montessori pre-k uses that model but the elementary school has a lower FRM rate than ATS.

Colleges can’t even set aside spots based on race. But public elementary schools can?

Who said race? This is FRL.

There are white kids in the VPI classes.

Right, but PP said minorities. Reading comprehension, people. No wonder our kids are struggling.

Oh sorry, did that disadvantaged argument strike a nerve? You people smell of fear. Like maybe your free country day school might actually get redirected to people who really need it. Love it.

Huh? My kids don’t even go to ATS. Just saying you can’t fill a school based on race.

Well, that’s not true. How do you think our schools became (and remain) so segregated? It’s not an accident.

Housing policy (historically) and home prices (currently).

I’m not saying they aren’t segregated. I’m saying APS can’t make a policy that states certain schools must be x percent POC. Universities can’t even do that.

Should there be a greater mix demographically in our schools? I want there to be. Though realistically, how do they do that? Bus kids all over town? And what happens when even more families leave for private school? Take a look at Alexandria. It isn’t so pretty.

The Ashlawn boundary is contiguous to Carlin Springs and Barrett. Innovation has been “picked” to be the North Arlington future school for massive amounts of affordable housing, yet you have Science Focus about a mile up the road and one metro stop away. Would you consider adjusting those boundaries too radical? It wouldn’t require a “bus all over town.” I don’t think most people are aware how blatantly segregated the boundaries are in some instances. It cannot be reasonably explained away.

Are you in favor of eliminating the wrap-around services some of these title I schools offer? Spread the poor kids out between different high-performing schools, dropping them at the door and saying “good luck”?

I’m not sure what the answer is, but I know APS doesn’t have the resources to offer some of those services at EVERY school.

APS and Title 1 aren’t funding those services. The county pays for most of the wraparound services, the stuff like free glasses and social workers. The funding follows the kids, so move them around and the $$ and services follow them. PTAs offer some of the other resources, like donations to holiday or food drives and scholarships to after school activities, so a wealthier PTA with fewer needy kids could provide more for each individual student. There’s a lot of research out there if you want to learn about the affects of poverty on schools, and about how it’s really detrimental for poor kids to be in majority low income schools and neighborhoods. It’s neither here nor there. APS will never do anything about it and often they make it worse when they “adjust” contiguous boundaries because it’s the last consideration on their list, when it should be first. It’s the thing that has the most bearing on education, with tons of evidence and research out there. I am not aware of the same level of research into how alignment affects student outcomes (hint: it doesn’t).

Thank you. And I just want to add that some CAF buildings already require buses to get the kids to elementary school, so those kids are getting bused anyway whether it’s to their current high-poverty school, or another nearby school. There are schools within 1-3 miles of each other that aren’t high-poverty where these kids could go. This isn’t something APS couldn’t fix if it actually cared.

Are the other nearby schools under enrolled? And if not, are you expecting some of their students to swap places into the high-poverty school? That’s a hard sell, and would lead to many families fleeing APS. Again, look at Alexandria.

I have no idea why you keep repeating this statement. Alexandria City High School is a 4400 student high school with similar demographics to Wakefield. Wakefield is ranked over 5000 spots higher than ACHS. We are talking about making the schools even LESS segregated, not more. If we shuffle things around, there will be fewer high-poverty schools in Arlington.

No. Take a look at Alexandria’s elementary and middle schools, not ACHS. A lot of Alexandria residents refuse to use the public schools, choosing private school starting at K, which is why their schools are so 💩 at ALL levels.

Which is my point: No one with means is swapping spaces into a high-poverty school. They’d rather flee APS. And as much as it sucks, we need some of those privileged families to stay. Or YES, we turn into Alexandria, where only disadvantaged families use the public schools at ANY level.

I’m not saying it’s right. But do you really think people would willingly send their kids to a failing school?

DP, and nope, we’re definitely not sending our kids to APS unless they get into ATS. We will move if they don’t get in. We’re in S Arlington. I don’t care if this is an unpopular opinion, but I expect high test scores in the schools my kids attend.

But the idea some people are suggesting is to adjust the boundaries to create more mixed-income rather than high-poverty or significantly affluent schools. Wouldn’t this help your neighborhood school? Or are you only after the 22207 schools? Why didn’t you just move there? I’m not sure where you think you can go if you can’t afford that option unless you’re leaving the area.

It doesn’t have to be perfect but the boundaries could be improved. That’s all anyone here has suggested so far. This shouldn’t freak rationale people out.

I’m the poster you’re responding to and yes, I wholeheartedly support this idea. My experience with this discussion (not necessarily this one but others) is that folks come out of the woodwork to vehemently argue against it for multiple reasons. It’s exhausting and made me apathetic that ANY positive change in APS will ever occur. If it does, great! We might stay. But there doesn’t seem to be any will to fix this. Wouldn’t School Board candidates run on this platform? I could be wrong but I haven’t seen it yet.

This is the older thread I was thinking about (I didn’t read everything in it): https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1015344.page

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Anonymous wrote:ATS should mandate 2/3rds of slots for lower socioeconomic and minority students, similar to how Montessori does their prek. I have no problem with ATS existing or being a home for attentive parents. But it should favor disadvantaged every step of the way. And, please don't tell me it's FRL rate is similar or better than other schools, that is truly irrelevant. It's FRL needs to be twice the worst neighborhood school, and it's student demographics needs to flip the stats of U.S. public. Then you know it's really serving those who need it in our society.

ATS parent. I support setting aside more K-5 slots for FRL families.

Btw Montessori pre-k uses that model but the elementary school has a lower FRM rate than ATS.

Colleges can’t even set aside spots based on race. But public elementary schools can?

Who said race? This is FRL.

There are white kids in the VPI classes.

Right, but PP said minorities. Reading comprehension, people. No wonder our kids are struggling.

Oh sorry, did that disadvantaged argument strike a nerve? You people smell of fear. Like maybe your free country day school might actually get redirected to people who really need it. Love it.

Huh? My kids don’t even go to ATS. Just saying you can’t fill a school based on race.

Well, that’s not true. How do you think our schools became (and remain) so segregated? It’s not an accident.

Housing policy (historically) and home prices (currently).

I’m not saying they aren’t segregated. I’m saying APS can’t make a policy that states certain schools must be x percent POC. Universities can’t even do that.

Should there be a greater mix demographically in our schools? I want there to be. Though realistically, how do they do that? Bus kids all over town? And what happens when even more families leave for private school? Take a look at Alexandria. It isn’t so pretty.

The Ashlawn boundary is contiguous to Carlin Springs and Barrett. Innovation has been “picked” to be the North Arlington future school for massive amounts of affordable housing, yet you have Science Focus about a mile up the road and one metro stop away. Would you consider adjusting those boundaries too radical? It wouldn’t require a “bus all over town.” I don’t think most people are aware how blatantly segregated the boundaries are in some instances. It cannot be reasonably explained away.

Are you in favor of eliminating the wrap-around services some of these title I schools offer? Spread the poor kids out between different high-performing schools, dropping them at the door and saying “good luck”?

I’m not sure what the answer is, but I know APS doesn’t have the resources to offer some of those services at EVERY school.

