Anonymous wrote:
I have toddlers, so we absolutely factored in schools. That's why we weren't looking in Alexandria or DC. I just don't think ASFS is any better than Taylor or Long Branch, which are geographically the closest schools after Key and ASFS. We will be fine in any of them, but prefer a neighborhood school.

And indeed, they aren't, but that doesn't mean some people don't fixate on ASFS. It doesn't make sense, but it happens, because people are -- brace yourself-- not always logical in their decisionmaking.

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Anonymous wrote:My friends who paid inflated prices to buy in the Key district so they could send their kids to ASFS are shaking in their boots right now. I understand their concern, but it never seemed fair to be able to pay to play.

How is picking a house because of its assigned school "pay to play"? ASFS was their neighborhood school -- if you look at real estate listings, that's what it says. If you call aps to confirm school districts, that's where they say your neighborhood school is.

Yeah - I don't understand this argument either. A few of my friends moved into the Discovery zone because they wanted their kids to go there. One friend loved Tuckohoe and moved there. What's the difference? ASFS was never a "choice" school.

Yes, i think that this is where the big disconnect is. People who lived outside of Key/ASFS viewed ASFS and Key as "choice" schools within the team. By that reasoning, Taylor was a "choice" school and so was Jamestown. ASFS was always a neighborhood school (or at least it was for the past five years that I've lived in that zone and had kids there). 80% of the kids that attend there live in the Key/ASFS neighborhood. APS staff always called it our neighborhood school (for example when I was doing early intervention). I've had three kids at that school over the past five years, and I can say without a doubt that there is nothing different about the curriculum other than an extra hour of science a week. They have a couple of extra science activities during the year, like outside the box day, but I don't think its as emphasized as people claim it is here. Its super diverse and very academically rigorous, which is why we chose to live there and send our kids there, but its just a neighborhood school that for some reason sits outside its neighborhood. I would totally support it switching buildings with key (assuming all of the administration and teachers transferred as well) because then it would sit in the neighborhood.

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Anonymous wrote:My friends who paid inflated prices to buy in the Key district so they could send their kids to ASFS are shaking in their boots right now. I understand their concern, but it never seemed fair to be able to pay to play.

How is picking a house because of its assigned school "pay to play"? ASFS was their neighborhood school -- if you look at real estate listings, that's what it says. If you call aps to confirm school districts, that's where they say your neighborhood school is.

Yeah - I don't understand this argument either. A few of my friends moved into the Discovery zone because they wanted their kids to go there. One friend loved Tuckohoe and moved there. What's the difference? ASFS was never a "choice" school.

Yes, i think that this is where the big disconnect is. People who lived outside of Key/ASFS viewed ASFS and Key as "choice" schools within the team. By that reasoning, Taylor was a "choice" school and so was Jamestown. ASFS was always a neighborhood school (or at least it was for the past five years that I've lived in that zone and had kids there). 80% of the kids that attend there live in the Key/ASFS neighborhood. APS staff always called it our neighborhood school (for example when I was doing early intervention). I've had three kids at that school over the past five years, and I can say without a doubt that there is nothing different about the curriculum other than an extra hour of science a week. They have a couple of extra science activities during the year, like outside the box day, but I don't think its as emphasized as people claim it is here. Its super diverse and very academically rigorous, which is why we chose to live there and send our kids there, but its just a neighborhood school that for some reason sits outside its neighborhood. I would totally support it switching buildings with key (assuming all of the administration and teachers transferred as well) because then it would sit in the neighborhood.

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Anonymous wrote:My friends who paid inflated prices to buy in the Key district so they could send their kids to ASFS are shaking in their boots right now. I understand their concern, but it never seemed fair to be able to pay to play.

No one pays a premium for ASFS over say Taylor or Jamestown. It's all about Clarendon and metro access. Granted metro is failing and Clarendon retail is going stale, those are real problems.

I'll tell my friends that they lied to me, then, when they said they were only house shopping in Key b/c they wanted their kids at ASFS.

Huh. That's weird. I live in the Key zone, but we paid for the walkability and short commute to the city. More power to them, I guess.

you either don't have school age kids that you were planning on sending to a public school or don't actually live in that area. I can't think of anyone with school age kids that wouldn't factor in schools when buying a house.

I have toddlers, so we absolutely factored in schools. That's why we weren't looking in Alexandria or DC. I just don't think ASFS is any better than Taylor or Long Branch, which are geographically the closest schools after Key and ASFS. We will be fine in any of them, but prefer a neighborhood school.

