Anonymous wrote:I have a 4yr old, is there any chance this will be sorted out in 10 years??

Nope they are projecting 1000 more students per grade by the time your kid goes to school.

If they haven't gotten around to building the 4th high school, what is the plan?

Night shifts? DL for half your classes? Double decker trailers and lunch at 9am?


https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Fall-2019-28-APS-Enrollment-Report_v12_.pdf

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hope some who left for private don't come back. My kid is entering HS next year and was in an overcrowded ES and MS. The opening of Hamm still left the MS overcrowded b/c they didn't put enough kids in Hamm. Now, with HS on the horizon, the plans for more space won't impact my kid until almost the end. We are even contemplating not taking the IB spot b/c of the overcrowding at WL.

Don’t worry. We left for good last year, decided pre-pandemic. No way in hell are we coming back.

And yet you're still here...

Yes. I still have a 7th grader in APS. So less than 2 years until I bid adieu for good!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

My point was if tables and chairs for a new school cost a million dollars, retrofitting the building is going to cost more than $2.4M.

Do you know what the final budget was to redo Dorothy Hamm? Keep in mind that H-B Woodlawn was there for 40 years, functioning as a middle and high school with a full complement of programs serving 700 students (not even counting the Shriver program). APS spent $40 million to renovate and expand the existing building so that it could be a middle school that now enrolls....800 students.

They essentially built a NEW 1/3 of the school. So yeah retrofitting existing office space for $10M would have been easy.

Why are you just counting one year of interest? We are paying that debt for 30...

Why do people complain about the spending at The Heights and not Dorothy Hamm? They spent $100M in Rosslyn and got a new building for 775 students. They spent $40M in Cherrydale and got 100 seats. Um..........

Renovating an old building is always less cost effective per unit than building new, just like with a house.

Why did they spend a dollar? HB was there and it was fine. They could have a) left HB there and built a middle school at The Heights (oh wait, the parents rejected that), b) moved HB and let the kids move into Vacation Lane as is (why was this not acceptable???) and saved $40 million either way. And now the south Arlington middle schools are huge compared to the north Arlington ones because Hamm is so far north all the moves came from Williamsburg and Swanson.

It was too small, what are you talking about. It going to be a 1000 person middle school once the WM/SN grandfathering is over. That was the bulk of the renovation. The original parts got new lockers and paint. But excavating and construction next to an active in-person school is complicated and adds costs.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

My point was if tables and chairs for a new school cost a million dollars, retrofitting the building is going to cost more than $2.4M.

Do you know what the final budget was to redo Dorothy Hamm? Keep in mind that H-B Woodlawn was there for 40 years, functioning as a middle and high school with a full complement of programs serving 700 students (not even counting the Shriver program). APS spent $40 million to renovate and expand the existing building so that it could be a middle school that now enrolls....800 students.

They essentially built a NEW 1/3 of the school. So yeah retrofitting existing office space for $10M would have been easy.

Why are you just counting one year of interest? We are paying that debt for 30...

Why do people complain about the spending at The Heights and not Dorothy Hamm? They spent $100M in Rosslyn and got a new building for 775 students. They spent $40M in Cherrydale and got 100 seats. Um..........

Renovating an old building is always less cost effective per unit than building new, just like with a house.

Why did they spend a dollar? HB was there and it was fine. They could have a) left HB there and built a middle school at The Heights (oh wait, the parents rejected that), b) moved HB and let the kids move into Vacation Lane as is (why was this not acceptable???) and saved $40 million either way. And now the south Arlington middle schools are huge compared to the north Arlington ones because Hamm is so far north all the moves came from Williamsburg and Swanson.

Why? Because of a bunch of complainers in Taylor. You can thank them for this inefficient use of space.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can't we all just agree that the problem isn't any one school but John Chadwick and the crazy building and overspending on schools that do not need to look like they could be on the cover of Architectural Digest to provide decent educations for our kids?

Well, the fact that HB is still going to be under when other schools are struggling does point to HB being the problem. They should admit at least 5-10 from each MS for incoming 9th grade and 2-3 from each ES for 6th.