APS and Title 1 aren’t funding those services. The county pays for most of the wraparound services, the stuff like free glasses and social workers. The funding follows the kids, so move them around and the $$ and services follow them. PTAs offer some of the other resources, like donations to holiday or food drives and scholarships to after school activities, so a wealthier PTA with fewer needy kids could provide more for each individual student. There’s a lot of research out there if you want to learn about the affects of poverty on schools, and about how it’s really detrimental for poor kids to be in majority low income schools and neighborhoods. It’s neither here nor there. APS will never do anything about it and often they make it worse when they “adjust” contiguous boundaries because it’s the last consideration on their list, when it should be first. It’s the thing that has the most bearing on education, with tons of evidence and research out there. I am not aware of the same level of research into how alignment affects student outcomes (hint: it doesn’t).

Thank you. And I just want to add that some CAF buildings already require buses to get the kids to elementary school, so those kids are getting bused anyway whether it’s to their current high-poverty school, or another nearby school. There are schools within 1-3 miles of each other that aren’t high-poverty where these kids could go. This isn’t something APS couldn’t fix if it actually cared.

Are the other nearby schools under enrolled? And if not, are you expecting some of their students to swap places into the high-poverty school? That’s a hard sell, and would lead to many families fleeing APS. Again, look at Alexandria.

I have no idea why you keep repeating this statement. Alexandria City High School is a 4400 student high school with similar demographics to Wakefield. Wakefield is ranked over 5000 spots higher than ACHS. We are talking about making the schools even LESS segregated, not more. If we shuffle things around, there will be fewer high-poverty schools in Arlington.

No. Take a look at Alexandria’s elementary and middle schools, not ACHS. A lot of Alexandria residents refuse to use the public schools, choosing private school starting at K, which is why their schools are so 💩 at ALL levels.

Which is my point: No one with means is swapping spaces into a high-poverty school. They’d rather flee APS. And as much as it sucks, we need some of those privileged families to stay. Or YES, we turn into Alexandria, where only disadvantaged families use the public schools at ANY level.

I’m not saying it’s right. But do you really think people would willingly send their kids to a failing school?

If APS would balance demographics, you would lose fewer UMC in the process because they wouldn't be going to 60%+ FRL schools; they would be going to 30-40% FRL schools. Yes, some would still balk. But many will stay. Many have stayed. Oakridge balked about getting split to Hoffman Boston; but parents have stuck with it. Of course, they were going from a school already 30% FRL instead of 3%.

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Anonymous wrote:ATS should mandate 2/3rds of slots for lower socioeconomic and minority students, similar to how Montessori does their prek. I have no problem with ATS existing or being a home for attentive parents. But it should favor disadvantaged every step of the way. And, please don't tell me its FRL rate is similar or better than other schools, that is truly irrelevant. Its FRL needs to be twice the worst neighborhood school, and its student demographics needs to flip the stats of U.S. public. Then you know it's really serving those who need it in our society.

This is an interesting comment, but I think that APS just needs to offer more schools that use the ATS model. This is a public school district. It’s unfair to offer a product like ATS- the literal best public elementary school in Virginia- when it benefits so few of the taxpaying population. I would be fine with them setting aside percentage for students receiving FRL, but there’s no getting around the fact that we need more ATS slots for everyone.

All of the options are built and supported by the fact that there is demand for 125%, maybe 175%, of capacity, but no more. As a public system, you don't want to build an option building that then depends on you struggling to fill it every year. As others have noted here, there are huge swaths of APS system that do NOT want rigid ATS for their kids. And if your answer is,fine, don't build buildings, just implement inside current schoools, then I strongly suggest you look into the lessons learned from the failures of "schools win schools" in APS. Long story short, nothing makes a local school more like a civil war battleground than when you ty to divide up its classrooms between very different pedagogies. See Montessori experience at Drew.

But demand for ATS is almost 200% of current capacity. Way more than demand for other options.

This is a fact. look at the waitlists. You could fill a second APS and I think you could fill quite a few more HBs. That said, why is HB such a short school if it was a new build? Why didn't APS maximize that space. Wait, I know why. WE HAVE A HORRIBLE SCHOOL BOARD AND THEY ALL MUST GO.

Its true that part of the reason HB works is because all the adults know all the kids, and the kids know that they have a lot of freedom but at the same time have to act to a reasonable standard. It wouldn't work with twice as many kids, or if there were tons of kids there that didn't really want to be there. Not every teacher wants to be in a school where the students can wander around freely and address them directly, and not every teenager can handle being in a building where they can wander around freely and address adults directly--especially if they haven't been given increasing amounts of independence and responsibility all along, and seen it modeled from all of their older peers.

I had kids at both Gunston and HB and I can tell you -- you can't just take parts of the HB model and plunk it down somewhere else, or double it in size. I assume the same is true with ATS. Or at least, you won't automatically get the same results. Not to say there aren't aspects that could be replicated other places, or lessons to be learned, it's just not something you can easily do 1:1.

100 agree with this take on HB. I also have a kid at HB and one in a different APS MS. You just can't replicate the HB model in a much larger school. Whatever - it's a moot point - the site in Rosslyn can't handle trailers.

I am definitely in favor of more programs of a smaller size though since parents seem to want that.

And the rest of us would like to deal in reality. If a program like HB only works because it's small, then we should have gotten rid of it and put a bigger choice school on the Wilson site. A 7-12 program for 1300 kids would still be a lot smaller than the current MS and HS programs, and for kids who are satisfied with team sports limited to frisbee, it would be a godsend.

I'm not interested in replicating ATS until someone shows that it has benefits that last past 5th grade. If you want to define success as high SOLs in 5th, you're free to do so, and good luck getting into a school that will deliver. But the rest of us want something with bigger benefits.

They considered that and the cost of building than 6 stories were not just incrementally higher, they were geometrically higher. (That's universal--it's why you see so many apartment buildings that height, too.)

I'm not sure where you're getting that. Community presentations showed that the least expensive way to get 1300 more seats was to build them on Wilson. But 22207 parents and HB parents created a unified whine that stopped the SB from doing so

Sure, because 1300 families didn't want to send their kids to a neighborhood school in downtown Rosslyn with no fields, no outdoor space, and no parking. That is not a crazy position. And the Heights building technically could hold more kids than it does if it had all traditional classrooms, but there are only 25 kids on the 2 floors used by the Shriver program.

It currently holds 750 kids. So if they built it up to 1300, and gave up those two floors for Shriver they could have easily had 1000 students in HBW.

Great idea. Kick the Shriver kids out.

Can you not read? We would give the same 2 floors to Shriver thus reducing capacity from 1300 to 1000.

I’ve noticed this a lot of posts, HBW apologists wave the “stop attacking the disabled kids” flag anytime people talk about HBW capacity, meanwhile, HBW students have ZERO interaction with Shriver students and are only colocated because they are a fixed size school and thus there is no risk of over crowding.

It’s really distasteful to keep pretending people are dismissing Shriver program to advance your own interests. Nobody is talking about taking the Shriver space. Nobody.

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Anonymous wrote:ATS should mandate 2/3rds of slots for lower socioeconomic and minority students, similar to how Montessori does their prek. I have no problem with ATS existing or being a home for attentive parents. But it should favor disadvantaged every step of the way. And, please don't tell me it's FRL rate is similar or better than other schools, that is truly irrelevant. It's FRL needs to be twice the worst neighborhood school, and it's student demographics needs to flip the stats of U.S. public. Then you know it's really serving those who need it in our society.

ATS parent. I support setting aside more K-5 slots for FRL families.

Btw Montessori pre-k uses that model but the elementary school has a lower FRM rate than ATS.

Colleges can’t even set aside spots based on race. But public elementary schools can?

Who said race? This is FRL.

