Elementary Crowding and Capacity Committee ECCC Meeting

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Elementary Crowding and Capacity
Committee(ECCC)Meeting 4October 16, 2007
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Meeting Agenda
700 Housekeeping 715 Numbers 745 Fine
Tuning Ideas 815 Break Out Conversations 845
Wrap-Up and Adjourn Next Meeting October 22
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Goals

• Use Meeting Guidelines in conducting day-to-day
  work of the committee
• Keep school communities updated and connected
  with ECCC process
• Propose recommendations that move the fewest
  students possible
• Improve oversight and management of existing
  enrollment tools (including but not limited to
  transfers, program planning, classroom usage,
  planning factor implementation, and class size
  to prevent future over/under enrollment)
• Create a standing citizens advisory committee,
  with APS staff support, to routinely monitor
  enrollment/capacity issues and to make
  recommendations on a regular and ongoing basis
  (e.g. ACI, Facilities, Budget, etc) to avoid
  major efforts of this type in the future.

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Meeting Guidelines

• Respect for the Committee process, citizens,
  APS staff, schools, and the children we are
  discussing
• Principals and representatives will sit at the
  meeting tables separate seating is provided for
  alternates and observers
• Trust but verify do not assume something you
  have heard via word-of-mouth is correct
• Each school will receive one vote when there is
  a vote on resolving action items
• Committee members should use discretion in
  talking about meeting discussions and debates
• Only voting members of the committee may submit
  proposals for committee consideration
• Anonymous proposals will not be considered
• Sixteen affirmative votes are required to pass
  a motion on substantive issues
• Proposals up for consideration, to the extent
  possible, should be studied and analyzed by the
  APS staff to provide the committee information
  on the following
• -- To what extent will it solve the problem
  as defined by the committee?
• -- What impact, if any, will it have on other
  schools or existing programs at other
  schools?
• -- What are the likely costs, or types of
  costs, of implementing the proposal? To
  the degree that costs are unknown, APS staff
  should be consulted for potential
  estimations.

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Board Criteria on Boundary Changesadopted by the
School Board as policy in June 2002

• Assign students to a school who reside in
  proximity to that school including those who
  live in safe walk zones.
• Keep neighborhoods together.
• Avoid creating elementary school boundaries
  that do not contain the school to which students
  are assigned.
• Minimize transportation times.
• Minimize future capital and operating budget
  costs.
• Promote demographic diversity.
• Avoid causing students who have continued to
  reside in a particular geographic area to be
  affected by boundary change more than once at a
  particular school level, (e.g. elementary,
  middle, high).
• Avoid separating small numbers of students from
  their classmates when they move to a school at
  the next level.

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Planning Units
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Langston Building

• Langston
• Shared facility with the County
• APS has 10 large classrooms, 6 are 700 sf, on
  2nd and 3rd floors
• High School Continuation enrollment as of 9/30
  94
• County program includes 4 PreK Head Start Rooms,
  Multi Purpose Room, Senior Program, Teen Center,
  Community Center

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Reed Building

• Construction schedule January 2008 Summer 2009
• The Childrens School/Integration Station
• 13 classrooms for 0-5 year olds
• No cafeteria, art, music, specials
• Relocating program would require 13 classrooms
  (290 student capacity in another APS facility)
• Teen Parenting
• 10 classrooms, 6 are 720 sf or smaller
• Majority of classrooms on 2nd floor
• 2 infant care rooms
• 60 students, 18 infants

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Interlude Program

• Countywide program
• 2 classrooms and quiet space, capacity of 20
  students
• Integrated into elementary program at Nottingham
• Must be located in an elementary school

