Anonymous wrote:

"What are you talking about. It will be 1300 with the addition. It’s almost 900 now without!"

Wrong. It is 1000.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you think they are just going to rent nearby office buildings that are “super vacant”, please go advocate for that and the logistics of how that can happen so that kids can just traipse all over busy streets with 5 minutes between classes. That’s not realistic. They aren’t going to start new construction on a building that was specifically built for those 2 programs, and furthermore, HB didn’t even want to move in the first place.

HB students are free to leave campus whenever they want, so traipsing across busy streets for after lunch classes would hardly be abnormal for them.

And stop with the stupid they didn’t want move; they were occupying an even LARGER campus with their tiny student body, so the status quo was equally untenable. Perhaps if they had piped up and said “instead of moving us, make us a 1300 seat program” they could have stayed. But that was never on the table either.

It wasn't up to HB. The neighborhood wanted their walkable middle school.

and the neighborhood wanted their SMALL walkable middle school. The Hamm building could have been build bigger but the neighborhood advocated against it and the Board caved. That's why the capacity is only 1000 instead of 1300. Very short sighted.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you think they are just going to rent nearby office buildings that are “super vacant”, please go advocate for that and the logistics of how that can happen so that kids can just traipse all over busy streets with 5 minutes between classes. That’s not realistic. They aren’t going to start new construction on a building that was specifically built for those 2 programs, and furthermore, HB didn’t even want to move in the first place.

HB students are free to leave campus whenever they want, so traipsing across busy streets for after lunch classes would hardly be abnormal for them.

And stop with the stupid they didn’t want move; they were occupying an even LARGER campus with their tiny student body, so the status quo was equally untenable. Perhaps if they had piped up and said “instead of moving us, make us a 1300 seat program” they could have stayed. But that was never on the table either.

It wasn't up to HB. The neighborhood wanted their walkable middle school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

HB Woodlawn must either increase capacity by several hundred students next year OR if there is objection and outrage, then it becomes a regular school next year and with their standard curriculum. The seats are needed. The school has them and there is not more time to fawn over that program like idiots.

1) HB new building doesn’t have the capacity to increase by several hundred.

2) HB offers exactky the same- actually less due to the lower population- classes as any other APS middle or high school. It’s not the curriculum that is different. It’s the philosophy of how the school is run and the student-teacher relationship. I have a kid there and one at Wakefield. The Wakefield student has many more classes to choose from.

The Heights building is very open air, they can find a way to expand the capacity. Maybe even rent nearby office suites which aren’t super vacant.

As for curriculum, exactly it is nothing special but HB boosters keep claiming they can’t grow or their special program will suffer. Get over that, and work with the same reality as everyone else.

It will suffer because the teachers have to buy in to the whole thing. The reason people want to get their kids into HB, and the reason HB is like a private school, is because the model at HB is all about the kids. The teachers and administrators want to be at HB specifically, and want to have personal, long-term relationships with the kids, and see themselves as helping develop the students over the course of seven years from kids into college-ready almost-adults. You can't just snap your fingers and duplicate that somewhere else, or magically find 20 more teachers willing to buy into that kind of culture, and part of why it works is because every adult in the building knows every kid in the building. And the HB students make a lot of tradeoffs to have that, like not having a lot of the course options that they have at the bigger high schools, not having easy access to sports, having a pretty limited friend pool, etc. Its the same thing at ATS -- everyone who works at ATS buys into the model, and everyone who chooses to go to ATS buys into the model, so it works, so you can grow it over time but its hard to just duplicate.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I see! You are one of those who prefers arguing on an anonymous internet forum vs doing anything that will effect actual change. That must be why you didn’t bring any of your concerns to the board up when plans for the new building were discussed at length, including the capacity of 775 total. Now that it’s built, in use, and your kid doesn’t attend, you are on the warpath.
Got it.

