Wednesday's Most Active Threads

One again, the Travis and Taylor thread was the most active, but like yesterday, I will skip that thread today because I have already discussed it. The next most active thread after that was titled, "2028 Girls Lacrosse" and posted in the "Lacrosse" forum. I know almost nothing about lacrosse so asking me to discuss the topic is similar to asking a group of blind people to describe an elephant. They each might get an individual part of the animal correct, but will probably miss the larger picture. It is my assumption that the "2028" in the title refers to the high school graduation year of the players which would mean that this thread is meant to discuss middle school-aged athletes. But I would not be surprised to learn that I am even wrong about that. This thread was started last November, but became active yesterday after a post beginning, "Here is some pre-season material from BOTC to get you fired up:". I have no idea who or what "BOTC" is, but the post did have the effect of firing up other posters. Or, perhaps "fired up" is too strong but it certainly got them posting. There was a ton of back and forth regarding which teams would do well and how one team might match up with another. But that did not even rise to the level of trash talk. Things got a bit heated when discussion turned to a team — at least I think it is a team — called "Lumberlax". If I understood correctly, a parent associated with that team was accused of "poaching" players from other teams. Moreover, one poster reported that Lumberlax parents had made some controversial statements about another team. But, then it turned out that Lumberlax isn't really a full-fledged team but more or less an ad hoc effort organized for a small number of games primarily to raise money for charity. Moreover, almost everyone denies that the alleged controversial statements by parents that were described had actually been made, but they are deeply sorry if they were. Most posters seem to believe the post about the statements was a troll. The only other thing I picked up from this thread is that it is entirely appropriate to respond to any question by writing, "IYKYK" and not only is there a "IYKYK guy", but he has an assistant. I'm sure that being the assistant to the IYKYK guy is very prestigious and a position to which we should all aspire.

Next was a thread posted in the "Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)" forum titled, "Secondary school BATHROOMS". The original poster asks about reports that many Montgomery County Public Schools high schools have locked the doors to the bathrooms. This has been a repeated topic in the forum and, indeed, one poster linked to at least two earlier threads on the topic. It seems that some high school bathrooms are routinely vandalized so that they are frequently inoperable and others are used by students for vaping, fighting, and robbing other students. Schools have responded by closing many, if not most, bathrooms. This results in very long lines for the few remaining open bathrooms and students often don't have time to wait in line between classes or even at lunch. Moreover, some schools or teachers limit the number of bathroom passes they will give out, creating a situation in which students may be unable to go to the bathroom for the entire school day. Some posters say that this has led to medical issues with their kids. Much of the discussion focuses on what can be done about the situation. Some posters suggest contacting members of the school board or going to board meetings and testifying. Others suggest filing a lawsuit. There are suggestions for increasing security or supervision of the bathrooms so that they can be opened. Multiple posters issued pleas for any journalists that are reading to write about this issue. But, another poster pointed out that the Washington Post has reported on this issue in the past and nothing changed. Most of the issues seem to come down to student behavior. Since students know that bathrooms are almost the only place within a school without cameras, all bad behavior has migrated there. Nobody seems to have a good idea what to do about this and the few ideas suggested are impractical. There are repeated demands that the school system do something about this problem, with an equal number of reminders that closing the bathrooms is the schools system's idea of doing something about it. At the time of this writing, the thread is full of posts by frustrated parents but very few realistic solutions.

The next most active thread was titled, "Board of Elections Issues Petitions in Charles Allen Recall" and posted in the "Metropolitan DC Local Politics" forum. Dedicated readers of this blog (both of you) will remember that I wrote about an almost identical topic not long ago. That thread was taken over by a poster who seemed to have an unhealthy obsession with Charles Allen, the Member of the District of Columbia Council representing Ward 6, so I locked the thread. As I discussed in my blog post about that thread, an effort has been launched to recall Allen due to what critics consider his soft on crime policies. I am not going to read much of this thread, or even comment on the posts. I would rather hear myself pontificate. Allen's role in the current DC crime situation has been vastly exaggerated. DC, probably more than any other jurisdiction, has a complex police and justice arrangement. Blame can be spread pretty far and placed on a lot of different individuals. Making Allen the culprit is both inaccurate and unfair. One idiosyncrasy about DC is that it attracts a large number of individuals who are dedicated to national or international politics. These individuals often don't bother to learn much about local politics and, while they may be legitimate experts on the national scene, they are basically ignorant neophytes at the local level. To make things worse, they often think they know everything anyway. What appears to have happened here is that a group of these individuals has gotten together and decided that the best way that they can fight crime in DC is to recall Charles Allen. The fact that, if Allen is recalled, his replacement will likely be just as progressive, if not more so, hasn't seemed to occur to them. But, again, this is not a group that is all that familiar with local politics. In many ways, I would compare this effort to the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas by House Republicans. It is mostly an effort aimed at generating publicity that will have no real impact. The recall group's recent financial report disclosed that much of the money they are raising is coming from Republicans and people who don't live in DC. Many of the recall's supporters are even behaving like MAGAs, calling Allen and his supporters "communists" and other names. Many DC residents are frustrated with crime and I guess it is natural for frustrated people to look for someone to blame. In this case, Allen is a convenient scapegoat. But, what is basically a primal scream by a bunch of uniformed transplants is not the solution.

The final thread that I will discuss today was originally posted in the "VA Public Schools other than FCPS" forum. But, when first saw the thread just now, I realized that it was not appropriate for that forum. So, I moved it to the "Real Estate" forum. Titled, "Arlington losing families". the original poster linked to a very short article in the Gazette Leader describing recent remarks by the Chairperson of the County Board saying that Arlington has been "losing young families at an alarming rate." The original poster suggested that a "decline in rigor" at public schools might be one cause of this loss. But, that idea was pretty roundly rejected. Instead, posters almost universally pointed to the cost of real estate, saying that young families could not afford houses in the county. The picture that some posters paint is not dissimilar to that that is probably common in many places. Twenty years ago, young families moved in creating an influx of students to local schools. Now, those families are empty nesters in houses that have doubled or more in value. Even if they decided to sell and move to Florida, their houses are too expensive for young families, something compounded by high interest rates. A thread I recently discussed dealt with the "Missing Middle" initiative that is aimed at filling the gap between apartments and single family houses. That effort came up frequently in this thread with posters arguing that it would not change this situation because young families were leaving Arlington in search of affordable single family houses. They would not stay simply because they could afford a unit in a duplex or triplex. One of the most recent posts seemed to catch the essence of things pretty well. So well, in fact, that I'll quote the entire post:

My kids are in college now. Arlington use to be the place where you could spend the same amount for a SFH as you would in Ashburn and it certainly wouldn't be as nice but it would be a decent, livable middle class house and the benefit was a short commute to work, good county services, and a district with small class sizes. Now that tier of SFH's is gone, fewer are commuting every day, and the advantage of class size seems to be gone. I see the new THs being developed through EHO and think that would mainly benefit people like me -- DH and I are empty nesters with strong ties in our community but would like to downsize in a few years, mostly to get rid of a lot of yard maintenance and the old-house issues. A new-build duplex in our neighborhood would be great. And then a developer will likely tear down our SFH and put up a 2M+ SFH (it's a small lot probably not a good option for MM housing)

This, I think, is basically it. Low-cost single family homes are disappearing from Arlington. As long as that is what young families are seeking, they will increasingly select options other than Arlington.