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Mock Analysis Move 3 Planning Units from
Tuckahoe to Glebe
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Feasibility Analysis of Mock Scenario
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Feasibility Analysis of Mock Scenario
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• Submitted by Lee Morales, Nottingham
• Spread the Hoffman-Boston population across
  adjacent neighborhood schools. Then, move the
  ATS Program, with no changes as it exists today,
  into the Hoffman-Boston facility, thereby freeing
  up and using the current ATS Program Facility on
  George Mason Drive as a new neighborhood school.
  The existing staff from H-B would be the staff
  at the newly created neighborhood school at the
  George Mason Drive facility.
• Reconsider the admission (boundary) policies for
  Immersion Schools (i.e., Claremont and Key) so
  as to allow students from the Northwest part of
  APS to apply for admittance to Key. By allowing
  students from the overcrowded Northwest schools
  to attend Key, you create opportunities for
  families to take advantage of the Immersion
  Program from these schools who otherwise would
  not have gone to Immersion because of the long
  commute from the Northwest to Claremont.
• Reconsider the planned space usage at the Reed
  Center to house multiple Preschool programs from
  overcrowded schools in the area and move the
  planned employee childcare facility to a
  facility or space not needed by overcrowded APS
  students.

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• Submitted by Lee Morales, Nottingham
• Relocate the County-wide Interlude Program from
  Nottingham to the Langston-Brown Center or any
  other location that is currently or projected to
  be under capacity.
• Explore year-round calendar options across
  overcrowded schools or the County.

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Submitted by Dave Hawkins, Campbell Expand bus
transportation to the entire county for students
electing to attend Campbell Elementary to help
alleviate overcrowding in Arlington County
Schools by ensuring that Campbell is a realistic
choice option for families needing transportation
services.
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• Submitted by Kate Mesches, McKinley
• Idea New Choice School Option/Expanding
  Traditional Choice
• Work with this Committee and APS staff to
  identify the most advantageous location for the
  implementation of a 2nd traditional learning
  PreK-5 program and creating 2 traditional area
  choice schools with attendance zones based on
  the immersion schools model of Key/Claremont.
• Idea Reed School
• Move the Childrens School to Langston or
  another under-enrolled APS facility.
• Move Teen Parenting program to Langston or
  another under-enrolled APS facility.
• Ask the Reed School design to include plans to
  implement a new neighborhood school program at
  the site as instructed by the School Board.

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• Submitted by Kate Mesches, McKinley
• Idea A Collection of Solutions Implemented
  Together to Ease Over- Enrollment
• Tuckahoe
• Help Tuckahoe ensure all class sizes are up to
  Countywide levels combining classes where
  possible to maximize use of classroom space
• Work with Tuckahoe to identify planning units
  (possibly a combination of 1609, 1608, 1607) to
  Glebe.
• Temporarily move Tuckahoes Special Ed Pre-K
  (with the goal of returning it or another Pre-K
  program to Tuckahoe within 5 years) to an
  under-enrolled school.
• Glebe
• Work with Glebe to identify programs to be
  moved (possibly Life Skills program, Pre-K
  Special Ed or Montessori) to an under-enrolled
  facility to allow room for new Tuckahoe
  planning units.
• Any Pre-K program(s) would be only be moved
  with the intention of returning at least one
  program to Glebe within 5 years).

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• Submitted by Kate Mesches, McKinley
• Idea A Collection of Solutions Implemented
  Together to Ease Over-Enrollment
• McKinley
• Create a walk zone for ATS from planning units
  1410, 1411 and possibly 1408 from within the
  McKinley boundary. APS students in these units
  could chose between McKinley (their neighborhood
  school) or ATS.
• Nottingham
• Analyze Nottinghams use of 5 newly constructed
  classroom spaces (ESOL/HILT, Special Ed, OT/PT,
  Gifted and Speech) to determine if they can be
  combined/shared to allow for K-5 space
• Move Nottinghams Interlude program to an
  under-enrolled APS facility.
• All Currently Over-Enrolled Schools
• Freeze all transfers (instructional,
  professional, etc) until each school reaches
  90-95 capacity or under.
• Move all pre-K programs from currently
  overcrowded schools temporarily to maximize
  classroom space with the goal of returning one to
  each within 5 years.

