Schools Dividing the Neighborhood
A neighbor brought up this important issue:
Hi guys, If you have young kids in the neighborhood or if you have an interest in property values in the neighborhood, this would be a good issue to stay on top of.As you may be aware, the City of Richmond is actively looking at rezoning school districts, including the strong possibility of closing John B. Cary Elementary because it is only around 50% capacity. Currently if you live on the 2000 or 2100 blocks of our Byrd Park neighborhood, your kids are zoned for Clark Springs Elementary, and the 3 blocks closer to the fountain lake are zoned for Cary.
There are 4 proposed rezoning plans for elementary schools. 3 do NOT include the 2000 or 2100 blocks in with the rest of our neighborhood; 2 have the kids on the upper blocks going to Fox, 1 has the kids on the upper blocks going to Munford, and 1 rezones our entire neighborhood to go to Clark Springs, including the 2200-2400 blocks.
There is a community meeting regarding rezoning this Wednesday, February 15 from 6:30-7:30 at Thompson Middle School where people can share their thoughts on these proposed maps.
You can follow a link within this blog post to view the current zoning as well as the 4 proposed rezoning maps for elementary schools.
http://hillsandheights.org/2012/01/19/rps-school-rezoning-meeting-february-15-at-thompson/
Heidi
For those who may go to the meeting or who may write letters to committee members, the little strip of blocks in our neighborhood not districted with the rest is also known as “Planning Block 61.” If PB 61 was districted with our neighborhood, the district line would be Meadow. http://web.richmond.k12.va.us/Portals/0/assets/AboutRPS/pdfs/RPSCommitteeMeeting1Presentation111025.pdf
I feel like I’m late to the party, but I thought John B. Cary was the third most “desirable” of all of the RPS elementary schools. Now they want to close it? Meanwhile, they shifted Maymont’s kids to Clark Springs where it’s overcrowded generally viewed as underperforming (and only 30% of eligible households even send their kids there).
If everybody only looks out for themselves, then maybe you’re cheering for one or the other of these proposals. But, if I treated this situation as though every child were my child, I think we might need another proposal.
Living in Byrd Park, I never had any illusion that I was moving into the lucrative Fox and Mumford zones. We couldn’t afford it and I don’t even want to pretend. Ideally, we should be trying to find a way to make our local schools better. Why not send all of Byrd Park to Cary and throw in some of Randolph and Maymont for good measure? Maybe then the school would continue its upward trend and Clark Springs teachers would have some room to breath.
ps: really grateful to Heidi for starting this post. It’s a really complex issue. Let’s work out our positions and pack that meeting on Wednesday.
People should definitely take whatever positions they are comfortable with, but a little background is that a large number of possibilities have been considered over the past couple of months, including several options that would have had Cary as a K-2 school and either Fox or Munford as the 3-5 school. Last month, the rezoning committee voted on all the options and ended up voting to close Cary and another elementary school, and now there are the four rezoning options that can be viewed at this link: http://www.croppermap.com/documents/RPSVA11x17Maps120118.pdf.
Three of the four options do have half of the kids in our neighborhood going to Fox or Munford, while the fourth has ALL of the kids in our neighbhorood going to Clark Springs.
Two of the guiding principles of the rezoning committee are not breaking up subdivisions/neighborhoods, and using major roads as natural dividing lines. Using these guidelines, my argument is that our neighborhood should be together in all four rezoning options instead of just one, and that Meadow should be used as the major road dividing line rather than little side-street Shields. However, I think it is important for our neighborhood to also be aware that as far as major roads go, you cannot get much more major than the highway, which would possibly (probably?) point towards our entire neighborhood getting zoned to Clark Springs.
Other than playing on the playgrounds, viewing online data for the test scores of the schools and anecdotes from friends who have experience with the various schools, I don’t have personal knowledge of the three schools and haven’t actually been inside any of them.
I’m having a hard time reading the maps and figuring out where the dividing lines are since not all roads are indicated… I realize this might be a lot to ask, but is there anyone that can spell out each option?
Also- if I’m understanding from Heidi’s post above, the only option that keeps the neighborhood intact is the one that sends all the kids to Clark Springs?