There are white kids in the VPI classes.

Right, but PP said minorities. Reading comprehension, people. No wonder our kids are struggling.

Oh sorry, did that disadvantaged argument strike a nerve? You people smell of fear. Like maybe your free country day school might actually get redirected to people who really need it. Love it.

Huh? My kids don’t even go to ATS. Just saying you can’t fill a school based on race.

Well, that’s not true. How do you think our schools became (and remain) so segregated? It’s not an accident.

Housing policy (historically) and home prices (currently).

I’m not saying they aren’t segregated. I’m saying APS can’t make a policy that states certain schools must be x percent POC. Universities can’t even do that.

Should there be a greater mix demographically in our schools? I want there to be. Though realistically, how do they do that? Bus kids all over town? And what happens when even more families leave for private school? Take a look at Alexandria. It isn’t so pretty.

The Ashlawn boundary is contiguous to Carlin Springs and Barrett. Innovation has been “picked” to be the North Arlington future school for massive amounts of affordable housing, yet you have Science Focus about a mile up the road and one metro stop away. Would you consider adjusting those boundaries too radical? It wouldn’t require a “bus all over town.” I don’t think most people are aware how blatantly segregated the boundaries are in some instances. It cannot be reasonably explained away.

Are you in favor of eliminating the wrap-around services some of these title I schools offer? Spread the poor kids out between different high-performing schools, dropping them at the door and saying “good luck”?

I’m not sure what the answer is, but I know APS doesn’t have the resources to offer some of those services at EVERY school.

APS and Title 1 aren’t funding those services. The county pays for most of the wraparound services, the stuff like free glasses and social workers. The funding follows the kids, so move them around and the $$ and services follow them. PTAs offer some of the other resources, like donations to holiday or food drives and scholarships to after school activities, so a wealthier PTA with fewer needy kids could provide more for each individual student. There’s a lot of research out there if you want to learn about the affects of poverty on schools, and about how it’s really detrimental for poor kids to be in majority low income schools and neighborhoods. It’s neither here nor there. APS will never do anything about it and often they make it worse when they “adjust” contiguous boundaries because it’s the last consideration on their list, when it should be first. It’s the thing that has the most bearing on education, with tons of evidence and research out there. I am not aware of the same level of research into how alignment affects student outcomes (hint: it doesn’t).

Thank you. And I just want to add that some CAF buildings already require buses to get the kids to elementary school, so those kids are getting bused anyway whether it’s to their current high-poverty school, or another nearby school. There are schools within 1-3 miles of each other that aren’t high-poverty where these kids could go. This isn’t something APS couldn’t fix if it actually cared.

Are the other nearby schools under enrolled? And if not, are you expecting some of their students to swap places into the high-poverty school? That’s a hard sell, and would lead to many families fleeing APS. Again, look at Alexandria.

I have no idea why you keep repeating this statement. Alexandria City High School is a 4400 student high school with similar demographics to Wakefield. Wakefield is ranked over 5000 spots higher than ACHS. We are talking about making the schools even LESS segregated, not more. If we shuffle things around, there will be fewer high-poverty schools in Arlington.

No. Take a look at Alexandria’s elementary and middle schools, not ACHS. A lot of Alexandria residents refuse to use the public schools, choosing private school starting at K, which is why their schools are so 💩 at ALL levels.

Which is my point: No one with means is swapping spaces into a high-poverty school. They’d rather flee APS. And as much as it sucks, we need some of those privileged families to stay. Or YES, we turn into Alexandria, where only disadvantaged families use the public schools at ANY level.

I’m not saying it’s right. But do you really think people would willingly send their kids to a failing school?

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ATS should mandate 2/3rds of slots for lower socioeconomic and minority students, similar to how Montessori does their prek. I have no problem with ATS existing or being a home for attentive parents. But it should favor disadvantaged every step of the way. And, please don't tell me its FRL rate is similar or better than other schools, that is truly irrelevant. Its FRL needs to be twice the worst neighborhood school, and its student demographics needs to flip the stats of U.S. public. Then you know it's really serving those who need it in our society.

This is an interesting comment, but I think that APS just needs to offer more schools that use the ATS model. This is a public school district. It’s unfair to offer a product like ATS- the literal best public elementary school in Virginia- when it benefits so few of the taxpaying population. I would be fine with them setting aside percentage for students receiving FRL, but there’s no getting around the fact that we need more ATS slots for everyone.

All of the options are built and supported by the fact that there is demand for 125%, maybe 175%, of capacity, but no more. As a public system, you don't want to build an option building that then depends on you struggling to fill it every year. As others have noted here, there are huge swaths of APS system that do NOT want rigid ATS for their kids. And if your answer is,fine, don't build buildings, just implement inside current schoools, then I strongly suggest you look into the lessons learned from the failures of "schools win schools" in APS. Long story short, nothing makes a local school more like a civil war battleground than when you ty to divide up its classrooms between very different pedagogies. See Montessori experience at Drew.

But demand for ATS is almost 200% of current capacity. Way more than demand for other options.

This is a fact. look at the waitlists. You could fill a second APS and I think you could fill quite a few more HBs. That said, why is HB such a short school if it was a new build? Why didn't APS maximize that space. Wait, I know why. WE HAVE A HORRIBLE SCHOOL BOARD AND THEY ALL MUST GO.

Its true that part of the reason HB works is because all the adults know all the kids, and the kids know that they have a lot of freedom but at the same time have to act to a reasonable standard. It wouldn't work with twice as many kids, or if there were tons of kids there that didn't really want to be there. Not every teacher wants to be in a school where the students can wander around freely and address them directly, and not every teenager can handle being in a building where they can wander around freely and address adults directly--especially if they haven't been given increasing amounts of independence and responsibility all along, and seen it modeled from all of their older peers.

I had kids at both Gunston and HB and I can tell you -- you can't just take parts of the HB model and plunk it down somewhere else, or double it in size. I assume the same is true with ATS. Or at least, you won't automatically get the same results. Not to say there aren't aspects that could be replicated other places, or lessons to be learned, it's just not something you can easily do 1:1.

100 agree with this take on HB. I also have a kid at HB and one in a different APS MS. You just can't replicate the HB model in a much larger school. Whatever - it's a moot point - the site in Rosslyn can't handle trailers.

I am definitely in favor of more programs of a smaller size though since parents seem to want that.

And the rest of us would like to deal in reality. If a program like HB only works because it's small, then we should have gotten rid of it and put a bigger choice school on the Wilson site. A 7-12 program for 1300 kids would still be a lot smaller than the current MS and HS programs, and for kids who are satisfied with team sports limited to frisbee, it would be a godsend.

I'm not interested in replicating ATS until someone shows that it has benefits that last past 5th grade. If you want to define success as high SOLs in 5th, you're free to do so, and good luck getting into a school that will deliver. But the rest of us want something with bigger benefits.

They considered that and the cost of building than 6 stories were not just incrementally higher, they were geometrically higher. (That's universal--it's why you see so many apartment buildings that height, too.)

I'm not sure where you're getting that. Community presentations showed that the least expensive way to get 1300 more seats was to build them on Wilson. But 22207 parents and HB parents created a unified whine that stopped the SB from doing so

Sure, because 1300 families didn't want to send their kids to a neighborhood school in downtown Rosslyn with no fields, no outdoor space, and no parking. That is not a crazy position. And the Heights building technically could hold more kids than it does if it had all traditional classrooms, but there are only 25 kids on the 2 floors used by the Shriver program.

