Haycock vs Kent Gardens

[Anonymous]

The thing with these chat bards is that only the moderator can tell who is posting. You simply cannot ever tell who is telling the truth or if it is just a few people posting over and over again. Your best bet is to arrange a trip to view schools and talk to people in the communities face to face.
If you are both working parents you also need to be concerned about childcare before or after school if you are not able to be home when your child is home from school. This is another issue for parents in many FCPS. Do you know that all Mondays are early release for elementary children?
OP had said in her earlier posts that they were looking for/or had found a house in the low 700K. From a real estate aspect there is only ONE house currently available listed on the market as of today in the Kent gardens ES boundary in the low 700Ks. So it is questionable what she was even referring to. Spring should be here soon which means hopefully more on the market for them everywhere. Wishing you good luck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Wow. Just wow. And not in a good way. I think we may revisit Arlington and Falls Church City. I had no idea what this AAP nonsense is, but it certainly isn't something we want our children to get caught up in, and it's definitely not our family's style. This is elementary school for goodness sake. These poor kids will all be on ativan and Zoloft before they are 10!

Please do not buy into the stereotype that is promoted here. This is an anonymous website that attracts people who want to stir thing up. Both Haycock and Kent Gardens are perfectly fine schools. Don't believe the hype.

My reaction as well. This won't be the first or last time that the lady from Shrevewood whose area was moved to a different AAP center looks for occasions to go after Haycock. She has a very large chip on her shoulder, but nothing she says has much of a shelf life.

I think there is more than one Haycock negativity poster. Look back, there were negative posts before the whole AAP drama. It goes back years.

There are some parents of Haycock students not in AAP who have posted here about their concerns that their kids may be "second-fiddle" at Haycock. That concern is not unique to Haycock, but can be said of most schools with a large AAP center, whether it's Haycock ES in the McLean pyramid, Colvin Run ES in the Langley pyramid, or Kilmer MS in the Marshall pyramid. It's a non-issue in high schools, which don't have AAP centers.

There are also one or two posters who live in the Shrevewood and Westgate ES distircts who were very unhappy that AAP students from those areas were reassigned last year from Haycock to Lemon Road. They felt that other Haycock parents "threw them under the bus" by agreeing with the majority of the School Board and the principals of both Haycock and Lemon Road that the best solution to overcrowding at Haycock was creating a brand-new AAP center at Lemon Road that kids from Lemon Road, Shrevewood and Westgate, which are in the Marshall HS pyramid, could attend. There is one woman from Shrevewood who has posted negative things about Haycock ever since this decision was made. I think she may also have a "grandfathered" AAP kid in 6th grade at Haycock this year. She tries to make her perspective sound like the widely shared view of current Haycock parents. The irony is that, in other threads, posters will acknowledge that the new Lemon Road AAP center is working out just fine. Even more, while some of these posters go after McLean parents for what happened at Haycock, the same dynamic is now starting to emerge at Kilmer MS, in their own pyramid, where Kilmer parents have started to argue AAP kids from Langley need to be sent to Cooper MS to relieve overcrowding at Kilmer. It's a never-ending cycle where school boundaries and enrollments are concerned.

Assuming the OP was a bona fide poster with a real request, it's a shame the thread deteriorated, but it was predicted early in the thread that this would happen, and it did right on cue. But it's not going to change the fact that most Haycock families are quite happy, both in real life and on this forum. The low inventory for homes in the district bears this out.

[Anonymous]

Interesting that PP seems to think she knows who the anonymous posters are and their views. She is incorrect.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Wow. Just wow. And not in a good way. I think we may revisit Arlington and Falls Church City. I had no idea what this AAP nonsense is, but it certainly isn't something we want our children to get caught up in, and it's definitely not our family's style. This is elementary school for goodness sake. These poor kids will all be on ativan and Zoloft before they are 10!

Please do not buy into the stereotype that is promoted here. This is an anonymous website that attracts people who want to stir thing up. Both Haycock and Kent Gardens are perfectly fine schools. Don't believe the hype.

