The very best or good? Two divergant views on schools for one child

[Anonymous]

Our family is moving back to the DC metro area and considering public school options but we have a real debate going. Dad wants the very best school possible for the child. He would rather live in a shoebox in an inconvenient location and spend more money on rent / commute if it meant that his child was getting the very best education possible for the child. Mom wants a good school for the child, but places a higher value than Dad on the location of the home, neighborhood, and the economics.

Dad went to private school his whole life and found it very enriching, challenging, rewarding. His private HS was considered one of the best in his state, if not the whole region. Mom went to solid (good not great) public schools. Got a good (not great) education. Both have gone on to excellent colleges and grad schools and are successful professionals. Both feel that the path they took was beneficial and want something similar for their child.

Parents are now considering schools and Dad is very strongly leaning towards the extremely high performing public schools (think N. Arlington and Bethesda) whereas Mom is very interested in some of the well regarded DC public charters and neighborhood schools (think EL Haynes, Cap City, Thompson, Ross).

What to do! What to do! Thoughts? Perspectives? Experiences? Ideas? How can we arrive at an option that both agree on?

[Anonymous]

Public charters in DC are lottery admissions and there are far more applicants than spots. You are taking a gamble if you go this route that may or may not work out. You may end up not getting into a charter and be stuck with a less than optimal DC public or trying to get a spot in a very expensive and exclusive private.

Going to the burbs will save you a bit of heartburn.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Public charters in DC are lottery admissions and there are far more applicants than spots. You are taking a gamble if you go this route that may or may not work out. You may end up not getting into a charter and be stuck with a less than optimal DC public or trying to get a spot in a very expensive and exclusive private.

Going to the burbs will save you a bit of heartburn.

Thanks for the input, but I guess my question isn't burbs v. city. We are also considering Takoma Park / Silver Spring. Again, good schools, but not as absolutely stellar as the schools in N. Arlington seem to be. The question I am asking is how people reach agreement when one parent wants the "best" school and the other parent would rather an OK school, but a better home / neighborhood / commute / etc.

[Anonymous]

Start with what's in the best interest of the child? Have you researched the current state of education today? What do you think of NCLB? If you are not a fan, I'd stay far, far away from any public school in MoCo. I'd instead look at the publics in Virginia. I don't know anything about DC so I'm not ruling it out, just not commenting on it.

But I'd determine the priorities you have for your child's education first, and then find a neighborhood that meets that, plus your other needs/wants. It can be done, but it will take a lot of exploration.

[Anonymous]

You're welcome. Can't help you there though.....not sure how to come to an agreement. Our house was purchased before kids came into the picture.

I will say that I live in Woodmore in Silver Spring and love the community. It is FULL of young families these days. We have 6 families within a block radius with kids that are relatively the same age as ours. I think the schools are very good as well.

[Anonymous]

You may want to really research the public school first. We decided to move to Montgomery County for the great public schools. The test scores are great but the more we learn about the school the more upset we are about going there. They truly lack good educational aspects like science, deeper math concepts, art, drama, music and anything beyond what NCLB scores. The class sizes are exploding and the facilities are aging at best. The MCPS teachers are frustrated and the administrators just perpetuate the problem.

If we could afford to move I would go to Arlington or go live in a condo and pay for private school.

[Anonymous]

My husband and I have a sort of similar kind of debate - he thinks a topnotch private would offer a substantially better education and a huge leg up in terms of college placement and life. I prefer public school - although I'd like to have the best public options we can afford. If we won the lottery, he'd try to get the kids into Sidwell and I would buy a giant house in Whitman or Churchill districts. As it is, we live in the BCC district and I am very happy with that "compromise" - it is a diverse district with a great reputation and great college matriculation stats.

I'm not preaching that for the OP - it is not perfect, although our experience with the public school system so far is very good (and doesn't bear out all the hysteria about teaching to the test that one of hte PPs invoked.) What I would say is this - OP, you need to take a step back before debating St. Albans vs. Yu Ying (or whatever). First decide whether you're renting or buying and what your price range is. What other aspects of your housing are non-negotiable (access to Metro, size, etc) from both of your perspectives? Housing costs are not that dramatically different between say Bethesda and downtown DC - so you are not necessarily going to be choosing between a shoebox in a great school district and a spacious house in a less well established school district. How does that impact your thinking?

Finally you need to do more research on the DC school options - some of the ones you mention have up-and-coming reputations but you need to think about what comes next etc. And what are the alternatives if you don't get into any of the charters you're hoping for - one of my friends is currently facing very high lottery numbers at every school she applied to for her daughter, and one private option that is logistically very difficult for her. I know a lot of other parents who got last-minute reprieves off waiting lists, but it's intensely stressful and ideally you want to go into this with your eyes open about the challenges (as well as the potential rewards.) I don't think there are any "right" answers - but you have to find a balance between house, commute, neighborhood and schools that satisfies you both.

