Letter to the Editor

Letter to the Editor: Students Shouldn’t Have to Attend High School in Shifts

By ARLnow.com

The following letter to the editor was submitted by 26 Arlington residents, regarding the Arlington Public Schools proposed Capital Improvement Plan.

With an exploding school population leading to hundreds of Arlington students spending their school days in trailers, Arlington Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Patrick Murphy’s proposed solution falls far short of meeting the needs. The Superintendent’s Proposed Capital Improvement Plan (“CIP”) only funds 53% of the needed seats district-wide. Our school system is facing a 4,600 total seat deficit but the Superintendent’s Proposal is for only 2,445 additional seats.

Perhaps the worst looming problem is at the high school level. Arlington will soon be short 2,775 high school seats, but the CIP would fund just 43% — fewer than half! — of the needed seats. That shortfall would be more than enough to fill an entire high school but the Superintendent does not plan to build one.

Instead, Superintendent Murphy wants to use incremental measures such as “internal modifications” to existing buildings, which would leave 1,575 Arlington students without a seat in high school. He would address that huge shortfall by having students attend school in shifts, partnerships with local colleges, and even more trailers. Cost estimates or details have not been provided for these stop-gap measures.

As parents of APS students, we are seriously concerned about Superintendent Murphy’s plan and its inadequate approach to Arlington’s demonstrated school enrollment boom. We don’t want our children to attend high school in shifts or be off-loaded to local colleges because of poor capacity planning. We don’t want our children spending their school days in villages of trailers. We don’t understand why Arlington’s many community centers sit under-utilized while our children sit in trailers.

We believe Arlington can do better for its students, and we call on the School Board, APS Superintendent Dr. Murphy and the Arlington County Board (which controls the overall size of the school CIP) to work together now to create real seats in real school buildings for Arlington’s students.

Bob Adamson, Arlington
Katie Adamson, Arlington
Rasha AlMahroos, Arlington
Jon Berroya, Arlington
Meghan Berroya, Arlington
Sarah Botha, Arlington
Stephanie Carpenter, Arlington
Christopher Carpenter, Arlington
Lee Davis, Arlington
Ben Eggert, Arlington
Kelly Fado, Arlington
Robin Frank, Arlington
Yahya Fouz, Arlington
Brian F. Keane, Arlington
Kate S. Keane, Arlington
Mary Kusler, Arlington
Kim Lipsky, Arlington
Michelle McCready, Arlington
Tamara McFarren, Arlington
Geoffrey Megargee, Arlington
Peter O’Such, Arlington
Valerie O’Such, Arlington
Wendy Pizer, Arlington
Stacy Rosenthal, Arlington
Jesse Rosenthal, Arlington
Laura Simpson, Arlington

ARLnow.com occasionally publishes thoughtful letters to the editor about issues of local interest. To submit a letter to the editor, please email it to [email protected]. Letters may be edited for content and brevity.

Letter to the Editor: Build the Long Bridge Park Aquatics Center

By ARLnow.com

The following letter to the editor was submitted by Jef Dolan, an Arlington resident, Marymount University professor and mother of Olympic gold medalist swimmer Tom Dolan. 

As a long time swimming resident of Arlington, I would like to refute some of the points that Peter made in his March 31 column referring to the proposed aquatics center at Long Bridge Park.

Many early mornings I would have to take my two time Olympic Gold Medalist son Tom to 50 meter pools either in the District, Fairfax or Montgomery County to train or swim in local and regional meets. I resented seeing these facilities getting revenues from food concessions, t-shirts and pool fees.

Why couldn’t Arlington share in this revenue?

The aquatics center at Long Bridge Park gives us this opportunity.

Will Arlington need additional indoor and outdoor recreational facilities in the future?

Existing county recreational facilities are not adequate to meet the full range of current and future community recreational, fitness and aquatics needs of the growing youth, adult and senior populations. A report by the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service Demographic Research Group showed that Arlington County’s population grew by 9.4 percent from the 2010 Census through July 2013 alone. By 2040, Arlington’s overall population is expected to grow by over 65,000 people.

Many of the aquatic classes I try to enroll in as a 55+ citizen in the high school pools through the parks and recreation department are closed due to over enrollment. As much of the Arlington population ages, we seek affordable places to recreate to continue productive lives in the county.