I don't disagree, but it doesn't really make a difference. If HB takes 25 more kids from across the county each of the next four years, that is 100 kids, sure they can probably do it. But look at it the other way--enrollment at each of the three comprehensive high schools is over 2,000, and you would be removing 20 or 30 kids across four grades. That hardly helps a school that is over capacity.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

My point was if tables and chairs for a new school cost a million dollars, retrofitting the building is going to cost more than $2.4M.

Do you know what the final budget was to redo Dorothy Hamm? Keep in mind that H-B Woodlawn was there for 40 years, functioning as a middle and high school with a full complement of programs serving 700 students (not even counting the Shriver program). APS spent $40 million to renovate and expand the existing building so that it could be a middle school that now enrolls....800 students.

They essentially built a NEW 1/3 of the school. So yeah retrofitting existing office space for $10M would have been easy.

Why are you just counting one year of interest? We are paying that debt for 30...

Why do people complain about the spending at The Heights and not Dorothy Hamm? They spent $100M in Rosslyn and got a new building for 775 students. They spent $40M in Cherrydale and got 100 seats. Um..........

Renovating an old building is always less cost effective per unit than building new, just like with a house.

Why did they spend a dollar? HB was there and it was fine. They could have a) left HB there and built a middle school at The Heights (oh wait, the parents rejected that), b) moved HB and let the kids move into Vacation Lane as is (why was this not acceptable???) and saved $40 million either way. And now the south Arlington middle schools are huge compared to the north Arlington ones because Hamm is so far north all the moves came from Williamsburg and Swanson.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

My point was if tables and chairs for a new school cost a million dollars, retrofitting the building is going to cost more than $2.4M.

Do you know what the final budget was to redo Dorothy Hamm? Keep in mind that H-B Woodlawn was there for 40 years, functioning as a middle and high school with a full complement of programs serving 700 students (not even counting the Shriver program). APS spent $40 million to renovate and expand the existing building so that it could be a middle school that now enrolls....800 students.

They essentially built a NEW 1/3 of the school. So yeah retrofitting existing office space for $10M would have been easy.

Why are you just counting one year of interest? We are paying that debt for 30...

Why do people complain about the spending at The Heights and not Dorothy Hamm? They spent $100M in Rosslyn and got a new building for 775 students. They spent $40M in Cherrydale and got 100 seats. Um..........

Renovating an old building is always less cost effective per unit than building new, just like with a house.

Anonymous wrote:Can't we all just agree that the problem isn't any one school but John Chadwick and the crazy building and overspending on schools that do not need to look like they could be on the cover of Architectural Digest to provide decent educations for our kids?

Well, the fact that HB is still going to be under when other schools are struggling does point to HB being the problem. They should admit at least 5-10 from each MS for incoming 9th grade and 2-3 from each ES for 6th.

Can't we all just agree that the problem isn't any one school but John Chadwick and the crazy building and overspending on schools that do not need to look like they could be on the cover of Architectural Digest to provide decent educations for our kids?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

My point was if tables and chairs for a new school cost a million dollars, retrofitting the building is going to cost more than $2.4M.

Do you know what the final budget was to redo Dorothy Hamm? Keep in mind that H-B Woodlawn was there for 40 years, functioning as a middle and high school with a full complement of programs serving 700 students (not even counting the Shriver program). APS spent $40 million to renovate and expand the existing building so that it could be a middle school that now enrolls....800 students.

They essentially built a NEW 1/3 of the school. So yeah retrofitting existing office space for $10M would have been easy.

Why are you just counting one year of interest? We are paying that debt for 30...

Why do people complain about the spending at The Heights and not Dorothy Hamm? They spent $100M in Rosslyn and got a new building for 775 students. They spent $40M in Cherrydale and got 100 seats. Um..........

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meanwhile HB Woodlawn has seen zero growth since moving to the new building. They still plan for just around 80 kids per MS grade and around 115 per HS grade. The lottery only accepted 75 6th graders and 26 9th graders (bringing the total 9th grade class next year to just 107 since they currently have 81 8th graders and I’m sure at least one or two will decide to move to another school). They really need to increase their enrollment to 100 per MS grade as promised when plans for them to move to the new building were being discussed. HS grades should each be at 125 at a minimum. They would still be a small program with these numbers.