It currently holds 750 kids. So if they built it up to 1300, and gave up those two floors for Shriver they could have easily had 1000 students in HBW.

Great idea. Kick the Shriver kids out.

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Anonymous wrote:ATS should mandate 2/3rds of slots for lower socioeconomic and minority students, similar to how Montessori does their prek. I have no problem with ATS existing or being a home for attentive parents. But it should favor disadvantaged every step of the way. And, please don't tell me it's FRL rate is similar or better than other schools, that is truly irrelevant. It's FRL needs to be twice the worst neighborhood school, and it's student demographics needs to flip the stats of U.S. public. Then you know it's really serving those who need it in our society.

ATS parent. I support setting aside more K-5 slots for FRL families.

Btw Montessori pre-k uses that model but the elementary school has a lower FRM rate than ATS.

Colleges can’t even set aside spots based on race. But public elementary schools can?

Who said race? This is FRL.

There are white kids in the VPI classes.

Right, but PP said minorities. Reading comprehension, people. No wonder our kids are struggling.

Oh sorry, did that disadvantaged argument strike a nerve? You people smell of fear. Like maybe your free country day school might actually get redirected to people who really need it. Love it.

Huh? My kids don’t even go to ATS. Just saying you can’t fill a school based on race.

Well, that’s not true. How do you think our schools became (and remain) so segregated? It’s not an accident.

Housing policy (historically) and home prices (currently).

I’m not saying they aren’t segregated. I’m saying APS can’t make a policy that states certain schools must be x percent POC. Universities can’t even do that.

Should there be a greater mix demographically in our schools? I want there to be. Though realistically, how do they do that? Bus kids all over town? And what happens when even more families leave for private school? Take a look at Alexandria. It isn’t so pretty.

The Ashlawn boundary is contiguous to Carlin Springs and Barrett. Innovation has been “picked” to be the North Arlington future school for massive amounts of affordable housing, yet you have Science Focus about a mile up the road and one metro stop away. Would you consider adjusting those boundaries too radical? It wouldn’t require a “bus all over town.” I don’t think most people are aware how blatantly segregated the boundaries are in some instances. It cannot be reasonably explained away.

Are you in favor of eliminating the wrap-around services some of these title I schools offer? Spread the poor kids out between different high-performing schools, dropping them at the door and saying “good luck”?

I’m not sure what the answer is, but I know APS doesn’t have the resources to offer some of those services at EVERY school.

APS and Title 1 aren’t funding those services. The county pays for most of the wraparound services, the stuff like free glasses and social workers. The funding follows the kids, so move them around and the $$ and services follow them. PTAs offer some of the other resources, like donations to holiday or food drives and scholarships to after school activities, so a wealthier PTA with fewer needy kids could provide more for each individual student. There’s a lot of research out there if you want to learn about the affects of poverty on schools, and about how it’s really detrimental for poor kids to be in majority low income schools and neighborhoods. It’s neither here nor there. APS will never do anything about it and often they make it worse when they “adjust” contiguous boundaries because it’s the last consideration on their list, when it should be first. It’s the thing that has the most bearing on education, with tons of evidence and research out there. I am not aware of the same level of research into how alignment affects student outcomes (hint: it doesn’t).

Thank you. And I just want to add that some CAF buildings already require buses to get the kids to elementary school, so those kids are getting bused anyway whether it’s to their current high-poverty school, or another nearby school. There are schools within 1-3 miles of each other that aren’t high-poverty where these kids could go. This isn’t something APS couldn’t fix if it actually cared.

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Anonymous wrote:ATS should mandate 2/3rds of slots for lower socioeconomic and minority students, similar to how Montessori does their prek. I have no problem with ATS existing or being a home for attentive parents. But it should favor disadvantaged every step of the way. And, please don't tell me it's FRL rate is similar or better than other schools, that is truly irrelevant. It's FRL needs to be twice the worst neighborhood school, and it's student demographics needs to flip the stats of U.S. public. Then you know it's really serving those who need it in our society.

ATS parent. I support setting aside more K-5 slots for FRL families.

Btw Montessori pre-k uses that model but the elementary school has a lower FRM rate than ATS.

Colleges can’t even set aside spots based on race. But public elementary schools can?

Who said race? This is FRL.

There are white kids in the VPI classes.

Right, but PP said minorities. Reading comprehension, people. No wonder our kids are struggling.

Oh sorry, did that disadvantaged argument strike a nerve? You people smell of fear. Like maybe your free country day school might actually get redirected to people who really need it. Love it.

Huh? My kids don’t even go to ATS. Just saying you can’t fill a school based on race.

Well, that’s not true. How do you think our schools became (and remain) so segregated? It’s not an accident.

Housing policy (historically) and home prices (currently).

I’m not saying they aren’t segregated. I’m saying APS can’t make a policy that states certain schools must be x percent POC. Universities can’t even do that.

Should there be a greater mix demographically in our schools? I want there to be. Though realistically, how do they do that? Bus kids all over town? And what happens when even more families leave for private school? Take a look at Alexandria. It isn’t so pretty.

The Ashlawn boundary is contiguous to Carlin Springs and Barrett. Innovation has been “picked” to be the North Arlington future school for massive amounts of affordable housing, yet you have Science Focus about a mile up the road and one metro stop away. Would you consider adjusting those boundaries too radical? It wouldn’t require a “bus all over town.” I don’t think most people are aware how blatantly segregated the boundaries are in some instances. It cannot be reasonably explained away.

Are you in favor of eliminating the wrap-around services some of these title I schools offer? Spread the poor kids out between different high-performing schools, dropping them at the door and saying “good luck”?

I’m not sure what the answer is, but I know APS doesn’t have the resources to offer some of those services at EVERY school.

APS and Title 1 aren’t funding those services. The county pays for most of the wraparound services, the stuff like free glasses and social workers. The funding follows the kids, so move them around and the $$ and services follow them. PTAs offer some of the other resources, like donations to holiday or food drives and scholarships to after school activities, so a wealthier PTA with fewer needy kids could provide more for each individual student. There’s a lot of research out there if you want to learn about the affects of poverty on schools, and about how it’s really detrimental for poor kids to be in majority low income schools and neighborhoods. It’s neither here nor there. APS will never do anything about it and often they make it worse when they “adjust” contiguous boundaries because it’s the last consideration on their list, when it should be first. It’s the thing that has the most bearing on education, with tons of evidence and research out there. I am not aware of the same level of research into how alignment affects student outcomes (hint: it doesn’t).

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Anonymous wrote:ATS should mandate 2/3rds of slots for lower socioeconomic and minority students, similar to how Montessori does their prek. I have no problem with ATS existing or being a home for attentive parents. But it should favor disadvantaged every step of the way. And, please don't tell me its FRL rate is similar or better than other schools, that is truly irrelevant. Its FRL needs to be twice the worst neighborhood school, and its student demographics needs to flip the stats of U.S. public. Then you know it's really serving those who need it in our society.

This is an interesting comment, but I think that APS just needs to offer more schools that use the ATS model. This is a public school district. It’s unfair to offer a product like ATS- the literal best public elementary school in Virginia- when it benefits so few of the taxpaying population. I would be fine with them setting aside percentage for students receiving FRL, but there’s no getting around the fact that we need more ATS slots for everyone.