As a mom who has sat in pools all over the country, I have seen the benefits of a multi-purpose training facility.

Existing county recreational facilities are not adequate to meet the full range of current and future community recreational, fitness and aquatics needs of the growing youth, adult and senior populations. We need to have an Oak-Mar Fairfax facility in our community.

Sixty-three percent of our citizens responded favorably to this in a recent survey posted on ARLnow.com.

The money is there. Let’s coalesce as a community to build this facility.

I look forward to seeing many youth teams and swim for safety programs delight in this amenity in Arlington County.

ARLnow.com occasionally publishes thoughtful letters to the editor about issues of local interest. To submit a letter to the editor, please email it to [email protected]. Letters may be edited for content and brevity.

Letter to the Editor: Thank You, Snow Crews

By ARLnow.com

Snow scenes in Rosslyn Jan. 22, 2016

The following letter to the editor was submitted by Abby Olin, a Falls Church resident, regarding the local snow removal effort.

Since you recently gave a platform to readers frustrated with the snow-removal progress, I want to take a moment to briefly thank everyone who has contributed to the advanced preparation and snow clearing efforts so far.

Given the snow fall totals and the thousands of miles of road surfaces, Arlington County and other nearby counties have done an admirable job so far.

In the days before the storm arrived, my local Safeway called in extra cashiers, and while my wait time wasn’t exactly short, it was clear they were doing everything they could to ensure their customers were prepared for the storm. My vet was flexible and helped squeeze in my appointment early so my dog didn’t have to wait the whole weekend with an ear infection. The staff at my apartment complex did everything it could to keep the sidewalks clear, shoveling multiples times during the day over the course of Friday and Saturday.

On Sunday, a plow came and got stuck for more than eight hours. I saw several neighbors working to help the plow driver dig out. I didn’t have a shovel, so my contribution was to bring them hot cocoa. From the week leading up to the storm until Sunday, I was struck by how neighborly the residents of Arlington and Falls Church became — I saw neighbors helping to dig out others’ cars, grocery store customers encouraging a mother with several small children to pass them in a long check-out line, and a steep increase in friendly small talk all over town.

Since Monday, however, the tone has largely shifted in a negative direction — complaints about unplowed streets, annoyance with local school districts’ decisions, and a general frustration in regard to how tax dollars are spent. These are all valid concerns, and as a community we should continue to seek resolutions, but I wonder if it might be easier to if we thwart our reflex to find fault and instead exhibit the “pull together” attitude that was on display all last week.

ARLnow.com occasionally publishes thoughtful letters to the editor about issues of local interest. To submit a letter to the editor, please email it to [email protected]. Letters may be edited for content and brevity.

Letter to the Editor: Better Screening and Instruction for Dyslexic APS Students

By ARLnow.com

The following letter to the editor was submitted by Donna Owens, a parent of three Arlington Public Schools students. It’s co-signed by more than three dozen members of the Arlington Special Education PTA and the Arlington Reading Yahoo group.

Dear Editor:

In response to Peter’s Take: Reform APS Reading Curriculum for Dyslexic Students, we believe that APS’ School Board and Superintendent need to assess if decisions are being given the appropriate priority and objectivity to effectively identify and successfully instruct our dyslexic students, a population that Mr. Rousselot suggests may be as many as 5,000 in APS.

Students in Special Education are entitled to services through an Individualized Education Program to meet the student’s unique needs for their disability. Those services should occur in the least restrictive environment, which is generally presumed to be the classroom with their non-disabled peers. APS defines its available dyslexia resources (Orton-Gillingham, SpellRead, Phono-Graphix, My Virtual Reading Coach, and Read Naturally) (see http://www.apsva.us/Page/31000) as “Interventions” to serve students with dyslexia. However, APS does not define how these resources should integrate with the core English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum.

By not providing a process to incorporate the dyslexia instruction into the student’s regular English/Reading class, too many of our dyslexic students are shackled with the burden to navigate difficult scheduling complexities to receive their dyslexia instruction outside of their English/Reading class, when, in fact, the student is failing to learn how to read in their regular English/Reading class. Not only is this model inefficient, but it also perpetuates a cycle that may jeopardize the student’s rights to be educated in the least restrictive environment.

