I’ve started adding the year to some of these stories because we’ve had these discussions before.
I said in 2019
If you don’t have kids, please get involved, as school quality and perceived school quality affects property values. If you do have kids, get aware and involved. Even if your kids are little now, they’re going to grow up. I’m happy to talk our schools’ perceived quality about property values offline.
via the excellent Katherine Knott at the Daily Progress
(read the whole thing, and the bolding below is mine)
The Albemarle County school division will start figuring out this week how to move hundreds of students from Brownsville to Crozet Elementary.
A 10-person community advisory committee will lead the first phase of that redistricting effort, which will include two public meetings in November. The school division is aiming for the School Board to make a final decision about the two schools’ boundaries in January, so it can start working with the affected families.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, nearby Brownsville Elementary had nearly 900 students while the building’s capacity was 764. At Crozet, enrollment was up to 360 students, 30 more than the building’s capacity.
…
The committee will hold its first virtual work session Tuesday from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Additional work sessions are scheduled for Oct. 12, Oct. 26 and Nov. 16, all starting at 6 p.m. Meetings can be viewed at streaming.k12albemarle.org/ACPS/publicmeeting.html.
Virtual public meetings to hear community input will be from 6 to 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 4 and Nov. 9.
Living in Old Trail, without kids but close to BES, I am so glad AC is enlarging and upgrading CES. Bringing more balance to Crozet.
From an email commenter:
Merely rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic aka Albemarle County Public Schools. We don’t need redistricting. We need two new elementary schools in western Albemarle. We also need a large public park with appropriate recreational amenities in an appropriate location, not accessed by inadequate roads and buried in private neighborhoods.
Research shows the optimum size for an elementary school is between 300 and 400 students. This concept is nothing new, just foreign to Albemarle County.
https://www.aps.edu/sapr/documents/2005-2006-publications/ES_School_Size.pdf
Recommended School Size
• On average, research indicates that an effective size for an elementary school is in the range
of 300-400 students.1 Academic Achievement
• Student achievement in small schools is at least equal, and often superior, to student
achievement in large schools. 1 ?
Student Attitudes
• Student attitudes toward school in general and toward particular subjects are better in small
schools compared to large ones. 1
Student Behavior
• Small schools have lower incidences of negative social behavior than do large schools. 1
Effects on Minority and Low-Income Students
• The effects of small schools on the academic achievement of ethnic minority students and
students from low-income families are especially positive. In other words, large schools have
a more negative impact on minority and low-income students than on students in general.1
• School size has a particularly strong influence on student attitudes about school among low-
income and minority students. 1
• The social behavior of ethnic minority and low-income students is even more positively
impacted by small schools than that of other students.