All of the options are built and supported by the fact that there is demand for 125%, maybe 175%, of capacity, but no more. As a public system, you don't want to build an option building that then depends on you struggling to fill it every year. As others have noted here, there are huge swaths of APS system that do NOT want rigid ATS for their kids. And if your answer is,fine, don't build buildings, just implement inside current schoools, then I strongly suggest you look into the lessons learned from the failures of "schools win schools" in APS. Long story short, nothing makes a local school more like a civil war battleground than when you ty to divide up its classrooms between very different pedagogies. See Montessori experience at Drew.

But demand for ATS is almost 200% of current capacity. Way more than demand for other options.

This is a fact. look at the waitlists. You could fill a second APS and I think you could fill quite a few more HBs. That said, why is HB such a short school if it was a new build? Why didn't APS maximize that space. Wait, I know why. WE HAVE A HORRIBLE SCHOOL BOARD AND THEY ALL MUST GO.

Its true that part of the reason HB works is because all the adults know all the kids, and the kids know that they have a lot of freedom but at the same time have to act to a reasonable standard. It wouldn't work with twice as many kids, or if there were tons of kids there that didn't really want to be there. Not every teacher wants to be in a school where the students can wander around freely and address them directly, and not every teenager can handle being in a building where they can wander around freely and address adults directly--especially if they haven't been given increasing amounts of independence and responsibility all along, and seen it modeled from all of their older peers.

I had kids at both Gunston and HB and I can tell you -- you can't just take parts of the HB model and plunk it down somewhere else, or double it in size. I assume the same is true with ATS. Or at least, you won't automatically get the same results. Not to say there aren't aspects that could be replicated other places, or lessons to be learned, it's just not something you can easily do 1:1.

100 agree with this take on HB. I also have a kid at HB and one in a different APS MS. You just can't replicate the HB model in a much larger school. Whatever - it's a moot point - the site in Rosslyn can't handle trailers.

I am definitely in favor of more programs of a smaller size though since parents seem to want that.

And the rest of us would like to deal in reality. If a program like HB only works because it's small, then we should have gotten rid of it and put a bigger choice school on the Wilson site. A 7-12 program for 1300 kids would still be a lot smaller than the current MS and HS programs, and for kids who are satisfied with team sports limited to frisbee, it would be a godsend.

I'm not interested in replicating ATS until someone shows that it has benefits that last past 5th grade. If you want to define success as high SOLs in 5th, you're free to do so, and good luck getting into a school that will deliver. But the rest of us want something with bigger benefits.

They considered that and the cost of building than 6 stories were not just incrementally higher, they were geometrically higher. (That's universal--it's why you see so many apartment buildings that height, too.)

I'm not sure where you're getting that. Community presentations showed that the least expensive way to get 1300 more seats was to build them on Wilson. But 22207 parents and HB parents created a unified whine that stopped the SB from doing so

Sure, because 1300 families didn't want to send their kids to a neighborhood school in downtown Rosslyn with no fields, no outdoor space, and no parking. That is not a crazy position. And the Heights building technically could hold more kids than it does if it had all traditional classrooms, but there are only 25 kids on the 2 floors used by the Shriver program.

It makes me laugh so hard that you people want to live on the doorstep of the nation’s capitol but you don’t want your kids to go to school “downtown.”

Capital, sweetie.

Actually, both work here!

No, they don’t. Arlington is very close to the DC border. The front steps of the Capitol? Not so much.

Thank you for your contributions. Sweetie.

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Anonymous wrote:ATS should mandate 2/3rds of slots for lower socioeconomic and minority students, similar to how Montessori does their prek. I have no problem with ATS existing or being a home for attentive parents. But it should favor disadvantaged every step of the way. And, please don't tell me its FRL rate is similar or better than other schools, that is truly irrelevant. Its FRL needs to be twice the worst neighborhood school, and its student demographics needs to flip the stats of U.S. public. Then you know it's really serving those who need it in our society.

This is an interesting comment, but I think that APS just needs to offer more schools that use the ATS model. This is a public school district. It’s unfair to offer a product like ATS- the literal best public elementary school in Virginia- when it benefits so few of the taxpaying population. I would be fine with them setting aside percentage for students receiving FRL, but there’s no getting around the fact that we need more ATS slots for everyone.

All of the options are built and supported by the fact that there is demand for 125%, maybe 175%, of capacity, but no more. As a public system, you don't want to build an option building that then depends on you struggling to fill it every year. As others have noted here, there are huge swaths of APS system that do NOT want rigid ATS for their kids. And if your answer is,fine, don't build buildings, just implement inside current schoools, then I strongly suggest you look into the lessons learned from the failures of "schools win schools" in APS. Long story short, nothing makes a local school more like a civil war battleground than when you ty to divide up its classrooms between very different pedagogies. See Montessori experience at Drew.

But demand for ATS is almost 200% of current capacity. Way more than demand for other options.

This is a fact. look at the waitlists. You could fill a second APS and I think you could fill quite a few more HBs. That said, why is HB such a short school if it was a new build? Why didn't APS maximize that space. Wait, I know why. WE HAVE A HORRIBLE SCHOOL BOARD AND THEY ALL MUST GO.

Its true that part of the reason HB works is because all the adults know all the kids, and the kids know that they have a lot of freedom but at the same time have to act to a reasonable standard. It wouldn't work with twice as many kids, or if there were tons of kids there that didn't really want to be there. Not every teacher wants to be in a school where the students can wander around freely and address them directly, and not every teenager can handle being in a building where they can wander around freely and address adults directly--especially if they haven't been given increasing amounts of independence and responsibility all along, and seen it modeled from all of their older peers.

I had kids at both Gunston and HB and I can tell you -- you can't just take parts of the HB model and plunk it down somewhere else, or double it in size. I assume the same is true with ATS. Or at least, you won't automatically get the same results. Not to say there aren't aspects that could be replicated other places, or lessons to be learned, it's just not something you can easily do 1:1.

100 agree with this take on HB. I also have a kid at HB and one in a different APS MS. You just can't replicate the HB model in a much larger school. Whatever - it's a moot point - the site in Rosslyn can't handle trailers.

I am definitely in favor of more programs of a smaller size though since parents seem to want that.

And the rest of us would like to deal in reality. If a program like HB only works because it's small, then we should have gotten rid of it and put a bigger choice school on the Wilson site. A 7-12 program for 1300 kids would still be a lot smaller than the current MS and HS programs, and for kids who are satisfied with team sports limited to frisbee, it would be a godsend.

I'm not interested in replicating ATS until someone shows that it has benefits that last past 5th grade. If you want to define success as high SOLs in 5th, you're free to do so, and good luck getting into a school that will deliver. But the rest of us want something with bigger benefits.

They considered that and the cost of building than 6 stories were not just incrementally higher, they were geometrically higher. (That's universal--it's why you see so many apartment buildings that height, too.)

I'm not sure where you're getting that. Community presentations showed that the least expensive way to get 1300 more seats was to build them on Wilson. But 22207 parents and HB parents created a unified whine that stopped the SB from doing so

Sure, because 1300 families didn't want to send their kids to a neighborhood school in downtown Rosslyn with no fields, no outdoor space, and no parking. That is not a crazy position. And the Heights building technically could hold more kids than it does if it had all traditional classrooms, but there are only 25 kids on the 2 floors used by the Shriver program.

It makes me laugh so hard that you people want to live on the doorstep of the nation’s capitol but you don’t want your kids to go to school “downtown.”

Capital, sweetie.

Actually, both work here!

No, they don’t. Arlington is very close to the DC border. The front steps of the Capitol? Not so much.