Perhaps an even bigger concern are the struggling readers who are not identified through the current screening process and fall further behind with each passing year. A well-administered screening process should pinpoint the who, what, and why for poor readers. Do these students have trouble sounding out the words, reading the words with fluidity, or comprehending what they just read? Are these struggling readers still learning the English language or do they need more exposure to books? Until APS can fully answer these basic questions for each of their students, how can we ensure that our students are being provided the most appropriate instruction?

APS provides 2 – 2.5 hours of daily language arts instruction for grades K-2 and 1.5 – 2 hours for grades 3-5.

APS needs to investigate if these ELA blocks of time are being used as constructively as possible, and those decisions should be viewed from the lens of the struggling readers.

Sincerely,

Donna Owens

ARLnow.com occasionally publishes thoughtful letters to the editor about issues of local interest. To submit a letter to the editor, please email it to [email protected]. Letters may be edited for content and brevity.

Letter to the Editor: Five Ways to Help Others During the Blizzard

By ARLnow.com

Snowy roads in Rosslyn

The following letter to the editor was submitted by Thomas Crane, a Fairlington resident who had a recent experience in Courthouse that inspired him to write us. 

Dear Editor:

As the winter storm interrupts our lives for the next few days, most of us will likely get along just fine. If you’re like me, you’ve stocked up on the essentials and plan to binge watch Netflix . . . until the power goes out, at least. Others will need help.

On Wednesday night, there was a lesser storm in the area that served as a proper wakeup call. I nearly lost all faith in humanity that evening. Sadly, most people stood idly and laughed as cars collided with other cars, curbs, and signs. On the other hand, one person was extremely helpful and his actions inspired me to write this piece.

It was about 8 p.m. and I was on my way home from a community meeting — ironically, the meeting topic “emergency preparedness”– and a few inches of snow caused extremely icy conditions. I took a shortcut to avoid reckless drivers and I came to a “T” where I could turn left and slide down a steep icy hill, turn right and get stuck and probably slide backwards down the hill, or go in reverse up a hill and probably slide into every car parked to the left and right. Two other car accidents were already visible as I approached so I pulled over and got out to see if everyone was okay. They were.

A crowd of mostly young men formed and, with hands in pockets, watched as several cars attempted the hill. The crowd was entertained as car after car slid dangerously up and down the hill. Not one person jumped in to help. Eventually, some onlookers half-heartedly tried advising drivers from attempting the hill. Some convinced the drivers they could make it if they just took their foot off the brake and did this or that. It seemed like all the onlookers were armchair experts. I did my part to deter some cars and push a couple others.

I started talking with a guy named Mike who lived next door and was late to the scene. We were chatting and I said I’d been there for over an hour and was waiting to see if a car of my caliber could actually conquer the hill. He invited me inside his home to warm up and check the news to see if conditions would improve. Soon, he invited me to stay the night, and I did. His family was extremely welcoming and kind. I remain blown away by his kindness to a complete stranger.

In emergencies and difficult times, we must be able to rely on our neighbors. Don’t be afraid to ask for help, and please, don’t be hesitant to offer help. Below are 5 great ways to help others.

Knock on your neighbors’ doors and say “hi.” Ask if they’re prepared to hunker down for a couple days. You can learn who may need help and who can give help. Maybe you’ll want to get friendly with those who have a propane grill, generator, firewood, and other essentials that may be shared if need be.

Shovel snow. This is as desirable as helping a friend move, but those you help will be eternally grateful. I remember a young Marine helped shovel a bunch of cars out of our apartment complex during Snowmaggaden of 2010. Thank you, Marine!

Give a push. If you see a car that is stuck, go ask them if they need a push. And push! And get others to help you push.

Inform and advise. Some people are apathetic to this storm. But if you’re well informed about the current forecast and hazards and know what action to take, tell others. Spread the word on how to get prepared.

Give shelter. Offer to open your home to those in need. Of course, take safety precautions but don’t let fear deter you from hospitality.

Please comment on other ways to help, and how others have helped you.

Sincerely,

Thomas Crane

ARLnow.com occasionally publishes thoughtful letters to the editor about issues of local interest. To submit a letter to the editor, please email it to [email protected]. Letters may be edited for content and brevity.