My reaction as well. This won't be the first or last time that the lady from Shrevewood whose area was moved to a different AAP center looks for occasions to go after Haycock. She has a very large chip on her shoulder, but nothing she says has much of a shelf life.

I think there is more than one Haycock negativity poster. Look back, there were negative posts before the whole AAP drama. It goes back years.

There are some parents of Haycock students not in AAP who have posted here about their concerns that their kids may be "second-fiddle" at Haycock. That concern is not unique to Haycock, but can be said of most schools with a large AAP center, whether it's Haycock ES in the McLean pyramid, Colvin Run ES in the Langley pyramid, or Kilmer MS in the Marshall pyramid. It's a non-issue in high schools, which don't have AAP centers.

There are also one or two posters who live in the Shrevewood and Westgate ES distircts who were very unhappy that AAP students from those areas were reassigned last year from Haycock to Lemon Road. They felt that other Haycock parents "threw them under the bus" by agreeing with the majority of the School Board and the principals of both Haycock and Lemon Road that the best solution to overcrowding at Haycock was creating a brand-new AAP center at Lemon Road that kids from Lemon Road, Shrevewood and Westgate, which are in the Marshall HS pyramid, could attend. There is one woman from Shrevewood who has posted negative things about Haycock ever since this decision was made. I think she may also have a "grandfathered" AAP kid in 6th grade at Haycock this year. She tries to make her perspective sound like the widely shared view of current Haycock parents. The irony is that, in other threads, posters will acknowledge that the new Lemon Road AAP center is working out just fine. Even more, while some of these posters go after McLean parents for what happened at Haycock, the same dynamic is now starting to emerge at Kilmer MS, in their own pyramid, where Kilmer parents have started to argue AAP kids from Langley need to be sent to Cooper MS to relieve overcrowding at Kilmer. It's a never-ending cycle where school boundaries and enrollments are concerned.

Assuming the OP was a bona fide poster with a real request, it's a shame the thread deteriorated, but it was predicted early in the thread that this would happen, and it did right on cue. But it's not going to change the fact that most Haycock families are quite happy, both in real life and on this forum. The low inventory for homes in the district bears this out.

The real shame is that you single handedly brought this thread so far off track that the OP has likely cancelled their move altogether, all while blaming it on what you suppose must be the view of one anonymous poster whose life you seem to have all figured out. Now you're back, blaming it all on others once again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Wow. Just wow. And not in a good way. I think we may revisit Arlington and Falls Church City. I had no idea what this AAP nonsense is, but it certainly isn't something we want our children to get caught up in, and it's definitely not our family's style. This is elementary school for goodness sake. These poor kids will all be on ativan and Zoloft before they are 10!

Please do not buy into the stereotype that is promoted here. This is an anonymous website that attracts people who want to stir thing up. Both Haycock and Kent Gardens are perfectly fine schools. Don't believe the hype.

My reaction as well. This won't be the first or last time that the lady from Shrevewood whose area was moved to a different AAP center looks for occasions to go after Haycock. She has a very large chip on her shoulder, but nothing she says has much of a shelf life.

I think there is more than one Haycock negativity poster. Look back, there were negative posts before the whole AAP drama. It goes back years.

There are some parents of Haycock students not in AAP who have posted here about their concerns that their kids may be "second-fiddle" at Haycock. That concern is not unique to Haycock, but can be said of most schools with a large AAP center, whether it's Haycock ES in the McLean pyramid, Colvin Run ES in the Langley pyramid, or Kilmer MS in the Marshall pyramid. It's a non-issue in high schools, which don't have AAP centers.

