Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Getting back to the new CIP - I'm looking back at when we got into this Career Center mess. Details are all here: https://www.apsva.us/instruction/new-high-school/

It was four years ago - June 2017 - that the School Board voted on the very last minute "hybrid plan" to put some of the 1300 new HS seats at the Ed Center and some at the CC. The documents show that they planned 500-600 seats at Ed Center to open most likely before 2022, and 700-800 new HS at the CC to open by Fall 2022. This was instead of building a 1300 seat HS at Kenmore, the option with the most land and the longest term growth potential. And these new CC seats were supposed to be in addition to the 600 seats already planned for Arlington Tech.

So we were supposed to have 1300-1400 CC seats built out by Fall 2022. Instead, we had years of planning commissions trying to figure out how to make this work and how much it would cost. That ended in disaster last spring when the costs where way too high and the neighborhood rejected a school without full facilities, including a pool.

So now, APS puts out this very roughly sketched out plan for up to 1800 MS and HS seats at this site by 2026, with no details about what program(s) this would be, how they will fit, what facilities they will have, etc.

How are we not right back where we started four years ago? And the poor Arlington Tech students still have no facility improvements, right? If we are going back to the beginning, can we please, pretty please reconsider Kenmore now??

No, because no neighborhood is going to be okay with being zoned to the lesser school that lacks equivalent facilities, and APS has said they can’t afford to build a full HS. That’s why these are option seats, wherever they are placed. I don’t think it makes sense to move Montessori and Tech and all the CTE programs to a new location.

Who said anything about moving Arl Tech, CTE, and Montessori? At one point, Kenmore was discussed as an option arts focused high school.

You could build an option HS there now and then down the road add a pool and what not and turn the whole campus into a 2300 seat HS (once you find a new home for the middle school, i.e. the VHC campus). There is a long term possibility to have a comprehensive 4th high school with adequate land.

I agree with this, which is why it doesn’t make sense to build option programs there now. Look how “easy” it has been to move those around once they’re entrenched. I think adding capacity to Arl Tech and maybe putting another small MS/HS program, like an arts focus or whatever, makes more sense if we can’t build a comprehensive HS right now.

Building at the center of the site actually makes this not possible. The only way to get a full size HS field is to make the building be at the south end of the campus. So we are basically committing to options programs forever on this site.

There is a CIP work session tonight. Hopefully there are some good questions asked. I agree this all seems rushed and not well planned.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Getting back to the new CIP - I'm looking back at when we got into this Career Center mess. Details are all here: https://www.apsva.us/instruction/new-high-school/

It was four years ago - June 2017 - that the School Board voted on the very last minute "hybrid plan" to put some of the 1300 new HS seats at the Ed Center and some at the CC. The documents show that they planned 500-600 seats at Ed Center to open most likely before 2022, and 700-800 new HS at the CC to open by Fall 2022. This was instead of building a 1300 seat HS at Kenmore, the option with the most land and the longest term growth potential. And these new CC seats were supposed to be in addition to the 600 seats already planned for Arlington Tech.

So we were supposed to have 1300-1400 CC seats built out by Fall 2022. Instead, we had years of planning commissions trying to figure out how to make this work and how much it would cost. That ended in disaster last spring when the costs where way too high and the neighborhood rejected a school without full facilities, including a pool.

So now, APS puts out this very roughly sketched out plan for up to 1800 MS and HS seats at this site by 2026, with no details about what program(s) this would be, how they will fit, what facilities they will have, etc.

How are we not right back where we started four years ago? And the poor Arlington Tech students still have no facility improvements, right? If we are going back to the beginning, can we please, pretty please reconsider Kenmore now??

No, because no neighborhood is going to be okay with being zoned to the lesser school that lacks equivalent facilities, and APS has said they can’t afford to build a full HS. That’s why these are option seats, wherever they are placed. I don’t think it makes sense to move Montessori and Tech and all the CTE programs to a new location.

Who said anything about moving Arl Tech, CTE, and Montessori? At one point, Kenmore was discussed as an option arts focused high school.

You could build an option HS there now and then down the road add a pool and what not and turn the whole campus into a 2300 seat HS (once you find a new home for the middle school, i.e. the VHC campus). There is a long term possibility to have a comprehensive 4th high school with adequate land.