Letter to the Editor: What Do Dave Grohl and a Concrete Factory Have in Common?

By ARLnow.com

The following letter to the editor was submitted by Robin Stombler, a Nauck resident, business owner and past chair of the Arlington Committee of 100, regarding revitalization plans for the Shirlington Crescent area.

Dear Editor:

Over 80 Arlington residents and elected officials joined the Nauck-Shirlington Crescent neighborhood launch on Sunday, January 10, 2016. Nauck residents led groups of citizens on walking tours throughout the Crescent. We anticipated some of the reactions:

  • Arlington is home to a concrete factory?
  • Floods up to 19 feet have occurred at Four Mile Run?
  • Jennie Dean Park honors the founder of the Manassas Industrial School for Colored Youth?
  • Arlington’s first distribution brewery since 1916 opened this week in the Crescent?
  • Artists from Stephen Sondheim to Dave Grohl have walked the Crescent streets?

The answers are yes. Beyond the auto repair stores, towing facilities, and ART bus storage, many people pass the Crescent without really seeing what it has to offer. We have a vision to change that perception.

The Nauck-Shirlington Crescent is unique for many reasons, and chief among them is its diversity. We aim to embrace the economic, social and cultural diversity of our neighborhood from our nonprofit neighbors to our commercial entrepreneurs and from our established citizens to our newer residents.

We also see a significant opportunity to revitalize the Crescent into a creative, industry and arts cluster. This cluster would build and support an environment that encourages businesses and workforce development, protects and preserves the natural resources of the area, and fosters innovation. Space for new housing, tree-lined vistas, and parking also figure into our design.

The Arlington County Board has declared the Nauck-Shirlington Crescent a top priority for 2016. Our ideas, expressed briefly here, will be part of a fuller conversation on the future of the Crescent. The energy and excitement expressed at the launch portends well what that future holds.

Sincerely,

Robin Stombler

ARLnow.com occasionally publishes thoughtful letters to the editor about issues of local interest. To submit a letter to the editor, please email it to [email protected]. Letters may be edited for content and brevity.

Letter to the Editor: Time to Return to the Original Arlington Way

By ARLnow.com

Arlington County government's offices at 2100 Clarendon Blvd

The following letter to the editor was submitted by Dave Schutz, a 30 year Ashton Heights residents, regarding the Arlington Way.

Dear Editor: This letter responds to the Dec. 3 Progressive Voice column by Mary Rouleau.

Ms. Rouleau suggests that recent dissension in our community shows that the Arlington Way needs to be updated, and that it’s time for an Arlington Way 2.0. Ms. Rouleau says that the current practice, even though advisory groups generally advocate the progressive options which the County should follow, does not adequately inform residents to build the necessary consensus for these options. She says it is “…important that the County government provide the public with facts that support its decisions and a description of the public purposes served by the decisions… there is a wide information gap on that set of issues alone… the County has the resources to reach more households and should be a primary source of information for explaining the use of public assets and resources..”

I agree with Ms. Rouleau that there’s an Arlington Way problem, but what I see is that the problem is basically that we have left behind the original Arlington Way 1.0, are already in Arlington Way 2.0, and this has led to the turmoil we have seen.

Arlington Way 1.0 involved the Board seeking input from citizens who brought to an issue group a wide variety of perspectives, and the Board sought a way forward which would leave most residents satisfied with the direction. It was widely popular. About fifteen years ago we shifted to Arlington Way 2.0, in which the Board would recruit mostly-advocate advisory group members whose views at the outset matched those of the County Board majority.

Since the shift, there has been a growing buzz of rejectionist comments directed toward task force products, as well as doubt and opposition from budget-minded people in civic organizations. To complete the picture, the County Board can push necessary approvals for a proposal to well before or after an election, and then claim that it’s been legitimated. Anyone who did not work the process earlier has no standing, it’s the Arlington Way, and it can’t now be changed because the board has decided. I think it would be well for our community if we went back to Way 1.0.