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Anonymous wrote:ATS should mandate 2/3rds of slots for lower socioeconomic and minority students, similar to how Montessori does their prek. I have no problem with ATS existing or being a home for attentive parents. But it should favor disadvantaged every step of the way. And, please don't tell me it's FRL rate is similar or better than other schools, that is truly irrelevant. It's FRL needs to be twice the worst neighborhood school, and it's student demographics needs to flip the stats of U.S. public. Then you know it's really serving those who need it in our society.

ATS parent. I support setting aside more K-5 slots for FRL families.

Btw Montessori pre-k uses that model but the elementary school has a lower FRM rate than ATS.

Colleges can’t even set aside spots based on race. But public elementary schools can?

Who said race? This is FRL.

There are white kids in the VPI classes.

Right, but PP said minorities. Reading comprehension, people. No wonder our kids are struggling.

Oh sorry, did that disadvantaged argument strike a nerve? You people smell of fear. Like maybe your free country day school might actually get redirected to people who really need it. Love it.

Huh? My kids don’t even go to ATS. Just saying you can’t fill a school based on race.

Well, that’s not true. How do you think our schools became (and remain) so segregated? It’s not an accident.

Housing policy (historically) and home prices (currently).

I’m not saying they aren’t segregated. I’m saying APS can’t make a policy that states certain schools must be x percent POC. Universities can’t even do that.

Should there be a greater mix demographically in our schools? I want there to be. Though realistically, how do they do that? Bus kids all over town? And what happens when even more families leave for private school? Take a look at Alexandria. It isn’t so pretty.

The Ashlawn boundary is contiguous to Carlin Springs and Barrett. Innovation has been “picked” to be the North Arlington future school for massive amounts of affordable housing, yet you have Science Focus about a mile up the road and one metro stop away. Would you consider adjusting those boundaries too radical? It wouldn’t require a “bus all over town.” I don’t think most people are aware how blatantly segregated the boundaries are in some instances. It cannot be reasonably explained away.

Are you in favor of eliminating the wrap-around services some of these title I schools offer? Spread the poor kids out between different high-performing schools, dropping them at the door and saying “good luck”?

I’m not sure what the answer is, but I know APS doesn’t have the resources to offer some of those services at EVERY school.

APS and Title 1 aren’t funding those services. The county pays for most of the wraparound services, the stuff like free glasses and social workers. The funding follows the kids, so move them around and the $$ and services follow them. PTAs offer some of the other resources, like donations to holiday or food drives and scholarships to after school activities, so a wealthier PTA with fewer needy kids could provide more for each individual student. There’s a lot of research out there if you want to learn about the affects of poverty on schools, and about how it’s really detrimental for poor kids to be in majority low income schools and neighborhoods. It’s neither here nor there. APS will never do anything about it and often they make it worse when they “adjust” contiguous boundaries because it’s the last consideration on their list, when it should be first. It’s the thing that has the most bearing on education, with tons of evidence and research out there. I am not aware of the same level of research into how alignment affects student outcomes (hint: it doesn’t).

Thank you. And I just want to add that some CAF buildings already require buses to get the kids to elementary school, so those kids are getting bused anyway whether it’s to their current high-poverty school, or another nearby school. There are schools within 1-3 miles of each other that aren’t high-poverty where these kids could go. This isn’t something APS couldn’t fix if it actually cared.

Are the other nearby schools under enrolled? And if not, are you expecting some of their students to swap places into the high-poverty school? That’s a hard sell, and would lead to many families fleeing APS. Again, look at Alexandria.

I have no idea why you keep repeating this statement. Alexandria City High School is a 4400 student high school with similar demographics to Wakefield. Wakefield is ranked over 5000 spots higher than ACHS. We are talking about making the schools even LESS segregated, not more. If we shuffle things around, there will be fewer high-poverty schools in Arlington.

No. Take a look at Alexandria’s elementary and middle schools, not ACHS. A lot of Alexandria residents refuse to use the public schools, choosing private school starting at K, which is why their schools are so 💩 at ALL levels.

Which is my point: No one with means is swapping spaces into a high-poverty school. They’d rather flee APS. And as much as it sucks, we need some of those privileged families to stay. Or YES, we turn into Alexandria, where only disadvantaged families use the public schools at ANY level.

I’m not saying it’s right. But do you really think people would willingly send their kids to a failing school?

DP, and nope, we’re definitely not sending our kids to APS unless they get into ATS. We will move if they don’t get in. We’re in S Arlington. I don’t care if this is an unpopular opinion, but I expect high test scores in the schools my kids attend.

But the idea some people are suggesting is to adjust the boundaries to create more mixed-income rather than high-poverty or significantly affluent schools. Wouldn’t this help your neighborhood school? Or are you only after the 22207 schools? Why didn’t you just move there? I’m not sure where you think you can go if you can’t afford that option unless you’re leaving the area.

It doesn’t have to be perfect but the boundaries could be improved. That’s all anyone here has suggested so far. This shouldn’t freak rationale people out.

I’m the poster you’re responding to and yes, I wholeheartedly support this idea. My experience with this discussion (not necessarily this one but others) is that folks come out of the woodwork to vehemently argue against it for multiple reasons. It’s exhausting and made me apathetic that ANY positive change in APS will ever occur. If it does, great! We might stay. But there doesn’t seem to be any will to fix this. Wouldn’t School Board candidates run on this platform? I could be wrong but I haven’t seen it yet.

This is the older thread I was thinking about (I didn’t read everything in it): https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1015344.page

I mean, I keep asking you but you don’t respond: where are you going? Where is your magical school with great test scores and truly mixed income? You keep threatening to leave S Arlington, like there is some other option that everyone else is missing. I highly doubt that you’ve identified one and instead are just saying nonsense on a message board.

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ATS should mandate 2/3rds of slots for lower socioeconomic and minority students, similar to how Montessori does their prek. I have no problem with ATS existing or being a home for attentive parents. But it should favor disadvantaged every step of the way. And, please don't tell me it's FRL rate is similar or better than other schools, that is truly irrelevant. It's FRL needs to be twice the worst neighborhood school, and it's student demographics needs to flip the stats of U.S. public. Then you know it's really serving those who need it in our society.

ATS parent. I support setting aside more K-5 slots for FRL families.

Btw Montessori pre-k uses that model but the elementary school has a lower FRM rate than ATS.

Colleges can’t even set aside spots based on race. But public elementary schools can?

Who said race? This is FRL.

There are white kids in the VPI classes.

Right, but PP said minorities. Reading comprehension, people. No wonder our kids are struggling.

Oh sorry, did that disadvantaged argument strike a nerve? You people smell of fear. Like maybe your free country day school might actually get redirected to people who really need it. Love it.

Huh? My kids don’t even go to ATS. Just saying you can’t fill a school based on race.

Well, that’s not true. How do you think our schools became (and remain) so segregated? It’s not an accident.

Housing policy (historically) and home prices (currently).

I’m not saying they aren’t segregated. I’m saying APS can’t make a policy that states certain schools must be x percent POC. Universities can’t even do that.

Should there be a greater mix demographically in our schools? I want there to be. Though realistically, how do they do that? Bus kids all over town? And what happens when even more families leave for private school? Take a look at Alexandria. It isn’t so pretty.