There are also one or two posters who live in the Shrevewood and Westgate ES distircts who were very unhappy that AAP students from those areas were reassigned last year from Haycock to Lemon Road. They felt that other Haycock parents "threw them under the bus" by agreeing with the majority of the School Board and the principals of both Haycock and Lemon Road that the best solution to overcrowding at Haycock was creating a brand-new AAP center at Lemon Road that kids from Lemon Road, Shrevewood and Westgate, which are in the Marshall HS pyramid, could attend. There is one woman from Shrevewood who has posted negative things about Haycock ever since this decision was made. I think she may also have a "grandfathered" AAP kid in 6th grade at Haycock this year. She tries to make her perspective sound like the widely shared view of current Haycock parents. The irony is that, in other threads, posters will acknowledge that the new Lemon Road AAP center is working out just fine. Even more, while some of these posters go after McLean parents for what happened at Haycock, the same dynamic is now starting to emerge at Kilmer MS, in their own pyramid, where Kilmer parents have started to argue AAP kids from Langley need to be sent to Cooper MS to relieve overcrowding at Kilmer. It's a never-ending cycle where school boundaries and enrollments are concerned.

Assuming the OP was a bona fide poster with a real request, it's a shame the thread deteriorated, but it was predicted early in the thread that this would happen, and it did right on cue. But it's not going to change the fact that most Haycock families are quite happy, both in real life and on this forum. The low inventory for homes in the district bears this out.

The real shame is that you single handedly brought this thread so far off track that the OP has likely cancelled their move altogether, all while blaming it on what you suppose must be the view of one anonymous poster whose life you seem to have all figured out. Now you're back, blaming it all on others once again.

Oh well. Guess you can't have it both ways. If you want to make the same negative, inflammatory statements about certain schools time and time again, expect to get called out on it. You have a fairly big footprint on DCUM by now.

[Anonymous]

I am the person who posted about KG on one of the first few threads. I forgot to mention something we love which another poster brought up-cultural diversity. Every year so far the class has been composed of kids from all different ethnic backgrounds some of whom were born in other countries. You don't find as much economic diversity, but it is not all rich kids at all. For the record I have met several people from small towns in the Midwest, etc and they seem quite happy in McLean. I have met Tigermoms from various DC metro areas, not just McLean. I just avoid them.


Re:french immersion. I agree that it's not shoved down your throat. The kids all get some exposure to French-even non-immersion. I did find it funny and a tad annoying when a French teacher sent home a paper with a comment suggesting we work more with out child on some area of French vocab. Neither my husband nor I took French and we'd prefer a choice of languages, but it's not a big deal.

Springfield has many perks, but commuting is miserable. There is a good bus system you can use to get into DC, but it takes a while. There is more economic diversity in Springfield, but we also found more narrow-mindedness regarding diversity.

Re:dyslexia. Have several friends dealing with IEPs for dyslexia at schools other than KG and regardless of the school or county the consensus is, you need to supplement with some outside services too. There are lots of great summer and after school programs as well as tutors. My older child has an IEP at KG for other issues and there are some excellent seasoned special ed teachers and IAs who have been there a while. There is also a bit of turnover, but I think that happens anywhere. KG definitely tunes into reading issues and they screen and offer supports, summer school, etc, but I cannot speak to the quality of dyslexia services.

Let us know what you decide OP! Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Wow. Just wow. And not in a good way. I think we may revisit Arlington and Falls Church City. I had no idea what this AAP nonsense is, but it certainly isn't something we want our children to get caught up in, and it's definitely not our family's style. This is elementary school for goodness sake. These poor kids will all be on ativan and Zoloft before they are 10!

Please do not buy into the stereotype that is promoted here. This is an anonymous website that attracts people who want to stir thing up. Both Haycock and Kent Gardens are perfectly fine schools. Don't believe the hype.

My reaction as well. This won't be the first or last time that the lady from Shrevewood whose area was moved to a different AAP center looks for occasions to go after Haycock. She has a very large chip on her shoulder, but nothing she says has much of a shelf life.

I think there is more than one Haycock negativity poster. Look back, there were negative posts before the whole AAP drama. It goes back years.

There are some parents of Haycock students not in AAP who have posted here about their concerns that their kids may be "second-fiddle" at Haycock. That concern is not unique to Haycock, but can be said of most schools with a large AAP center, whether it's Haycock ES in the McLean pyramid, Colvin Run ES in the Langley pyramid, or Kilmer MS in the Marshall pyramid. It's a non-issue in high schools, which don't have AAP centers.