WTOP quoted Chris Zimmerman (a man who will never again face the voters) in Feb. 2014: “In the end, each Board member has to make a judgment about what is best for the community… Leadership is the unflinching exercise of that judgment without regard to momentary swings in popularity. I believe that the great success Arlington has had is the result of the combination of leaders who actively engage the people; listen closely to what they’re saying; and then chart a path that they, in their best judgment, believe is most likely to result in the ultimate happiness of the community; and the willingness of the people in this community to let them do so.”

I think this exemplifies the mindset which has led to Arlington Way 2.0. As an example, on the trolley, Zimmerman and his acolytes badly overestimated the willingness of the community to go down the road they had identified, and their advisory process did not adequately warn them of what was about to happen. Likewise on a number of other issues, including the Natatorium. Though the Board majority gavelled through the Affordable Housing Master Plan last month, it had been the source of a great deal of dissension — again, Arlington Way 2.0.

Ms. Rouleau suggested that the County government organize to advocate for new progressive initiatives. I’m not convinced that this would guarantee success: it’s very much what was done for the Columbia Pike trolley, hundreds of thousands of dollars went into the Mobility Lab for pro-trolley propaganda and the under-fifty thousand dollar oppositional spending of the Arlingtonians for Sensible Transit carried the day.

ARLnow.com occasionally publishes thoughtful letters to the editor about issues of local interest. To submit a letter to the editor, please email it to [email protected]. Letters may be edited for content and brevity.

Letter to the Editor: Arlington Was Better With Cows, Without High-Rises

By ARLnow.com

Cow (photo by USDA via Wikipedia)

The following letter to the editor was submitted by Bob Meyerson, a former Arlington resident, regarding development in the county and government spending.

I am almost 70 years old. I grew up in Arlington. I was last in Arlington in October for a reunion of (if you can believe it) the Woodlawn Elementary School Class of 1958, and recently before that I attended the W-L class of 1964 50 year reunion.

My purpose in writing is to express my utter shock and dismay at how Arlington has been destroyed, and for no good reason that I can discern, except for greed. There is no reason that so many people and hi-rise buildings should have been jammed into, as your publication proclaims, the smallest self governing county in the country. Why couldn’t the county have been left as it was in the “old days,” i.e., with predominantly single family home neighborhoods, albeit perhaps upgraded, renovated or replaced with more modern structures?

And commercial areas, i.e., Ballston, Clarendon, etc., rejuvenated without creating these New York City type ant hill like colonies with people jammed together? Why, I can’t even find my way around most of the county any more!

When I was in the first grade at John Marshall Elementary, I remember riding the school bus by an old house on Military Road with a milk cow in the front yard! And, when I was older, I remember a newspaper story of an old woman who lived on a small farm just off Glebe Road near Chain Bridge, who was evicted from her property for her inability to pay inflated taxes on a property she had lived on for most of her adult life…just so developers could build a bunch of (even for those days) McMansions. Also, I’d be really interested to know how much money the county and its residents have had to expend over the years on larger government, larger numbers of county personnel, greater numbers of emergency vehicles, larger structures to house county government and other inflated county expenditures. In Tuesday’s issue of your publication, there are stories about Arlington spending $637,500 here, and a million dollars there, like it was chump change!

I am not saying Arlington should have remained in the 1950s and 1960s (although I do miss that time period there). I am saying Arlington could have remained a successful, serene “bedroom” community adjacent to Washington, D.C. Instead, it is a place I can’t even recognize or claim as my home town anymore. Sadly, I would no more move back there (even if I could afford to) than I would move to Manhattan, New York City.

Bob Meyerson
Formerly of N. Woodstock Street and N. Quebec Street

ARLnow.com occasionally publishes thoughtful letters to the editor about issues of local interest. To submit a letter to the editor, please email it to [email protected]. Letters may be edited for content and brevity.

Photo by USDA via Wikipedia

Letter to the Editor: Disappointed By Mention of Gun Store

By ARLnow.com

The following letter to the editor was submitted by Jane, an Arlington resident who works in Cherrydale.

It is in response to our article on the opening of a pop-up vintage gift shop in the Cherrydale storefront that was once slated to become a gun store.

My coworkers and myself are very disappointed by your coverage of the Pop Vintage store in Cherrydale.

Was it really necessary to drag up all the gun store dirt? All that did was get your regulars stirred up and writing their usual insane comments.