Hilarious. Actually I was probably instrumental to having them move off the Hamm site. I didn’t prevail in increasing size, but the SB knew my opinion.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you think they are just going to rent nearby office buildings that are “super vacant”, please go advocate for that and the logistics of how that can happen so that kids can just traipse all over busy streets with 5 minutes between classes. That’s not realistic. They aren’t going to start new construction on a building that was specifically built for those 2 programs, and furthermore, HB didn’t even want to move in the first place.

HB students are free to leave campus whenever they want, so traipsing across busy streets for after lunch classes would hardly be abnormal for them.

And stop with the stupid they didn’t want move; they were occupying an even LARGER campus with their tiny student body, so the status quo was equally untenable. Perhaps if they had piped up and said “instead of moving us, make us a 1300 seat program” they could have stayed. But that was never on the table either.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

HB Woodlawn must either increase capacity by several hundred students next year OR if there is objection and outrage, then it becomes a regular school next year and with their standard curriculum. The seats are needed. The school has them and there is not more time to fawn over that program like idiots.

1) HB new building doesn’t have the capacity to increase by several hundred.

2) HB offers exactky the same- actually less due to the lower population- classes as any other APS middle or high school. It’s not the curriculum that is different. It’s the philosophy of how the school is run and the student-teacher relationship. I have a kid there and one at Wakefield. The Wakefield student has many more classes to choose from.

The Heights building is very open air, they can find a way to expand the capacity. Maybe even rent nearby office suites which aren’t super vacant.

As for curriculum, exactly it is nothing special but HB boosters keep claiming they can’t grow or their special program will suffer. Get over that, and work with the same reality as everyone else.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

HB Woodlawn must either increase capacity by several hundred students next year OR if there is objection and outrage, then it becomes a regular school next year and with their standard curriculum. The seats are needed. The school has them and there is not more time to fawn over that program like idiots.

1) HB new building doesn’t have the capacity to increase by several hundred.

2) HB offers exactky the same- actually less due to the lower population- classes as any other APS middle or high school. It’s not the curriculum that is different. It’s the philosophy of how the school is run and the student-teacher relationship. I have a kid there and one at Wakefield. The Wakefield student has many more classes to choose from.

The Heights building is very open air, they can find a way to expand the capacity. Maybe even rent nearby office suites which aren’t super vacant.

As for curriculum, exactly it is nothing special but HB boosters keep claiming they can’t grow or their special program will suffer. Get over that, and work with the same reality as everyone else.

Anonymous wrote:I see! You are one of those who prefers arguing on an anonymous internet forum vs doing anything that will effect actual change. That must be why you didn’t bring any of your concerns to the board up when plans for the new building were discussed at length, including the capacity of 775 total. Now that it’s built, in use, and your kid doesn’t attend, you are on the warpath.
Got it.

Anonymous wrote:HB was at 105% capacity prior to moving to the heights. In order to accommodate Hamm students the upper grades were phased in and a new building has been added.

Please, advocate for what you are wanting! My kids about to graduate so it has no bearing on me.

Anonymous wrote:If you think they are just going to rent nearby office buildings that are “super vacant”, please go advocate for that and the logistics of how that can happen so that kids can just traipse all over busy streets with 5 minutes between classes. That’s not realistic. They aren’t going to start new construction on a building that was specifically built for those 2 programs, and furthermore, HB didn’t even want to move in the first place.

Anonymous wrote:

HB Woodlawn must either increase capacity by several hundred students next year OR if there is objection and outrage, then it becomes a regular school next year and with their standard curriculum. The seats are needed. The school has them and there is not more time to fawn over that program like idiots.

1) HB new building doesn’t have the capacity to increase by several hundred.

2) HB offers exactky the same- actually less due to the lower population- classes as any other APS middle or high school. It’s not the curriculum that is different. It’s the philosophy of how the school is run and the student-teacher relationship. I have a kid there and one at Wakefield. The Wakefield student has many more classes to choose from.