I agree with this, which is why it doesn’t make sense to build option programs there now. Look how “easy” it has been to move those around once they’re entrenched. I think adding capacity to Arl Tech and maybe putting another small MS/HS program, like an arts focus or whatever, makes more sense if we can’t build a comprehensive HS right now.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Getting back to the new CIP - I'm looking back at when we got into this Career Center mess. Details are all here: https://www.apsva.us/instruction/new-high-school/

It was four years ago - June 2017 - that the School Board voted on the very last minute "hybrid plan" to put some of the 1300 new HS seats at the Ed Center and some at the CC. The documents show that they planned 500-600 seats at Ed Center to open most likely before 2022, and 700-800 new HS at the CC to open by Fall 2022. This was instead of building a 1300 seat HS at Kenmore, the option with the most land and the longest term growth potential. And these new CC seats were supposed to be in addition to the 600 seats already planned for Arlington Tech.

So we were supposed to have 1300-1400 CC seats built out by Fall 2022. Instead, we had years of planning commissions trying to figure out how to make this work and how much it would cost. That ended in disaster last spring when the costs where way too high and the neighborhood rejected a school without full facilities, including a pool.

So now, APS puts out this very roughly sketched out plan for up to 1800 MS and HS seats at this site by 2026, with no details about what program(s) this would be, how they will fit, what facilities they will have, etc.

How are we not right back where we started four years ago? And the poor Arlington Tech students still have no facility improvements, right? If we are going back to the beginning, can we please, pretty please reconsider Kenmore now??

No, because no neighborhood is going to be okay with being zoned to the lesser school that lacks equivalent facilities, and APS has said they can’t afford to build a full HS. That’s why these are option seats, wherever they are placed. I don’t think it makes sense to move Montessori and Tech and all the CTE programs to a new location.

Who said anything about moving Arl Tech, CTE, and Montessori? At one point, Kenmore was discussed as an option arts focused high school.

You could build an option HS there now and then down the road add a pool and what not and turn the whole campus into a 2300 seat HS (once you find a new home for the middle school, i.e. the VHC campus). There is a long term possibility to have a comprehensive 4th high school with adequate land.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Getting back to the new CIP - I'm looking back at when we got into this Career Center mess. Details are all here: https://www.apsva.us/instruction/new-high-school/

It was four years ago - June 2017 - that the School Board voted on the very last minute "hybrid plan" to put some of the 1300 new HS seats at the Ed Center and some at the CC. The documents show that they planned 500-600 seats at Ed Center to open most likely before 2022, and 700-800 new HS at the CC to open by Fall 2022. This was instead of building a 1300 seat HS at Kenmore, the option with the most land and the longest term growth potential. And these new CC seats were supposed to be in addition to the 600 seats already planned for Arlington Tech.

So we were supposed to have 1300-1400 CC seats built out by Fall 2022. Instead, we had years of planning commissions trying to figure out how to make this work and how much it would cost. That ended in disaster last spring when the costs where way too high and the neighborhood rejected a school without full facilities, including a pool.

So now, APS puts out this very roughly sketched out plan for up to 1800 MS and HS seats at this site by 2026, with no details about what program(s) this would be, how they will fit, what facilities they will have, etc.

How are we not right back where we started four years ago? And the poor Arlington Tech students still have no facility improvements, right? If we are going back to the beginning, can we please, pretty please reconsider Kenmore now??

No, because no neighborhood is going to be okay with being zoned to the lesser school that lacks equivalent facilities, and APS has said they can’t afford to build a full HS. That’s why these are option seats, wherever they are placed. I don’t think it makes sense to move Montessori and Tech and all the CTE programs to a new location.

Who said anything about moving Arl Tech, CTE, and Montessori? At one point, Kenmore was discussed as an option arts focused high school.

Anonymous wrote:

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.

No but you can snap your fingers and get rid of it and next year just have a regular neighborhood school. Create a boundary and send 900 kids there. It really is just that easy. And if it's overcrowded a bit? Oh well, no biggie it happens. Get some trailers.

HB Woodlawn needs to go. Montessori needs to go. Rich white N Arl parents don't like it? Well good thing they are rich because they can afford private! Yeah for them. But sadly it might cut into their vacation budget and they won't be able to go to Europe every summer. I will weep tears for them for sure.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Getting back to the new CIP - I'm looking back at when we got into this Career Center mess. Details are all here: https://www.apsva.us/instruction/new-high-school/

It was four years ago - June 2017 - that the School Board voted on the very last minute "hybrid plan" to put some of the 1300 new HS seats at the Ed Center and some at the CC. The documents show that they planned 500-600 seats at Ed Center to open most likely before 2022, and 700-800 new HS at the CC to open by Fall 2022. This was instead of building a 1300 seat HS at Kenmore, the option with the most land and the longest term growth potential. And these new CC seats were supposed to be in addition to the 600 seats already planned for Arlington Tech.