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Anonymous wrote:My friends who paid inflated prices to buy in the Key district so they could send their kids to ASFS are shaking in their boots right now. I understand their concern, but it never seemed fair to be able to pay to play.

No one pays a premium for ASFS over say Taylor or Jamestown. It's all about Clarendon and metro access. Granted metro is failing and Clarendon retail is going stale, those are real problems.

I'll tell my friends that they lied to me, then, when they said they were only house shopping in Key b/c they wanted their kids at ASFS.

Huh. That's weird. I live in the Key zone, but we paid for the walkability and short commute to the city. More power to them, I guess.

you either don't have school age kids that you were planning on sending to a public school or don't actually live in that area. I can't think of anyone with school age kids that wouldn't factor in schools when buying a house.

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Anonymous wrote:My friends who paid inflated prices to buy in the Key district so they could send their kids to ASFS are shaking in their boots right now. I understand their concern, but it never seemed fair to be able to pay to play.

No one pays a premium for ASFS over say Taylor or Jamestown. It's all about Clarendon and metro access. Granted metro is failing and Clarendon retail is going stale, those are real problems.

I'll tell my friends that they lied to me, then, when they said they were only house shopping in Key b/c they wanted their kids at ASFS.

Huh. That's weird. I live in the Key zone, but we paid for the walkability and short commute to the city. More power to them, I guess.

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Anonymous wrote:My friends who paid inflated prices to buy in the Key district so they could send their kids to ASFS are shaking in their boots right now. I understand their concern, but it never seemed fair to be able to pay to play.

How is picking a house because of its assigned school "pay to play"? ASFS was their neighborhood school -- if you look at real estate listings, that's what it says. If you call aps to confirm school districts, that's where they say your neighborhood school is.

Yeah - I don't understand this argument either. A few of my friends moved into the Discovery zone because they wanted their kids to go there. One friend loved Tuckohoe and moved there. What's the difference? ASFS was never a "choice" school.

Anonymous wrote:My friends who paid inflated prices to buy in the Key district so they could send their kids to ASFS are shaking in their boots right now. I understand their concern, but it never seemed fair to be able to pay to play.

How is picking a house because of its assigned school "pay to play"? ASFS was their neighborhood school -- if you look at real estate listings, that's what it says. If you call aps to confirm school districts, that's where they say your neighborhood school is.

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Anonymous wrote:My friends who paid inflated prices to buy in the Key district so they could send their kids to ASFS are shaking in their boots right now. I understand their concern, but it never seemed fair to be able to pay to play.

No one pays a premium for ASFS over say Taylor or Jamestown. It's all about Clarendon and metro access. Granted metro is failing and Clarendon retail is going stale, those are real problems.

I'll tell my friends that they lied to me, then, when they said they were only house shopping in Key b/c they wanted their kids at ASFS.

Anonymous wrote:My friends who paid inflated prices to buy in the Key district so they could send their kids to ASFS are shaking in their boots right now. I understand their concern, but it never seemed fair to be able to pay to play.

No one pays a premium for ASFS over say Taylor or Jamestown. It's all about Clarendon and metro access. Granted metro is failing and Clarendon retail is going stale, those are real problems.

My friends who paid inflated prices to buy in the Key district so they could send their kids to ASFS are shaking in their boots right now. I understand their concern, but it never seemed fair to be able to pay to play.

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What's not fair? I have a very hard time seeing how Key will even reach 30 percent English speakers under the new proposal.

you think English speaking kids won't elect immersion if its a lottery program? I don't understand.

Make ASFS the neighborhood school for Cherrydale instead of putting those kids on a bus. Make Taylor the neighborhood school for Lyon Village. A lot of LV families will decide to send their kids to Key just to have a geographically convenient school, the way Ashlawn and McKinley-zoned families apply to ATS not because they are in love with the program but because dropoff is on the way to work.

We walk to ASF from Lyon Village. Cherrydale and LV shoukd both be ASF. They are right next to it.

So is Clarendon. They should redraw the boundary so kids that would have gone to Williamsburg middle get bussed to Jamestown-- that part of they key/asfs attendance zone is over a mile away from asfs.
Only thing to keep in mind is that some of the walk zone for asfs is actually within a mile of Taylor (don't believe me, look at it on google maps) and is even closer to glebe. If the school board doesn't have key and asfs switch buildings (and they are 0.6 miles away from each other so it wouldn't be a huge inconvenience compared with bussing kids to Jamestown or discovery), they should build an elemtary school in courthouse/rosslyn. Switching buildings is probably objectively the better long term solution, it's just inconvenient and disruptive to the current kids at both schools.

