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The Most Active Threads since Friday
The topics with the most engagement since my last post included closing Nottingham Elementary School, the Supreme Court decision regarding student loans, the Supreme Court decision regarding wedding websites, and whether calling God "mythical" is insulting.
The most active thread since I last posted was the thread about the Supreme Court's affirmative action decision which I've already covered. But, only a few posts short of that one was a thread titled, "APS Closing Nottingham" and posted in the "VA Public Schools other than FCPS" forum. "APS" refers to Arlington Public Schools and "Nottingham" is an elementary school in north Arlington. Apparently, the APS school board recently announced a proposal to send current Nottingham students to other nearby schools and use Nottingham as a swing space for schools that are being renovated. Changes of school assignments are always controversial and the length of this thread at 37 pages shows that this case is not an exception. However, the initial reaction from Nottingham parents in the thread was surprisingly subdued. They were far from thrilled with the proposal, but indicated that they could live with it. There was far more outrage from parents associated with the schools to which Nottingham students would move with near apocalyptic predictions regarding the extra traffic it would cause. But, it appears that the conventional wisdom expected Nottingham families to react with outrage and entitlement. When a few posters responded in ways that fulfilled that stereotype, they become the face of Nottingham parents. Frankly, I think it is an unfair portrayal, but posters complaining that they were being victimized because they are white and wealthy and that some would even be killed because of this decision made easy targets. Many of the pro-Nottingham responses were justifiably lampoonable. One poster was inspired to create a sarcastic version of Martin Niemöller's famous quotation, "First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out...", paraphrasing it to say, "First they overcrowded Glebe And I did not speak out..." While Nottingham parents threatened everything from moving out of Arlington to legal action, they didn't quite reach the point of comparing the closing of their school to the Holocaust. Though in the case of some posters, that may only be a matter of time. Still, and I am adamant about this, many of the Nottingham posters were level-headed and entirely reasonable in their responses. They just didn't get much attention. Nobody is likely to be thrilled with the closing of their much-loved school and their children's future schooling that had appeared to be settled suddenly being thrown into question. On the other hand, some of the posters with ties to other schools seem to be taking an inordinate amount of joy from this proposal. For instance, one poster wrote, "Hahahaha. Yes. Karma for Nottingham who was oh so obnoxious in the 2018 go round." This was a less respectful version of a point made by several other posters. According to them, past efforts by Nottingham families to successfully oppose proposals that would have added additional students to the school left Nottingham under-enrolled and vulnerable to this sort of development. A final decision on the proposal to convert Nottingham into a swing space is apparently not due for almost a year. So, this is not likely the last we've seen of this thread.