The Ashlawn boundary is contiguous to Carlin Springs and Barrett. Innovation has been “picked” to be the North Arlington future school for massive amounts of affordable housing, yet you have Science Focus about a mile up the road and one metro stop away. Would you consider adjusting those boundaries too radical? It wouldn’t require a “bus all over town.” I don’t think most people are aware how blatantly segregated the boundaries are in some instances. It cannot be reasonably explained away.

Are you in favor of eliminating the wrap-around services some of these title I schools offer? Spread the poor kids out between different high-performing schools, dropping them at the door and saying “good luck”?

I’m not sure what the answer is, but I know APS doesn’t have the resources to offer some of those services at EVERY school.

APS and Title 1 aren’t funding those services. The county pays for most of the wraparound services, the stuff like free glasses and social workers. The funding follows the kids, so move them around and the $$ and services follow them. PTAs offer some of the other resources, like donations to holiday or food drives and scholarships to after school activities, so a wealthier PTA with fewer needy kids could provide more for each individual student. There’s a lot of research out there if you want to learn about the affects of poverty on schools, and about how it’s really detrimental for poor kids to be in majority low income schools and neighborhoods. It’s neither here nor there. APS will never do anything about it and often they make it worse when they “adjust” contiguous boundaries because it’s the last consideration on their list, when it should be first. It’s the thing that has the most bearing on education, with tons of evidence and research out there. I am not aware of the same level of research into how alignment affects student outcomes (hint: it doesn’t).

Thank you. And I just want to add that some CAF buildings already require buses to get the kids to elementary school, so those kids are getting bused anyway whether it’s to their current high-poverty school, or another nearby school. There are schools within 1-3 miles of each other that aren’t high-poverty where these kids could go. This isn’t something APS couldn’t fix if it actually cared.

Are the other nearby schools under enrolled? And if not, are you expecting some of their students to swap places into the high-poverty school? That’s a hard sell, and would lead to many families fleeing APS. Again, look at Alexandria.

I have no idea why you keep repeating this statement. Alexandria City High School is a 4400 student high school with similar demographics to Wakefield. Wakefield is ranked over 5000 spots higher than ACHS. We are talking about making the schools even LESS segregated, not more. If we shuffle things around, there will be fewer high-poverty schools in Arlington.

No. Take a look at Alexandria’s elementary and middle schools, not ACHS. A lot of Alexandria residents refuse to use the public schools, choosing private school starting at K, which is why their schools are so 💩 at ALL levels.

Which is my point: No one with means is swapping spaces into a high-poverty school. They’d rather flee APS. And as much as it sucks, we need some of those privileged families to stay. Or YES, we turn into Alexandria, where only disadvantaged families use the public schools at ANY level.

I’m not saying it’s right. But do you really think people would willingly send their kids to a failing school?

DP, and nope, we’re definitely not sending our kids to APS unless they get into ATS. We will move if they don’t get in. We’re in S Arlington. I don’t care if this is an unpopular opinion, but I expect high test scores in the schools my kids attend.

But the idea some people are suggesting is to adjust the boundaries to create more mixed-income rather than high-poverty or significantly affluent schools. Wouldn’t this help your neighborhood school? Or are you only after the 22207 schools? Why didn’t you just move there? I’m not sure where you think you can go if you can’t afford that option unless you’re leaving the area.

It doesn’t have to be perfect but the boundaries could be improved. That’s all anyone here has suggested so far. This shouldn’t freak rationale people out.

I’m the poster you’re responding to and yes, I wholeheartedly support this idea. My experience with this discussion (not necessarily this one but others) is that folks come out of the woodwork to vehemently argue against it for multiple reasons. It’s exhausting and made me apathetic that ANY positive change in APS will ever occur. If it does, great! We might stay. But there doesn’t seem to be any will to fix this. Wouldn’t School Board candidates run on this platform? I could be wrong but I haven’t seen it yet.

This is the older thread I was thinking about (I didn’t read everything in it): https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1015344.page

I mean, I keep asking you but you don’t respond: where are you going? Where is your magical school with great test scores and truly mixed income? You keep threatening to leave S Arlington, like there is some other option that everyone else is missing. I highly doubt that you’ve identified one and instead are just saying nonsense on a message board.

I’m not the person you’re asking, but his/her answer is none of your business. There are lots of options for education, both here and across the country. Stop being an @ss.

I am not being a jerk. What this poster is suggesting exists does not actually exist and I’m calling them out. They are complaining about some fanciful school that doesn’t exist in real life. Can you name one? It’s a fair point that Arlington is not failing here when no one else is accomplishing it.

Actually there are mixed-income schools right here in Arlington. We are saying we want more.

But the poster wants the test scores of ATS right? Seems like those aren’t the mixed income schools but prove me wrong.

ATS *is* mixed income.

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Anonymous wrote:ATS should mandate 2/3rds of slots for lower socioeconomic and minority students, similar to how Montessori does their prek. I have no problem with ATS existing or being a home for attentive parents. But it should favor disadvantaged every step of the way. And, please don't tell me it's FRL rate is similar or better than other schools, that is truly irrelevant. It's FRL needs to be twice the worst neighborhood school, and it's student demographics needs to flip the stats of U.S. public. Then you know it's really serving those who need it in our society.

ATS parent. I support setting aside more K-5 slots for FRL families.

Btw Montessori pre-k uses that model but the elementary school has a lower FRM rate than ATS.

Colleges can’t even set aside spots based on race. But public elementary schools can?

Who said race? This is FRL.

There are white kids in the VPI classes.

Right, but PP said minorities. Reading comprehension, people. No wonder our kids are struggling.

Oh sorry, did that disadvantaged argument strike a nerve? You people smell of fear. Like maybe your free country day school might actually get redirected to people who really need it. Love it.

Huh? My kids don’t even go to ATS. Just saying you can’t fill a school based on race.

Well, that’s not true. How do you think our schools became (and remain) so segregated? It’s not an accident.

Housing policy (historically) and home prices (currently).

I’m not saying they aren’t segregated. I’m saying APS can’t make a policy that states certain schools must be x percent POC. Universities can’t even do that.

Should there be a greater mix demographically in our schools? I want there to be. Though realistically, how do they do that? Bus kids all over town? And what happens when even more families leave for private school? Take a look at Alexandria. It isn’t so pretty.

The Ashlawn boundary is contiguous to Carlin Springs and Barrett. Innovation has been “picked” to be the North Arlington future school for massive amounts of affordable housing, yet you have Science Focus about a mile up the road and one metro stop away. Would you consider adjusting those boundaries too radical? It wouldn’t require a “bus all over town.” I don’t think most people are aware how blatantly segregated the boundaries are in some instances. It cannot be reasonably explained away.

Are you in favor of eliminating the wrap-around services some of these title I schools offer? Spread the poor kids out between different high-performing schools, dropping them at the door and saying “good luck”?

I’m not sure what the answer is, but I know APS doesn’t have the resources to offer some of those services at EVERY school.

APS and Title 1 aren’t funding those services. The county pays for most of the wraparound services, the stuff like free glasses and social workers. The funding follows the kids, so move them around and the $$ and services follow them. PTAs offer some of the other resources, like donations to holiday or food drives and scholarships to after school activities, so a wealthier PTA with fewer needy kids could provide more for each individual student. There’s a lot of research out there if you want to learn about the affects of poverty on schools, and about how it’s really detrimental for poor kids to be in majority low income schools and neighborhoods. It’s neither here nor there. APS will never do anything about it and often they make it worse when they “adjust” contiguous boundaries because it’s the last consideration on their list, when it should be first. It’s the thing that has the most bearing on education, with tons of evidence and research out there. I am not aware of the same level of research into how alignment affects student outcomes (hint: it doesn’t).