HB is a perfect example of APS's fraud, waste and abuse of tax payer dollars.

Just stop it. All those kids would be back in the three comprehensive high schools if HB was still on Vacation Lane (where they wanted to stay) and that building was a neighborhood middle school, as originally proposed when they decided not to sell the land. And building it taller to hold more kids would have been cost-prohibitive. There are no fields.

If you have somewhere to put 900 middle and high schoolers, by all means, let us know where to build that school.

WAH we had to give up one of the largest parcels of land APS owns for an architects blinged out brand new vanity project. We can’t possibly accept more students...

HB should have moved to office buildings; they play on home school sports, and can walk off campus anytime they want is an office setting would have been ideal.

Great, let's walk this one through. Sounds like you are saying they should rent an office building, since APS doesn't own one they can use. So, we're paying commercial rents, in Arlington. And also somehow coming up with several million dollars to convert commercial space to educational space out of a current budget, because you can't use bond funds to pay for improvements to buildings that you don't own. And that conversion will include combining multiple floors order to put in a cafeteria, gym, and theater, not to mention renovating utilities to put in all the other things you need for a high school like science labs, art rooms, etc. And at the end of the lease we will have to pay several million dollars to put it all back to commercial space.

Can you smug people stop recycling these dumb ideas year after year after year? All of this stuff has been floated, and vetted, and determined to be more costly and more complicated and create less capacity and take more time than the alternatives. There are multiple citizen advisory groups and task forces in addition to full-time staff who work on these issues. If it were easier and cheaper to make the Wilson building bigger, or put HB in an office building, or whatever, THEY WOULD HAVE DONE THAT. All of the things they do they do because there is no clear better alternative.

The Heights building cost $100M dollars. They could have done all what you are talking about simply from the interest paid on that $100M.

Do you know what the interest rate is on a AAA muni bond right now? Arlington paid 2.42% on its last issue. That's $2.4M a year in interest. When we built Discovery, Hamm, Fleet, etc. -- it cost $1 million just to buy the desks, white boards, cafeteria tables, markers, library books, and all that junk AFTER the school was built.

FFS, you are making stuff up on. They have to buy those essentially consumable school products in BOTH cases, so why are you tacking it on now?

But in the 4 years of planning and construction of Heights, that would be $10M, which surely could cover a large part of the conversion again of some discount rate excess office space.

And we would save a ton on busing kids from ROSSLYN to Taylor for the next decades, and Rosslyn to Innovation.

My point was if tables and chairs for a new school cost a million dollars, retrofitting the building is going to cost more than $2.4M.

Do you know what the final budget was to redo Dorothy Hamm? Keep in mind that H-B Woodlawn was there for 40 years, functioning as a middle and high school with a full complement of programs serving 700 students (not even counting the Shriver program). APS spent $40 million to renovate and expand the existing building so that it could be a middle school that now enrolls....800 students.

They essentially built a NEW 1/3 of the school. So yeah retrofitting existing office space for $10M would have been easy.

Why are you just counting one year of interest? We are paying that debt for 30...

It cost Fairfax $10 million to convert an office building that they owned into a school, and it didn't have a gym or outdoor space.

https://www.insidenova.com/news/arlington/fairfax-may-provide-prototype-for-arlington-schools-of-the-future/article_7eb48964-328a-11e4-bdf7-0019bb2963f4.html
https://nationswell.com/fairfax-county-turns-high-rise-office-building-into-a-school/

But good luck getting taxpayers to agree to pay $10M to convert a rental.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meanwhile HB Woodlawn has seen zero growth since moving to the new building. They still plan for just around 80 kids per MS grade and around 115 per HS grade. The lottery only accepted 75 6th graders and 26 9th graders (bringing the total 9th grade class next year to just 107 since they currently have 81 8th graders and I’m sure at least one or two will decide to move to another school). They really need to increase their enrollment to 100 per MS grade as promised when plans for them to move to the new building were being discussed. HS grades should each be at 125 at a minimum. They would still be a small program with these numbers.

HB is a perfect example of APS's fraud, waste and abuse of tax payer dollars.

Just stop it. All those kids would be back in the three comprehensive high schools if HB was still on Vacation Lane (where they wanted to stay) and that building was a neighborhood middle school, as originally proposed when they decided not to sell the land. And building it taller to hold more kids would have been cost-prohibitive. There are no fields.