There are also one or two posters who live in the Shrevewood and Westgate ES distircts who were very unhappy that AAP students from those areas were reassigned last year from Haycock to Lemon Road. They felt that other Haycock parents "threw them under the bus" by agreeing with the majority of the School Board and the principals of both Haycock and Lemon Road that the best solution to overcrowding at Haycock was creating a brand-new AAP center at Lemon Road that kids from Lemon Road, Shrevewood and Westgate, which are in the Marshall HS pyramid, could attend. There is one woman from Shrevewood who has posted negative things about Haycock ever since this decision was made. I think she may also have a "grandfathered" AAP kid in 6th grade at Haycock this year. She tries to make her perspective sound like the widely shared view of current Haycock parents. The irony is that, in other threads, posters will acknowledge that the new Lemon Road AAP center is working out just fine. Even more, while some of these posters go after McLean parents for what happened at Haycock, the same dynamic is now starting to emerge at Kilmer MS, in their own pyramid, where Kilmer parents have started to argue AAP kids from Langley need to be sent to Cooper MS to relieve overcrowding at Kilmer. It's a never-ending cycle where school boundaries and enrollments are concerned.

Assuming the OP was a bona fide poster with a real request, it's a shame the thread deteriorated, but it was predicted early in the thread that this would happen, and it did right on cue. But it's not going to change the fact that most Haycock families are quite happy, both in real life and on this forum. The low inventory for homes in the district bears this out.

The real shame is that you single handedly brought this thread so far off track that the OP has likely cancelled their move altogether, all while blaming it on what you suppose must be the view of one anonymous poster whose life you seem to have all figured out. Now you're back, blaming it all on others once again.

Oh well. Guess you can't have it both ways. If you want to make the same negative, inflammatory statements about certain schools time and time again, expect to get called out on it. You have a fairly big footprint on DCUM by now.

I posted the most recently quoted post, and not a single other comment in the above saga. You are really embarrassing yourself.

[Anonymous]

Here's an interesting review of Haycock on another site from a year ago:

"I have finished reading the reviews here and am shocked by what I see. Haycock is a wonderful school with educated and caring teachers and administrators. I've been a Haycock parent for eight years and find these comments to be ridiculous and misleading. They are obviously the result of a realignment that occurred within the pyramid that caused some children to be moved to another school next year in order to ease overcrowding and enable the renovation to proceed safely. It seems that some of the understandable frustration has been misdirected at the parents and administrators. Please don't let this color your opinion of a fantastic school.[i] The parent community is very inviting and supportive of the school community and students are challenged at every level. We may have some difficult years ahead with the upcoming renovation, but I am thrilled that we will soon have a beautiful new school to house our students."

A year has passed, and posters like 18:26 still haven't let it go. I guess there's always February 2015.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many parents are aware that at Haycock, it seems like they are slowly phasing out recess. The school's expansion is also eating into playground.

These parents probably see value in giving the kids a rest or a chance to recharge batteries, but probably don't want to disrupt the crazy overachieving atmosphere at Haycock.

Double yawn.

If the truth bores you, so be it.

If the bore toots at it, it be you.

Snore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here's an interesting review of Haycock on another site from a year ago:

"I have finished reading the reviews here and am shocked by what I see. Haycock is a wonderful school with educated and caring teachers and administrators. I've been a Haycock parent for eight years and find these comments to be ridiculous and misleading. They are obviously the result of a realignment that occurred within the pyramid that caused some children to be moved to another school next year in order to ease overcrowding and enable the renovation to proceed safely. It seems that some of the understandable frustration has been misdirected at the parents and administrators. Please don't let this color your opinion of a fantastic school.[i] The parent community is very inviting and supportive of the school community and students are challenged at every level. We may have some difficult years ahead with the upcoming renovation, but I am thrilled that we will soon have a beautiful new school to house our students."

