FCPS Gen Ed, considering private school. Advice?

[Anonymous]

After one year of Gen Ed at a Level IV center school for DS we are considering moving him due to the overall bad Gen Ed classroom environments. CoGAT 120, between 60 and 85 iReady percentiles, and is well behaved and well liked, but perhaps predictably is not getting what he needs from Gen Ed in a center school, where teachers are distracted with behavior issues.

We are considering applying to St Louis and St Mary's, both fairly close. However our children are not baptized and only one parent is confirmed. Do we have any shot at acceptance? Any advice for a family in our position? Baptizing just for school seems silly but we want to do what is best for their education. Cannot afford independent, most likely, budget would be around 20k/yr.

[Anonymous]

Alexandria Catholic schools are hard to get into even for active parishioners. You'd have better luck looking a little further out into Springfield, Arlington and Annandale.

[Anonymous]

You are going to have a really hard time getting into either St. Louis or St. Mary as non-parishioners. If you are military, St. Louis does prioritize that. It might depend slightly on the grade but overall I think you will not have much luck as non-Catholics. If you did baptize and become parishioners, that would improve your chances but FYI (at least at St. Louis) you have to have been parish members for I think at least 6 months to get that bump in admissions priority. St. Mary's is hard to join as well, they are really picky about boundaries. St. Louis is easier.

[Anonymous]

Depending on your HHI, you could qualify for financial aid to bring the cost down some.

If you can stretch your $20k/year some, Browne Academy is about $28k I believe. They do not offer any financial aid now that they have the flat tuition rate.

[Anonymous]

Apply to both and pick another school or two as a backup. St. Louis is a nice school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:After one year of Gen Ed at a Level IV center school for DS we are considering moving him due to the overall bad Gen Ed classroom environments. CoGAT 120, between 60 and 85 iReady percentiles, and is well behaved and well liked, but perhaps predictably is not getting what he needs from Gen Ed in a center school, where teachers are distracted with behavior issues.

We are considering applying to St Louis and St Mary's, both fairly close. However our children are not baptized and only one parent is confirmed. Do we have any shot at acceptance? Any advice for a family in our position? Baptizing just for school seems silly but we want to do what is best for their education. Cannot afford independent, most likely, budget would be around 20k/yr.

What school? Waynewood has children who don't get AAP leave in large numbers for both schools

[Anonymous]

We did the same thing - kids are in gen ed and there are a ton of disruptions with disruptive kids.

We are Catholic, not parish members and got into St. Louis. But our kids are baptized and one had done their first communion already and the second has done her classes toward communion.

I think St. Louis sometimes does give a slight preference toward larger families - they know there are more kids coming down the pipe line. We have 3 kids so all 3 will be there at the same time.

[Anonymous]

OP here; PP, what grade level did you decide to leave? We have three, our oldest just began 4th. Middle child just began 1st and seems to perform better academically, so we again are hoping for AAP, but it is a tough gamble.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here; PP, what grade level did you decide to leave? We have three, our oldest just began 4th. Middle child just began 1st and seems to perform better academically, so we again are hoping for AAP, but it is a tough gamble.

PP here - we were in the exact same position. Oldest is in 4th right now and middle is in 2nd. Youngest hasn't started yet.

Oldest didn't get into AAP and middle most likely would have (based on test scores) but who knows. Plus we were concerned about middle school so knew if we were going to try and move we wanted to do it before then.

[Anonymous]

If you aren’t Catholic, you may find yourself with new problems moving to catholic school. We left St. Mary’s bc it was too conservative.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After one year of Gen Ed at a Level IV center school for DS we are considering moving him due to the overall bad Gen Ed classroom environments. CoGAT 120, between 60 and 85 iReady percentiles, and is well behaved and well liked, but perhaps predictably is not getting what he needs from Gen Ed in a center school, where teachers are distracted with behavior issues.

We are considering applying to St Louis and St Mary's, both fairly close. However our children are not baptized and only one parent is confirmed. Do we have any shot at acceptance? Any advice for a family in our position? Baptizing just for school seems silly but we want to do what is best for their education. Cannot afford independent, most likely, budget would be around 20k/yr.

What school? Waynewood has children who don't get AAP leave in large numbers for both schools

I’m guessing it’s Stratford landing

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you aren’t Catholic, you may find yourself with new problems moving to catholic school. We left St. Mary’s bc it was too conservative.

I think St. Mary’s is historically known to be more conservative than St. Louis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you aren’t Catholic, you may find yourself with new problems moving to catholic school. We left St. Mary’s bc it was too conservative.

I think St. Mary’s is historically known to be more conservative than St. Louis.

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Yes but it’s still the same diocese. I would fully explore whether you are interested in the Catholic part of Catholic school. It’s not just a less expensive private to get out of FCPS.

[Anonymous]

Look at St Stephens/St Agnes also. OP needs to apply to several schools, really maybe 4-5 different schools. Admissions are fairly competitive, perhaps more competitive than OP realizes…

[Anonymous]

OP here; we would definitely prefer less conservative if given a choice, so St. Louis has seemed appealing. Our kids' grandparents are all Catholic, and Catholic HS alumni, but as I said, only one of us (parents) is confirmed. As parents we have not practiced.

We are looking for an alternative to Gen Ed FCPS, but not totally unfamiliar with or opposed to Catholicism.

If we could afford it we would explore Independent schools first, but we cannot afford $30k+ per year for one child, let alone more than one. Frankly I don't see how anyone affords it, while still saving for college and retirement.