I was there when Olympia, the owner of the store, was reading their responses.

If you could have seen the look on her face when she read what passes for witticisms among the commenters, it would have broken your collective hearts.

Today there is another mass shooting in California.

The world is getting scarier day by day.

Responsible journalism has a responsibility to report the news as it is happening good and bad, I realize this.

And if it hadn’t been for your breaking news on the gun store it might be our neighbor today.

But to to unnecessarily dig up the dirt on days gone by? Did you think Arlington residents wouldn’t be happy to hear of a new fun business without a splash of controversy?

Maybe in the spirit of the season and humanity you could focus on the positive things that are happening around us.

Jane

ARLnow.com occasionally publishes thoughtful letters to the editor about issues of local interest. To submit a letter to the editor, please email it to [email protected]. Letters may be edited for content and brevity.

Letter to the Editor: Beyer Continues Moran’s Animal Advocacy

By ARLnow.com

The following letter to the editor was submitted by Kathleen McLean, an Arlington resident who lives near Tuckahoe Elementary School.

As a constituent in Virginia’s 8th district who cares deeply about animals, it was hard to believe that Congressman Moran’s successor would be as concerned about animal welfare issues as Representative Moran was.  Congressman Beyer, however, has proven time and again since he took office that he sincerely cares about animal welfare and is willing to fight for those beliefs.

Representative Beyer once again demonstrated his commitment to animal welfare this past week when he introduced his amendment to the Sportsmen’s Heritage and Recreational Enhancement (SHARE) Act of 2015.  Rep. Beyer’s amendment would have stripped the bill of many of its most devastating provisions.  Two of those provisions would have been Title X and Section 302.  Title X, the African Elephant Conservation and Legal Ivory Possession Act, would end efforts by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to crack down on the illegal trade of ivory by repealing the restrictions on U.S. ivory imports and exports.  Section 302 would allow for the importation of 41 polar bear hunting trophies from Canada; these polar bears were killed in the two year period from 2006, when it was proposed that polar bears be listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and 2008, when the listing was finalized.  Section 302 could serve as a dangerous precedent to allow other hunters who kill animals in other countries that are listed as threatened or endangered under the ESA  to import their trophies.

Congressman Beyer’s actions make it clear that he has strong beliefs about animal welfare that he is willing to fight for and make me proud to call him my Representative.

ARLnow.com occasionally publishes thoughtful letters to the editor about issues of local interest. To submit a letter to the editor, please email it to [email protected]. Letters to the editor may be edited for content and brevity.

Letter to the Editor: Save Stratford’s Visual History

By ARLnow.com

H-B Woodlawn (via Google Maps)

The following letter to the editor was submitted by Joan K. Lawrence, Chair of the Arlington Historical Affairs and Landmark Board.

The recently posted “Peter’s Take” commentary calling for the rejection of historic designation for the Stratford School is both premature and uninformed. Arlington does not create local historic districts lightly. There are many public hearings involving the Historical Affairs and Landmark Review Board (HALRB), the Planning Commission and the County Board, as well as the School Board, when the property in question is a school. This process is still in progress.

The designation process was started by a request from Arlingtonians and included one of the four African-American students who made national headlines on February 2, 1959. On that day, in the face of the massive resistance movement in Virginia, four students, escorted by police, walked from Old Dominion Drive and entered Stratford through a door in the back of the building to begin the integration of Virginia’s public schools. This door and the adjacent central portion of the building remain part of Stratford and are clearly visible.  It is still possible today to experience the site and enter the building as those courageous students did over 56 years ago. Children and adults can actually put themselves into the picture of what happened that day because the façade of the school has not been altered.

Capacity can be added to the current Stratford building without covering over the central portion of the rear of the building. This has been demonstrated over and over at public meetings. We just need the will to maintain the visual link with our past.

Stratford’s significance in our history was recognized over a decade ago when it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the Virginia Landmarks Register. We owe this designation to these four brave students and to the current and future generations of students and citizens of Arlington.

Joan K. Lawrence
Chair, Arlington Historical Affairs and Landmark Board

ARLnow.com occasionally publishes thoughtful letters to the editor about local issues. To submit a letter to the editor, please email it to [email protected]. Letters to the editor may be edited for content and brevity.

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