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• Submitted by Shirley Jones, Barcroft
• Under-utilized elementary schools could implement
  Montessori pre- school programs.
• 2. Under-utilized elementary schools could
  implement county-wide enrollment with
  transportation (like the immersion schools
  currently offer).
• 3. APS could create another "academic excellence"
  program like ATS at an under-utilized school.
• 4. APS could consider re-working boundaries from
  an East-West perspective vs. North-South.

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Submitted by Todd McCracken, Tuckahoe 1.
Far-reaching boundary changes should be
considered, to help ensure that any solution is
long-lasting and not merely a "band-aid" or
temporary. 2. Move the ATS program to an
appropriate site in an under-enrolled part of
the county, moving the planning units from that
school to the surrounding neighborhood schools.
Utilizing the current ATS building, create a new
school attendance area out of the -- current
eastern end of the Tuckahoe attendance area
(1606, 1607,1608, and 1609 should be
considered), -- southern and western parts of
Glebe (1501 1502, and/or 1512) eastern
McKinley (1408, 1409, and 1411, and perhaps 1407
and/or 1410), and -- appropriate units of
Ashlawn, if the numbers warrant. 3. Move the
eastern part of Nottingham (1706, 1707, and 1708
could be considered) to Glebe. Depending upon
projections, one or all those units could also
be moved to Jamestown and/or Taylor. If
projections warrant, Tuckahoe's 1603 could be
moved to Nottingham.
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Submitted by Rebecca Krafft, Randolph We would
like to see the current policy on academic
transfers changed to allow transfers to be based
on the available space in the school
essentially that academic transfers would be
allowed until a school reaches 95 of its
capacity.
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• Submitted by Wally Hays, Long Branch
• Hybrid Option for Alleviating Crowding at
  Tuckahoe and McKinley
• Long Branch believes that a hybrid method
  employing a combination of the tools available
  can move our most crowded schools well below 100
  capacity within the timeframe prescribed by the
  charge and create tools to maintain appropriate
  enrollment levels thereafter. To do this, we
  propose to
• Discount all dual enrollees as we did with the
  Boards agreement in 2004.
• Move the Special Ed preschool from Tuckahoe at
  least temporarily.
• Freeze ALL incoming transfers except for the
  Special and Administrative transfers for
  Tuckahoe, McKinley and Glebe and let the current
  86 transfers attrition out. (17, 15, 54).
• Set aside a small number of seats (15 total) 5
  each at Key, ASF, ATS schools with sufficient
  demand for transfers from overcrowded schools.
  
• Move planning unit 1609 (30 kids) to Glebe.
• Designate Long Branch as the alternative to Key
  for all of Woodbury Park to help offset the
  impact of kids coming into ASF.

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Submitted by Karla Hagan, Montessori An APS
Montessori school as an attractive option for
Arlington families that would provide a key
component to the solution of overcrowding.
  Montessori is popular countywide there are
over 500 kids in Montessori classrooms in 10
different schools the program at Drew has
quadrupled in the last decade there are hundreds
of kids on Montessori preschool wait lists.  The
creation of an APS Montessori school would
relieve overcrowding at Drew as well as draw kids
from all over the county and would provide a
safety valve on overcrowding, no matter where the
overcrowding exists.  
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• Submitted by Doug Levin, ATS
• Ensure all classes at the five impacted schools
  are at or are increased to their official
  planning factor
• Review space utilization at each of the five
  impacted schools to ensure that classroom space
  is maximized
• Ensure that the APS transfer policy is being
  fully and correctly applied at each of the five
  impacted schools
• Verify the status of dual enrollees at the five
  impacted schools and their impact on crowding
  and capacity issues
• Consider shifting PreK programs out of the five
  impacted schools to under-capacity schools
• Allow students in each of the five impacted
  schools to take advantage of increased
  enrollment options such as those being
  voluntarily offered by Campbell and Randolph
  Elementary Schools
• Revise the boundary lines in the northern
  portion of the County to take advantage of the
  220 excess positions at schools in the north
  (e.g., Jamestown, Key, and Taylor Elementary
  Schools) to alleviate any remaining excess
  demand at the five impacted schools and,
• If possible, implement grandfathering for
  current attendees and siblings at the five
  impacted schools.