So we were supposed to have 1300-1400 CC seats built out by Fall 2022. Instead, we had years of planning commissions trying to figure out how to make this work and how much it would cost. That ended in disaster last spring when the costs where way too high and the neighborhood rejected a school without full facilities, including a pool.

So now, APS puts out this very roughly sketched out plan for up to 1800 MS and HS seats at this site by 2026, with no details about what program(s) this would be, how they will fit, what facilities they will have, etc.

How are we not right back where we started four years ago? And the poor Arlington Tech students still have no facility improvements, right? If we are going back to the beginning, can we please, pretty please reconsider Kenmore now??

No, because no neighborhood is going to be okay with being zoned to the lesser school that lacks equivalent facilities, and APS has said they can’t afford to build a full HS. That’s why these are option seats, wherever they are placed. I don’t think it makes sense to move Montessori and Tech and all the CTE programs to a new location.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Getting back to the new CIP - I'm looking back at when we got into this Career Center mess. Details are all here: https://www.apsva.us/instruction/new-high-school/

It was four years ago - June 2017 - that the School Board voted on the very last minute "hybrid plan" to put some of the 1300 new HS seats at the Ed Center and some at the CC. The documents show that they planned 500-600 seats at Ed Center to open most likely before 2022, and 700-800 new HS at the CC to open by Fall 2022. This was instead of building a 1300 seat HS at Kenmore, the option with the most land and the longest term growth potential. And these new CC seats were supposed to be in addition to the 600 seats already planned for Arlington Tech.

So we were supposed to have 1300-1400 CC seats built out by Fall 2022. Instead, we had years of planning commissions trying to figure out how to make this work and how much it would cost. That ended in disaster last spring when the costs where way too high and the neighborhood rejected a school without full facilities, including a pool.

So now, APS puts out this very roughly sketched out plan for up to 1800 MS and HS seats at this site by 2026, with no details about what program(s) this would be, how they will fit, what facilities they will have, etc.

How are we not right back where we started four years ago? And the poor Arlington Tech students still have no facility improvements, right? If we are going back to the beginning, can we please, pretty please reconsider Kenmore now??

If we are reviewing history, note the reason the neighborhood was insisting on full features is because up until a week ago, APS would never publicly commit to these not being neighborhood HS seats. So if you live in this neighborhood, APS was saying, hey, we can zone you to this school and you have to go here, even though it may be a very different school from our other comprehensive HSs.

But I agree, this whole process is half-baked.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Getting back to the new CIP - I'm looking back at when we got into this Career Center mess. Details are all here: https://www.apsva.us/instruction/new-high-school/

It was four years ago - June 2017 - that the School Board voted on the very last minute "hybrid plan" to put some of the 1300 new HS seats at the Ed Center and some at the CC. The documents show that they planned 500-600 seats at Ed Center to open most likely before 2022, and 700-800 new HS at the CC to open by Fall 2022. This was instead of building a 1300 seat HS at Kenmore, the option with the most land and the longest term growth potential. And these new CC seats were supposed to be in addition to the 600 seats already planned for Arlington Tech.

So we were supposed to have 1300-1400 CC seats built out by Fall 2022. Instead, we had years of planning commissions trying to figure out how to make this work and how much it would cost. That ended in disaster last spring when the costs where way too high and the neighborhood rejected a school without full facilities, including a pool.

So now, APS puts out this very roughly sketched out plan for up to 1800 MS and HS seats at this site by 2026, with no details about what program(s) this would be, how they will fit, what facilities they will have, etc.

How are we not right back where we started four years ago? And the poor Arlington Tech students still have no facility improvements, right? If we are going back to the beginning, can we please, pretty please reconsider Kenmore now??

Ironically I recall one of the reasons they rejected Kenmore was that it would take too long to get street access to a state maintained road - 50 I guess.

Anonymous wrote:Getting back to the new CIP - I'm looking back at when we got into this Career Center mess. Details are all here: https://www.apsva.us/instruction/new-high-school/

It was four years ago - June 2017 - that the School Board voted on the very last minute "hybrid plan" to put some of the 1300 new HS seats at the Ed Center and some at the CC. The documents show that they planned 500-600 seats at Ed Center to open most likely before 2022, and 700-800 new HS at the CC to open by Fall 2022. This was instead of building a 1300 seat HS at Kenmore, the option with the most land and the longest term growth potential. And these new CC seats were supposed to be in addition to the 600 seats already planned for Arlington Tech.

So we were supposed to have 1300-1400 CC seats built out by Fall 2022. Instead, we had years of planning commissions trying to figure out how to make this work and how much it would cost. That ended in disaster last spring when the costs where way too high and the neighborhood rejected a school without full facilities, including a pool.