Thank you. And I just want to add that some CAF buildings already require buses to get the kids to elementary school, so those kids are getting bused anyway whether it’s to their current high-poverty school, or another nearby school. There are schools within 1-3 miles of each other that aren’t high-poverty where these kids could go. This isn’t something APS couldn’t fix if it actually cared.

Are the other nearby schools under enrolled? And if not, are you expecting some of their students to swap places into the high-poverty school? That’s a hard sell, and would lead to many families fleeing APS. Again, look at Alexandria.

I have no idea why you keep repeating this statement. Alexandria City High School is a 4400 student high school with similar demographics to Wakefield. Wakefield is ranked over 5000 spots higher than ACHS. We are talking about making the schools even LESS segregated, not more. If we shuffle things around, there will be fewer high-poverty schools in Arlington.

No. Take a look at Alexandria’s elementary and middle schools, not ACHS. A lot of Alexandria residents refuse to use the public schools, choosing private school starting at K, which is why their schools are so 💩 at ALL levels.

Which is my point: No one with means is swapping spaces into a high-poverty school. They’d rather flee APS. And as much as it sucks, we need some of those privileged families to stay. Or YES, we turn into Alexandria, where only disadvantaged families use the public schools at ANY level.

I’m not saying it’s right. But do you really think people would willingly send their kids to a failing school?

DP, and nope, we’re definitely not sending our kids to APS unless they get into ATS. We will move if they don’t get in. We’re in S Arlington. I don’t care if this is an unpopular opinion, but I expect high test scores in the schools my kids attend.

But the idea some people are suggesting is to adjust the boundaries to create more mixed-income rather than high-poverty or significantly affluent schools. Wouldn’t this help your neighborhood school? Or are you only after the 22207 schools? Why didn’t you just move there? I’m not sure where you think you can go if you can’t afford that option unless you’re leaving the area.

It doesn’t have to be perfect but the boundaries could be improved. That’s all anyone here has suggested so far. This shouldn’t freak rationale people out.

I’m the poster you’re responding to and yes, I wholeheartedly support this idea. My experience with this discussion (not necessarily this one but others) is that folks come out of the woodwork to vehemently argue against it for multiple reasons. It’s exhausting and made me apathetic that ANY positive change in APS will ever occur. If it does, great! We might stay. But there doesn’t seem to be any will to fix this. Wouldn’t School Board candidates run on this platform? I could be wrong but I haven’t seen it yet.

This is the older thread I was thinking about (I didn’t read everything in it): https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1015344.page

I mean, I keep asking you but you don’t respond: where are you going? Where is your magical school with great test scores and truly mixed income? You keep threatening to leave S Arlington, like there is some other option that everyone else is missing. I highly doubt that you’ve identified one and instead are just saying nonsense on a message board.

I’m not the person you’re asking, but his/her answer is none of your business. There are lots of options for education, both here and across the country. Stop being an @ss.

I am not being a jerk. What this poster is suggesting exists does not actually exist and I’m calling them out. They are complaining about some fanciful school that doesn’t exist in real life. Can you name one? It’s a fair point that Arlington is not failing here when no one else is accomplishing it.

Actually there are mixed-income schools right here in Arlington. We are saying we want more.

But the poster wants the test scores of ATS right? Seems like those aren’t the mixed income schools but prove me wrong.

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Anonymous wrote:ATS should mandate 2/3rds of slots for lower socioeconomic and minority students, similar to how Montessori does their prek. I have no problem with ATS existing or being a home for attentive parents. But it should favor disadvantaged every step of the way. And, please don't tell me its FRL rate is similar or better than other schools, that is truly irrelevant. Its FRL needs to be twice the worst neighborhood school, and its student demographics needs to flip the stats of U.S. public. Then you know it's really serving those who need it in our society.

This is an interesting comment, but I think that APS just needs to offer more schools that use the ATS model. This is a public school district. It’s unfair to offer a product like ATS- the literal best public elementary school in Virginia- when it benefits so few of the taxpaying population. I would be fine with them setting aside percentage for students receiving FRL, but there’s no getting around the fact that we need more ATS slots for everyone.

All of the options are built and supported by the fact that there is demand for 125%, maybe 175%, of capacity, but no more. As a public system, you don't want to build an option building that then depends on you struggling to fill it every year. As others have noted here, there are huge swaths of APS system that do NOT want rigid ATS for their kids. And if your answer is,fine, don't build buildings, just implement inside current schoools, then I strongly suggest you look into the lessons learned from the failures of "schools win schools" in APS. Long story short, nothing makes a local school more like a civil war battleground than when you ty to divide up its classrooms between very different pedagogies. See Montessori experience at Drew.

But demand for ATS is almost 200% of current capacity. Way more than demand for other options.

This is a fact. look at the waitlists. You could fill a second APS and I think you could fill quite a few more HBs. That said, why is HB such a short school if it was a new build? Why didn't APS maximize that space. Wait, I know why. WE HAVE A HORRIBLE SCHOOL BOARD AND THEY ALL MUST GO.

Its true that part of the reason HB works is because all the adults know all the kids, and the kids know that they have a lot of freedom but at the same time have to act to a reasonable standard. It wouldn't work with twice as many kids, or if there were tons of kids there that didn't really want to be there. Not every teacher wants to be in a school where the students can wander around freely and address them directly, and not every teenager can handle being in a building where they can wander around freely and address adults directly--especially if they haven't been given increasing amounts of independence and responsibility all along, and seen it modeled from all of their older peers.

I had kids at both Gunston and HB and I can tell you -- you can't just take parts of the HB model and plunk it down somewhere else, or double it in size. I assume the same is true with ATS. Or at least, you won't automatically get the same results. Not to say there aren't aspects that could be replicated other places, or lessons to be learned, it's just not something you can easily do 1:1.

100 agree with this take on HB. I also have a kid at HB and one in a different APS MS. You just can't replicate the HB model in a much larger school. Whatever - it's a moot point - the site in Rosslyn can't handle trailers.

I am definitely in favor of more programs of a smaller size though since parents seem to want that.

And the rest of us would like to deal in reality. If a program like HB only works because it's small, then we should have gotten rid of it and put a bigger choice school on the Wilson site. A 7-12 program for 1300 kids would still be a lot smaller than the current MS and HS programs, and for kids who are satisfied with team sports limited to frisbee, it would be a godsend.

I'm not interested in replicating ATS until someone shows that it has benefits that last past 5th grade. If you want to define success as high SOLs in 5th, you're free to do so, and good luck getting into a school that will deliver. But the rest of us want something with bigger benefits.

They considered that and the cost of building than 6 stories were not just incrementally higher, they were geometrically higher. (That's universal--it's why you see so many apartment buildings that height, too.)

I'm not sure where you're getting that. Community presentations showed that the least expensive way to get 1300 more seats was to build them on Wilson. But 22207 parents and HB parents created a unified whine that stopped the SB from doing so

Sure, because 1300 families didn't want to send their kids to a neighborhood school in downtown Rosslyn with no fields, no outdoor space, and no parking. That is not a crazy position. And the Heights building technically could hold more kids than it does if it had all traditional classrooms, but there are only 25 kids on the 2 floors used by the Shriver program.

It makes me laugh so hard that you people want to live on the doorstep of the nation’s capitol but you don’t want your kids to go to school “downtown.”

Capital, sweetie.

Actually, both work here!