[Anonymous]

Sometimes your kid may need a private. I have a friend in this situation - moved to MoCo for the schools and then one of her kids had needs the public schools would not adequately address. I would buy a house that left you with enough that you could do private if you absolutely had to. We are in DC, like our house and neighborhood, and send both kids (we only have 2) to private. We looked at moving to MoCo but decided we would rather keep this house and pay tuition than move. If we had moved to the biggest house we could buy and counted on public school and then turned out to have a need for private like what happened to my friend, I would have been beside myself.

[Anonymous]

Is your child school age now? I think between birth and starting school, so much can change. You don't know if your child will be painfully shy and benefit from a smaller class size, if your child will need you to advocate heavily because of a special needs and/or being ahead and not being offered differentiation. There was someone else I knew that their daughter really wanted to attend a religious school with friends. I think it is hard to really know where it will go until your child has started elementary school but of course in an ideal world you have it all figured out before your child starts K so they don't have to change schools.

I started out with one thought - going for the best school district I could reasonably afford. Now I wonder if more diversity, foreign language at a younger age, and a learning style that continues the Montessori tradition wouldn't serve my daughter better. The upside to going for one of the best school districts is there is a positive impact with home price and being in a good school cluster. Even if my daughter doesn't get into a magnet program, the fallback option isn't that bad. The downside is if your budget is that tight - you don't have another option - you have to make that school work for you and your child unless you can get into a magnet or charter. In the end, you can only work with what you know and having a reasonable commute to work, living a reasonable commute from other jobs in your field (in case you change jobs), being conservative with your budget/money, and looking for a neighborhood that you would like to come home to everyday is all you can do. I would how good and best schools fit in with the other decisions.

[Anonymous]

First, the difference in commute time between Arlington/close-in MoCo and NW DC is not that great. Nor, as a PP has noted, is the cost of housing.

We chose a neighborhood that balanced good public schools and a reasonable commute, but we are both down on long commutes. We want to be able to spend time with our kids for our sake and theirs. I don't think you can entirely separate education from overall quality of life.

[Anonymous]

I feel like a sense of community is very important to my family's values. That you belong to institutions and work for them, that you can walk to get to places, that you see the same people at the farmers' market as in the neighborhood. We live in Takoma on the D.C. side and there is a lot of cross-over from place to place-- my child sees many of the same adults all the time. It's like a small town of friendly waves and small talk. We also work very hard to support the groups and institutions of which we are a part-- and now my child thinks in those terms as well. "We could have a lemonade stand and donate the money to Haiti!"

I grew up in a small-ish, midwestern town and it was an environment that really supported community and family. I want that same thing for my family here in this area. You can do it if you live in one of those neighborhoods where there is a sense of place, of belonging.

School is just one piece of the puzzle. We made it work by finding a school that fit into the neighborhood thing -- again, we have a lot of cross-over between different places in our lives, including the school community. I would not uproot my family to live in a "better school district" that does not have a good sense of "neighborliness."

I think you can find those places and good school solutions within them. For example, Mt. Rainier/Hyattsville-- a lot of families go to St. Mark's, or the local public elementary school or Christian Family Montessori School. They shop at Glut, eat at Franklin's, take classes at Joe's Movement Emplorium, swim on the swim team at PG Pool. Same faces over and over. Nice historic neighborhoods with trees. The "best" public schools? No, but a great place to live a full and rich life.

[Anonymous]

a big round of applause for pp! I totally agree, and often have trouble putting the philosophy into words.

[Anonymous]

OP, I don't know if it is possible with your work schedules and such. But if you are both at such a standstill, I would encourage you to try to take some tours of a few different types of kindergartens. A private school or two, and several of the well-regarded public schools in hoity toity expensive areas; then also a few well regarded elemntary schools in such places as S. Arlington, DC, and Prince George's County. (Gasp!) You might be surprised at how easy the decision is -- some types of schools will simply scream out to you that they are the kind of place for your child -- or you may be surprised that the schools are basically the same -- only difference is financial background of the family of the children who attend.

[Anonymous]

PP 17:09 in Montgomery County. Can I ask what school? Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Public charters in DC are lottery admissions and there are far more applicants than spots. You are taking a gamble if you go this route that may or may not work out. You may end up not getting into a charter and be stuck with a less than optimal DC public or trying to get a spot in a very expensive and exclusive private.

Going to the burbs will save you a bit of heartburn.

Thanks for the input, but I guess my question isn't burbs v. city. We are also considering Takoma Park / Silver Spring. Again, good schools, but not as absolutely stellar as the schools in N. Arlington seem to be. The question I am asking is how people reach agreement when one parent wants the "best" school and the other parent would rather an OK school, but a better home / neighborhood / commute / etc.

Schools in North Arlington are great when it comes to narrow metrics like test scores but they are also very limiting. Some (Nottingham) don't offer foreign language and are quite blunt that they have no interest in doing so (others like Taylor do). They are also overwhelmingly, monochromatically white. We're white, live in the Nottingham District, and opted to send DC to another Arlington public school. If you win the good versus great/outstanding battle, there are plenty of wonderful public schools in Arlington that offer a more well-rounded (and still wonderful) education than some of the "great" North Arlington ones do. Good luck!