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What's not fair? I have a very hard time seeing how Key will even reach 30 percent English speakers under the new proposal.

you think English speaking kids won't elect immersion if its a lottery program? I don't understand.

Make ASFS the neighborhood school for Cherrydale instead of putting those kids on a bus. Make Taylor the neighborhood school for Lyon Village. A lot of LV families will decide to send their kids to Key just to have a geographically convenient school, the way Ashlawn and McKinley-zoned families apply to ATS not because they are in love with the program but because dropoff is on the way to work.

We walk to ASF from Lyon Village. Cherrydale and LV shoukd both be ASF. They are right next to it.

APS runs a bus from ASFS to Lyon Village. Most families don't walk.

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

What's not fair? I have a very hard time seeing how Key will even reach 30 percent English speakers under the new proposal.

you think English speaking kids won't elect immersion if its a lottery program? I don't understand.

Make ASFS the neighborhood school for Cherrydale instead of putting those kids on a bus. Make Taylor the neighborhood school for Lyon Village. A lot of LV families will decide to send their kids to Key just to have a geographically convenient school, the way Ashlawn and McKinley-zoned families apply to ATS not because they are in love with the program but because dropoff is on the way to work.

We walk to ASF from Lyon Village. Cherrydale and LV shoukd both be ASF. They are right next to it.

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Anonymous wrote:Right now, buy into or at least rent in the KEY district. That gives you guaranteed admissions. They are supposedly some slots (if Key doesn't fill the grade) for Taylor or Jamestown, but those are like unicorns. Watch out, though. The SB might be making a lot of changes to that area.

The boundary for ASFS is about to be radically changed -- there is No way to know if you will be in bound (currently living near it is not in boundary for example).

There is a possibility that Key and ASFS will swap campuses since Key is becoming a pure lottery immersion, and then ASFS will be in boundary. Or they will redraw boundaries and some key parts will go elsewhere and some Taylor parts go to ASFS.

Buy a neighborhood you like, in a house you like near a few schools you are ok with. There are guarantees now. And watch the high school changes coming -- they could be disruptive.

While this may very well happen, it would somewhat surprise me considering how much money the ASFS PTA and parents have invested in the building and its outdoor space over the years for various science-related teaching tools, including raising at least $150,000 less than two years ago for the science lab called investigation station. Not saying Key, if the schools swap buildings, wouldn't benefit from all of this but it seems kind of crazy for ASFS to leave it all behind and have to start all over again without it.

I'm a former long time ASFS parent - do not move to a home just for this school. Not worth it.

Well, it is equipment in a publuc school, so it would be nice if others could have an opportunity to benefit from it. But I highly doubt this switch will happen. Both schools must probably feel like they are having the rug pulled out from under them.

Well, the school board should have done something years ago. You can't have two "choice" programs that are essentially neighborhood schools, and give both to the same neighborhood in perpetuity. That's just bad policy. I understand why they did it this way at first, when conditions were such that anyone could enroll just about anywhere due to low enrollment. But to let it go this long was just kicking the can down the road and leaving it to others to deal with.

I don't think the schools are going to swap places. But there will have to be boundary adjustments (there would be anyway when the new school comes online).

The key/asfs zone wasn't supposed to have boundary changes. It's fine that they want to establish a walk zone and redistribute kids because of the policy change, but we shouldn't try to spin this as something that was well planned. If aps had been thinking straight, they wouldn't have located a niche program like immersion at the only elementary school located with neighborhood bounds to begin with. It would have been easier to have either originally placed the immersion program at the asfs building or drawn the key/asfs boundaries to include the neighborhood around asfs. Now twenty years later they are like "oh this isn't really fair", and it's like no shit really?

What's not fair? I have a very hard time seeing how Key will even reach 30 percent English speakers under the new proposal.

Just because YOU bought in-bounds to Key so you could go to ASFS does not mean that there isn't countywide demand for Immersion at Key. I get it, you see no value in it. Guess what? A lot of families in other parts of Arlington disagree and will be more than happy to take a spot at Key.

Why are you screaming at me? I think Key is fantastic. I just am a bit worried about its future.