A year has passed, and posters like 18:26 still haven't let it go. I guess there's always February 2015.

Is this person a troll? It seems like he or she has written a majority of posts on this thread and is consistently inflammatory.
OP, I apologize that it is so difficult to have a mature conversation on this forum. I suggest you visit the area and the schools and make your own decisions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Wow. Just wow. And not in a good way. I think we may revisit Arlington and Falls Church City. I had no idea what this AAP nonsense is, but it certainly isn't something we want our children to get caught up in, and it's definitely not our family's style. This is elementary school for goodness sake. These poor kids will all be on ativan and Zoloft before they are 10!

Unfortunately, the competitiveness among parents exists in Arlington and Falls Church city as well. It lessens as you head south and west. McLean just happens to be the hub.

McLean isn't the only hub. Plenty of this in Vienna, Centreville, and Fairfax.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Wow. Just wow. And not in a good way. I think we may revisit Arlington and Falls Church City. I had no idea what this AAP nonsense is, but it certainly isn't something we want our children to get caught up in, and it's definitely not our family's style. This is elementary school for goodness sake. These poor kids will all be on ativan and Zoloft before they are 10!

If you are concerned about the AAP hype, make sure you do not buy into a center school (which is different than local level IV) because if your child is in AAP, you might be very unhappy. At certain center schools, the non-AAP kids are a minority and it can be upsetting for the children and the parents. The concern is that they are a minority at their neighborhood school. There are threads on this if you search.

Haycock is a center school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We've been trying for months to find something in the Haycock district near the West Falls Church metro for under $850,000. We always seem to be too late to the party, and there's nothing now. If this thread scares away some competing buyers, I'd be delighted.

Maybe Haycock needs its own forum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Wow. Just wow. And not in a good way. I think we may revisit Arlington and Falls Church City. I had no idea what this AAP nonsense is, but it certainly isn't something we want our children to get caught up in, and it's definitely not our family's style. This is elementary school for goodness sake. These poor kids will all be on ativan and Zoloft before they are 10!

If you are concerned about the AAP hype, make sure you do not buy into a center school (which is different than local level IV) because if your child is in AAP, you might be very unhappy. At certain center schools, the non-AAP kids are a minority and it can be upsetting for the children and the parents. The concern is that they are a minority at their neighborhood school. There are threads on this if you search.

Haycock is a center school.

Really? Who would have guessed that?

I saw someone recommend Lemon Road. It's a center school, too. And I think some other posters recommended Shrevewood. It's not a center school, but it feeds into a middle school that's an overcrowded center school, Kilmer. Yikes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Wow. Just wow. And not in a good way. I think we may revisit Arlington and Falls Church City. I had no idea what this AAP nonsense is, but it certainly isn't something we want our children to get caught up in, and it's definitely not our family's style. This is elementary school for goodness sake. These poor kids will all be on ativan and Zoloft before they are 10!

If you are concerned about the AAP hype, make sure you do not buy into a center school (which is different than local level IV) because if your child is in AAP, you might be very unhappy. At certain center schools, the non-AAP kids are a minority and it can be upsetting for the children and the parents. The concern is that they are a minority at their neighborhood school. There are threads on this if you search.

Haycock is a center school.

Really? Who would have guessed that?

I saw someone recommend Lemon Road. It's a center school, too. And I think some other posters recommended Shrevewood. It's not a center school, but it feeds into a middle school that's an overcrowded center school, Kilmer. Yikes.

You are so defensive!!!! Yes, LR is a center, but so far, it's a small center and the parents there have not been complaining that the Gen Ed kids are outnumbered or that the center has taken over the school as they have at Haycock if you read the existing threads. As for Kilmer, no one here is really talking about middle school, but if you read the Cooper thread, the Longfellow parents seem to be more concerned about overcrowding than the Kilmer parents (of course, that could change at some point). I don;t think anyone is saying that Haycock is a bad school. People are just pointing out things OP might want to consider. Every school has flaws, including Haycock.