I know people with kids at Fox and Munford and they’re VERY happy. I’ve never heard anything about Clark Springs at all.
I’d started to hear Cary was ok. I agree with Jason about using Cary better, but it seems they’ve already made that decision. I’m totally with you Heidi about Meadow being an obvious hurdle, but you raise an excellent point when mentioning the expressway.
Its so complex.
Thanks for raising the topic though!
On one hand, I want to support having the whole community be one school and work to improve Clark Springs. On the other hand, looking out for myself here, it’s really difficult to rally myself against Fox/Mumford when my husband and I bought our house assuming Cary was a good comparable school to the affluent Fox/Mumford district that we wanted but couldn’t buy in. Attending the meeting tomorrow night. Will have to see where my alliances end up, I guess. I don’t want to be selfish, but while the idea of a community rallying to fix a school that’s not viewed as desirable is good, I have to wonder how that would actually play out.
Erin, just in brief, as applies to our neighborhood, Options 1-3 keep the zoning lines just as they are now, so our little neighborhood splits at Shields, with the two easternmost blocks of Idlewood/Rosewood/Maplewood/Lakeview, as well as Byrd Park Court and the other small streets on this side of Meadow around the parks would continue to be districted for Clark Springs while the other blocks that are currently districted for Cary would be districted for either Fox or Munford. In Option 4, all of those more western blocks are scooped up and districted for Clark Springs with the eastern half of the neighborhood.
Hayley, I agree about not rallying against Fox or Munford. My opinion is that the neighborhood should be unified in Options 1-3 as it is in Option 4, and then my preference is for either Option 1 or Option 3 which would have the entire neighborhood at Fox (if indeed PB 61 were to be included with the rest of the neighborhood.)
Quite a few of the kids on the few blocks of our neighborhood districted for Clark Springs already don’t go there anyway but go to Fox, Munford or Patrick Henry, and I just think those numbers of kids trying to go to an out of zone school would increase if our entire neighborhood were districted for Clark Springs.
Meanwhile, the closing of Cary and the influx of those students into either Fox or Munford would make it that much harder to get a spot in the lottery system if you are out of district for those schools.
I have a vested interest in trying to unify the neighborhood in Options 1-3 as I live on the 2100 block of Rosewood, seven houses into PB 61. So if Options 1-3 are implemented without unifying the neighborhood, my little guy won’t be zoned for the same school that many of his friends in the neighborhood will be zoned for. Having said that, even without neighborhood unification, I would rather see Options 1-3 implemented than Option 4 (where the whole neighborhood gets zoned to Clark Springs) so at least most of the kids in the neighborhood have the opportunity to go to one of the two most desirable elementary schools in the city even though it would mean having to scramble for my own child.
To me Option 4 is not an acceptable option, but I’m afraid it may end up being the one implemented unless people in our neighborhood really speak up/write letters/emails.
My request to people who live on the western blocks of our neighborhood would be to voice your strong preference for Options 1-3, but to also voice a request for neighborhood unification within Options 1-3.
Whew, can you guys tell I’ve been thinking about all of this way too much?! I’m going to the meeting tomorrow. Depending on the circumstances at the meeting, I may or may not speak, but I’m definitely going to get contact info for rezoning committee members and be writing some letters. Additionally, Sarah shared this survey link yesterday which I completed, basically expressing the same opinions I stated above.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/RezoningStudyForum1
THANK YOU Heidi! That was super helpful. I’d love to hear a report on the meeting tonight if you (or anyone else who attends) has a second to recap it!
Heidi thats exactly what I put on the survey. As a 2400 resident I want options 1-3 for sure! I wrote that “whilst viewing our neighborhood from an aerial view shields looks like an obvious divider that meadow was the boundary the residents considered”. I said that “moving Byrd Park to FOX or Munford will not only unite a neighborhood and offer better schooling but it will increase property values, support the reshaping of a previously plagued neighborhood and promote more use of the Park system by others within those schools districts”. My argument against was that “most residents won’t use the Clark Springs option and will move, resulting in a decrease in property values and reforming of the neighborhood”
I was trying to appeal to them on a money side by pointing out the increased revenue from higher property taxes!
Did anyone make it to the meeting?