So now, APS puts out this very roughly sketched out plan for up to 1800 MS and HS seats at this site by 2026, with no details about what program(s) this would be, how they will fit, what facilities they will have, etc.

How are we not right back where we started four years ago? And the poor Arlington Tech students still have no facility improvements, right? If we are going back to the beginning, can we please, pretty please reconsider Kenmore now??

Anonymous wrote:Getting back to the new CIP - I'm looking back at when we got into this Career Center mess. Details are all here: https://www.apsva.us/instruction/new-high-school/

It was four years ago - June 2017 - that the School Board voted on the very last minute "hybrid plan" to put some of the 1300 new HS seats at the Ed Center and some at the CC. The documents show that they planned 500-600 seats at Ed Center to open most likely before 2022, and 700-800 new HS at the CC to open by Fall 2022. This was instead of building a 1300 seat HS at Kenmore, the option with the most land and the longest term growth potential. And these new CC seats were supposed to be in addition to the 600 seats already planned for Arlington Tech.

So we were supposed to have 1300-1400 CC seats built out by Fall 2022. Instead, we had years of planning commissions trying to figure out how to make this work and how much it would cost. That ended in disaster last spring when the costs where way too high and the neighborhood rejected a school without full facilities, including a pool.

So now, APS puts out this very roughly sketched out plan for up to 1800 MS and HS seats at this site by 2026, with no details about what program(s) this would be, how they will fit, what facilities they will have, etc.

How are we not right back where we started four years ago? And the poor Arlington Tech students still have no facility improvements, right? If we are going back to the beginning, can we please, pretty please reconsider Kenmore now??

Anonymous wrote:Getting back to the new CIP - I'm looking back at when we got into this Career Center mess. Details are all here: https://www.apsva.us/instruction/new-high-school/

It was four years ago - June 2017 - that the School Board voted on the very last minute "hybrid plan" to put some of the 1300 new HS seats at the Ed Center and some at the CC. The documents show that they planned 500-600 seats at Ed Center to open most likely before 2022, and 700-800 new HS at the CC to open by Fall 2022. This was instead of building a 1300 seat HS at Kenmore, the option with the most land and the longest term growth potential. And these new CC seats were supposed to be in addition to the 600 seats already planned for Arlington Tech.

So we were supposed to have 1300-1400 CC seats built out by Fall 2022. Instead, we had years of planning commissions trying to figure out how to make this work and how much it would cost. That ended in disaster last spring when the costs where way too high and the neighborhood rejected a school without full facilities, including a pool.

So now, APS puts out this very roughly sketched out plan for up to 1800 MS and HS seats at this site by 2026, with no details about what program(s) this would be, how they will fit, what facilities they will have, etc.

How are we not right back where we started four years ago? And the poor Arlington Tech students still have no facility improvements, right? If we are going back to the beginning, can we please, pretty please reconsider Kenmore now??

Anonymous wrote:Getting back to the new CIP - I'm looking back at when we got into this Career Center mess. Details are all here: https://www.apsva.us/instruction/new-high-school/

It was four years ago - June 2017 - that the School Board voted on the very last minute "hybrid plan" to put some of the 1300 new HS seats at the Ed Center and some at the CC. The documents show that they planned 500-600 seats at Ed Center to open most likely before 2022, and 700-800 new HS at the CC to open by Fall 2022. This was instead of building a 1300 seat HS at Kenmore, the option with the most land and the longest term growth potential. And these new CC seats were supposed to be in addition to the 600 seats already planned for Arlington Tech.

So we were supposed to have 1300-1400 CC seats built out by Fall 2022. Instead, we had years of planning commissions trying to figure out how to make this work and how much it would cost. That ended in disaster last spring when the costs where way too high and the neighborhood rejected a school without full facilities, including a pool.

So now, APS puts out this very roughly sketched out plan for up to 1800 MS and HS seats at this site by 2026, with no details about what program(s) this would be, how they will fit, what facilities they will have, etc.

How are we not right back where we started four years ago? And the poor Arlington Tech students still have no facility improvements, right? If we are going back to the beginning, can we please, pretty please reconsider Kenmore now??

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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

Wrong. It is 1000.

It was approved at 1300 seats. Then APS made the extremely short-sighted (and typical for APS) decision to only build it out for 1000 students to save something like $11 million. I might be wrong on that figure but it was absurdly low and a bad move. But it was APS admin stupidity not parent pressure, as I remember it. (And I don't live in the neighborhood, so no dog in that fight).

The problem with the Heights was trying to build an architectural masterpiece instead of a basic school to maximize capacity. APS went WAY over budget on it and is still paying for it's flaws.