Anybody on here waiting for DCPS lottery?

[Anonymous]

Would you turn down your spot for Walls or stick with Catholic? I’m so conflicted if we do get a spot at Walls.

[Anonymous]

Which Catholic?

[Anonymous]

My kid is enrolled at Gonzaga, just got into Walls. I don't know what we'll do.

[Anonymous]

Take Gonzaga and Visi over Walls any day of the week.

[Anonymous]

How can you be confused?? Visi and Gonzaga are heads and shoulders over Walls.

[Anonymous]

Can you say more about why these privates over Walls? In something of the same boat. Said yes to a private but now Walls an option. My kid wants the private but we are sacrificing a lot to make it happen.

[Anonymous]

Here are some of the pros for each school as my family considers. Important to note that we aren't catholic and kid currently attends a public school.

Gonzaga:
High quality / even teaching
School spirit
Excellent and well-resourced sports and extracurriculars
College counseling
Prestige/alumni network

Walls:
No required religion class leaves room in schedule for more/different classes
Girls
Friends from current school
Nearly universally high-caliber academically oriented peers (TBH this is a pro and a con)

[Anonymous]

We were in that boat last year for K - our inbound is terrible but we lucked out and lotteried into a great elementary near us. We had already sent in the deposit and accepted a K-12 we love.

The money is eye watering but we realized that even if we solved elementary, we didn't have a middle and high school path. I'm glad we went private because the public elementary had a budget cut this year and lost a bunch of teachers. Rumor is the principal is leaving.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here are some of the pros for each school as my family considers. Important to note that we aren't catholic and kid currently attends a public school.

Gonzaga:
High quality / even teaching
School spirit
Excellent and well-resourced sports and extracurriculars
College counseling
Prestige/alumni network

Walls:
No required religion class leaves room in schedule for more/different classes
Girls
Friends from current school
Nearly universally high-caliber academically oriented peers (TBH this is a pro and a con)

Thanks for the feedback!

[Anonymous]

I'd love to hear from anyone else making this decision - especially for high school - about factors they/their kid is weighing.

[Anonymous]

Our kid got into Banneker as well as Gonzaga. After we got the word from Gonzaga, I was half hoping that he wouldn’t get into Banneker just to make the decision easier.

He is very excited about Gonzaga and that’s where we are leaning, but the tuition is going to hurt.

We were very impressed with Banneker on interview day but I’m finding it harder than it should be to get hard info on the school. There seems to be no reputable source for average SAT scores, AP passes, college admissions and so forth. The published PARCC data is about all there is and that is not encouraging.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We were in that boat last year for K - our inbound is terrible but we lucked out and lotteried into a great elementary near us. We had already sent in the deposit and accepted a K-12 we love.

The money is eye watering but we realized that even if we solved elementary, we didn't have a middle and high school path. I'm glad we went private because the public elementary had a budget cut this year and lost a bunch of teachers. Rumor is the principal is leaving.

Not really relevant since OP is talking about HS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:After we got the word from Gonzaga, I was half hoping that he wouldn’t get into Banneker just to make the decision easier.

I can relate to your whole post, but especially to this part. I'm happy for my kid's success but this is going to be difficult.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After we got the word from Gonzaga, I was half hoping that he wouldn’t get into Banneker just to make the decision easier.

I can relate to your whole post, but especially to this part. I'm happy for my kid's success but this is going to be difficult.

Same! We've already had to sign a contract for the private. So aren't we financially obligated?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After we got the word from Gonzaga, I was half hoping that he wouldn’t get into Banneker just to make the decision easier.

I can relate to your whole post, but especially to this part. I'm happy for my kid's success but this is going to be difficult.

Same! We've already had to sign a contract for the private. So aren't we financially obligated?

Read the contract. In most cases, you can walk away before some date (often June 1) and you lose the deposit but are not on the hook for the entire tuition.