If you have somewhere to put 900 middle and high schoolers, by all means, let us know where to build that school.

I believe many of us are not asking for HB to go away - at least I'm not. We are asking for them to do the same as every other secondary school in Arlington and that is to grow. To take just 75 6th graders and then add just 26 9th graders each year is ridiculous. There should have been some growth after they moved into the new building. You quote 900 MS and HS kids in your post but they don't have nearly that many. Current HB enrollment - as of Feb 2021 - is just 241 MS and 449 HS students. That is just 690 kids for combined 6-12 grades, unbelievably small. Yes, the building is shared with the Shriver program, but that program has just 35 kids in grades 6-12, so that brings the number of students currently in the Heights building up to 725. Building capacity is 775. Why is the HB program not growing if there is capacity for at least 50 more students? Why did they lottery in just 26 9th graders when current 8th grade enrollment is just 82? If they are planning for class sizes to be just 75 -80 in MS and 108-115 in HS that means APS is planning for HB enrollment to remain at just between 657-700? That is no where near the 900 you quoted, or even the official building capacity of 775.

This year is weird, look at the trend. They have been going up every year since 2016 in preparation for the move, and last year were at about 250 middle school and 475 high school (meaning they grew by about 10 percent in five years).

They need to add kids at 6th and 9th, so that the middle school grows and the high school grows on top of the middle schoolers who stay for high school. However, that means they need to retain the middle school growth and it looks like more kids than they expected didn't move to The Heights in 2019 and didn't come this year, so now they have to rebuild some. They had been adding 20 kids a year and will get back on track hopefully next year.

Looking at the trend, I agree, they were growing. HB enrollment then suddenly went back down and based on the lottery admissions this past month for next school year, they have no plan to go back to the numbers they were at when the building first opened.

March 2016: 232 MS, 425 HS, Total: 657
February 2017: 244 MS 441 HS Total:685
February 2018: 249 MS, 454 HS Total: 703
February 2019: 247 MS, 461 HS Total: 708
Move to new building
February 2020: 243 MS, 473 HS Total:716
February 2021 241 MS, 449 HS, Total: 690

February 2022: (projection based on 6th/9th grade lottery admissions and current enrollment):
234 MS, 452 HS, Total: 686 (add a few admin transfers...so let's say they are back to 690)

Essentially, all of the HB enrollment growth we were seeing is now gone and we are back to 2017 pre-move HB enrollment numbers. How is this acceptable when there is a huge waiting list? It doesn't matter if this year was weird. If someone left APS because they didn't like how things were mostly DL this year, someone on the waiting list should have been offered their seat. Did this not happen?

Maybe I'm missing something but the numbers just don't add up - HB families keep telling me they are doing their fair share of growing like the rest of APS schools, but I'm not seeing it. Happy for someone to correct me and point out where the additional seats are located which would bring them up to 100% capacity of 775 seats. Please don't say it's the Shriver program. They have just about 35 seats.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meanwhile HB Woodlawn has seen zero growth since moving to the new building. They still plan for just around 80 kids per MS grade and around 115 per HS grade. The lottery only accepted 75 6th graders and 26 9th graders (bringing the total 9th grade class next year to just 107 since they currently have 81 8th graders and I’m sure at least one or two will decide to move to another school). They really need to increase their enrollment to 100 per MS grade as promised when plans for them to move to the new building were being discussed. HS grades should each be at 125 at a minimum. They would still be a small program with these numbers.

HB is a perfect example of APS's fraud, waste and abuse of tax payer dollars.

Just stop it. All those kids would be back in the three comprehensive high schools if HB was still on Vacation Lane (where they wanted to stay) and that building was a neighborhood middle school, as originally proposed when they decided not to sell the land. And building it taller to hold more kids would have been cost-prohibitive. There are no fields.

If you have somewhere to put 900 middle and high schoolers, by all means, let us know where to build that school.

WAH we had to give up one of the largest parcels of land APS owns for an architects blinged out brand new vanity project. We can’t possibly accept more students...

HB should have moved to office buildings; they play on home school sports, and can walk off campus anytime they want is an office setting would have been ideal.

Great, let's walk this one through. Sounds like you are saying they should rent an office building, since APS doesn't own one they can use. So, we're paying commercial rents, in Arlington. And also somehow coming up with several million dollars to convert commercial space to educational space out of a current budget, because you can't use bond funds to pay for improvements to buildings that you don't own. And that conversion will include combining multiple floors order to put in a cafeteria, gym, and theater, not to mention renovating utilities to put in all the other things you need for a high school like science labs, art rooms, etc. And at the end of the lease we will have to pay several million dollars to put it all back to commercial space.

Can you smug people stop recycling these dumb ideas year after year after year? All of this stuff has been floated, and vetted, and determined to be more costly and more complicated and create less capacity and take more time than the alternatives. There are multiple citizen advisory groups and task forces in addition to full-time staff who work on these issues. If it were easier and cheaper to make the Wilson building bigger, or put HB in an office building, or whatever, THEY WOULD HAVE DONE THAT. All of the things they do they do because there is no clear better alternative.

The Heights building cost $100M dollars. They could have done all what you are talking about simply from the interest paid on that $100M.

Do you know what the interest rate is on a AAA muni bond right now? Arlington paid 2.42% on its last issue. That's $2.4M a year in interest. When we built Discovery, Hamm, Fleet, etc. -- it cost $1 million just to buy the desks, white boards, cafeteria tables, markers, library books, and all that junk AFTER the school was built.

FFS, you are making stuff up on. They have to buy those essentially consumable school products in BOTH cases, so why are you tacking it on now?

But in the 4 years of planning and construction of Heights, that would be $10M, which surely could cover a large part of the conversion again of some discount rate excess office space.

And we would save a ton on busing kids from ROSSLYN to Taylor for the next decades, and Rosslyn to Innovation.

My point was if tables and chairs for a new school cost a million dollars, retrofitting the building is going to cost more than $2.4M.

Do you know what the final budget was to redo Dorothy Hamm? Keep in mind that H-B Woodlawn was there for 40 years, functioning as a middle and high school with a full complement of programs serving 700 students (not even counting the Shriver program). APS spent $40 million to renovate and expand the existing building so that it could be a middle school that now enrolls....800 students.

They essentially built a NEW 1/3 of the school. So yeah retrofitting existing office space for $10M would have been easy.

Why are you just counting one year of interest? We are paying that debt for 30...

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meanwhile HB Woodlawn has seen zero growth since moving to the new building. They still plan for just around 80 kids per MS grade and around 115 per HS grade. The lottery only accepted 75 6th graders and 26 9th graders (bringing the total 9th grade class next year to just 107 since they currently have 81 8th graders and I’m sure at least one or two will decide to move to another school). They really need to increase their enrollment to 100 per MS grade as promised when plans for them to move to the new building were being discussed. HS grades should each be at 125 at a minimum. They would still be a small program with these numbers.

HB is a perfect example of APS's fraud, waste and abuse of tax payer dollars.

Just stop it. All those kids would be back in the three comprehensive high schools if HB was still on Vacation Lane (where they wanted to stay) and that building was a neighborhood middle school, as originally proposed when they decided not to sell the land. And building it taller to hold more kids would have been cost-prohibitive. There are no fields.

If you have somewhere to put 900 middle and high schoolers, by all means, let us know where to build that school.

WAH we had to give up one of the largest parcels of land APS owns for an architects blinged out brand new vanity project. We can’t possibly accept more students...

HB should have moved to office buildings; they play on home school sports, and can walk off campus anytime they want is an office setting would have been ideal.

Great, let's walk this one through. Sounds like you are saying they should rent an office building, since APS doesn't own one they can use. So, we're paying commercial rents, in Arlington. And also somehow coming up with several million dollars to convert commercial space to educational space out of a current budget, because you can't use bond funds to pay for improvements to buildings that you don't own. And that conversion will include combining multiple floors order to put in a cafeteria, gym, and theater, not to mention renovating utilities to put in all the other things you need for a high school like science labs, art rooms, etc. And at the end of the lease we will have to pay several million dollars to put it all back to commercial space.

Can you smug people stop recycling these dumb ideas year after year after year? All of this stuff has been floated, and vetted, and determined to be more costly and more complicated and create less capacity and take more time than the alternatives. There are multiple citizen advisory groups and task forces in addition to full-time staff who work on these issues. If it were easier and cheaper to make the Wilson building bigger, or put HB in an office building, or whatever, THEY WOULD HAVE DONE THAT. All of the things they do they do because there is no clear better alternative.

The Heights building cost $100M dollars. They could have done all what you are talking about simply from the interest paid on that $100M.

Do you know what the interest rate is on a AAA muni bond right now? Arlington paid 2.42% on its last issue. That's $2.4M a year in interest. When we built Discovery, Hamm, Fleet, etc. -- it cost $1 million just to buy the desks, white boards, cafeteria tables, markers, library books, and all that junk AFTER the school was built.

FFS, you are making stuff up on. They have to buy those essentially consumable school products in BOTH cases, so why are you tacking it on now?

But in the 4 years of planning and construction of Heights, that would be $10M, which surely could cover a large part of the conversion again of some discount rate excess office space.

And we would save a ton on busing kids from ROSSLYN to Taylor for the next decades, and Rosslyn to Innovation.

My point was if tables and chairs for a new school cost a million dollars, retrofitting the building is going to cost more than $2.4M.

Do you know what the final budget was to redo Dorothy Hamm? Keep in mind that H-B Woodlawn was there for 40 years, functioning as a middle and high school with a full complement of programs serving 700 students (not even counting the Shriver program). APS spent $40 million to renovate and expand the existing building so that it could be a middle school that now enrolls....800 students.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meanwhile HB Woodlawn has seen zero growth since moving to the new building. They still plan for just around 80 kids per MS grade and around 115 per HS grade. The lottery only accepted 75 6th graders and 26 9th graders (bringing the total 9th grade class next year to just 107 since they currently have 81 8th graders and I’m sure at least one or two will decide to move to another school). They really need to increase their enrollment to 100 per MS grade as promised when plans for them to move to the new building were being discussed. HS grades should each be at 125 at a minimum. They would still be a small program with these numbers.

HB is a perfect example of APS's fraud, waste and abuse of tax payer dollars.

Just stop it. All those kids would be back in the three comprehensive high schools if HB was still on Vacation Lane (where they wanted to stay) and that building was a neighborhood middle school, as originally proposed when they decided not to sell the land. And building it taller to hold more kids would have been cost-prohibitive. There are no fields.

If you have somewhere to put 900 middle and high schoolers, by all means, let us know where to build that school.

WAH we had to give up one of the largest parcels of land APS owns for an architects blinged out brand new vanity project. We can’t possibly accept more students...

HB should have moved to office buildings; they play on home school sports, and can walk off campus anytime they want is an office setting would have been ideal.

Agree - put HB in office space.

The Heights building should have been an elementary school.

Kindergarten and first grade have to be on the ground floor. If Montessori were there, that means the 3/4/5 classes and the 1st/2nd/3rd classes would have to be on the ground floor.

Virginia requirements for elementary school playgrounds are two 100'x120' play equipment areas and a 100'x120' hard surface area plus a 180'x140' field.

No need for Montessori so you can unlink the 2/3 from the VPI/K/1.

Get an exception because it's an urban environment. It's not like NYC public schools have enormous outdoor play areas. Or even all of existing APS schools for that matter? ASFS certainly doesn't have a hard surface area now with those trailers. And doesn't have two large play equipment areas.

Montessori at one point offered to go there, but it wouldn't work with their mixed-age classrooms (for those about to say "Montessori" in answer to my next question):

Who in Arlington is going to send their kids to an urban high rise elementary with no outdoor space? With HB they make the argument that no-one can complain about the lack of fields because the kids can play sports at their home schools and are at that school by choice. How would they attract 500-600 elementary students?

I would have sent my kids there because I live down the street. It would have been a better solution than what they are doing now where most of the kids that can walk to key don’t go there because they need to make room for rosslyn.
I would have loved to walk my kids to school there.

Like some dad wouldn't have tried to sue because his kids weren't being treated fairly, being zoned to a school with insufficient outdoor space when kids at choice schools have huge playgrounds. I can see the yard signs now.