Falls Church City Elementary Schools

[Anonymous]

we are contemplating a move to Falls Church City. Can anyone comment on the elementary schools? We see that the Henderson and Mason are highly rated as the middle and upper schools, but are not sure how Mount Daniel and Thomas Jefferson elementary schools are.

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

They are excellent-that's why the real estate is so outrageous in falls church city.

[Anonymous]

They are building a lot of condos in Falls Church City now and underestimated the number of new students. That wouldn't be an issue in some places, but it's a problem for the City of Falls Church since most of the schools are actually in Fairfax County and the City needs the county's permission to add trailers, build a new wing, etc.

[Anonymous]

I'm surprised that many families with elementary age kids moved into those condos (I guess FC City was surprised, too!).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm surprised that many families with elementary age kids moved into those condos (I guess FC City was surprised, too!).

I guess buying a condo to get into that school district is cheaper than buying a SFH.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm surprised that many families with elementary age kids moved into those condos (I guess FC City was surprised, too!).

I remember with the first one (the Broadway I think?) they tried to limit the number of kids living in the building but someone objected and instead I think they made the developer give a "donation" for the schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:we are contemplating a move to Falls Church City. Can anyone comment on the elementary schools? We see that the Henderson and Mason are highly rated as the middle and upper schools, but are not sure how Mount Daniel and Thomas Jefferson elementary schools are.

Thanks!

We moved here because of the schools. 2 kids of elementary school age. Love it!!!

[Anonymous]

They have a great historical reputation, because of the small town feel, but the town is now turning from what looked like Mayberry to a Ballston-esque urban community.
As a result, the schools are experiencing significant overcrowding.
http://fallschurchtimes.com/2570/no-more-room-at-mount-daniel-elementary-%E2%80%93-no-money-either/

I would say it's still a great place to live (if you can stomach the high taxes), but I wouldn't say that the schools are necessarily "better" than a majority of Fairfax County schools.

[Anonymous]

Well, if you go by test scores - SATs and SOLs then Falls Church City schools are better than the majority of Fairfax County Schools. And I say this as a FCPS parent.

Anonymous wrote:They have a great historical reputation, because of the small town feel, but the town is now turning from what looked like Mayberry to a Ballston-esque urban community.
As a result, the schools are experiencing significant overcrowding.
http://fallschurchtimes.com/2570/no-more-room-at-mount-daniel-elementary-%E2%80%93-no-money-either/

I would say it's still a great place to live (if you can stomach the high taxes), but I wouldn't say that the schools are necessarily "better" than a majority of Fairfax County schools.

[Anonymous]

But you have to take into consideration that Falls Church City schools are 80% caucasian with a median salary of $96,000/year.

If you only tested that portion of a FCPS school, you would have the same higher test scores there also.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But you have to take into consideration that Falls Church City schools are 80% caucasian with a median salary of $96,000/year.

If you only tested that portion of a FCPS school, you would have the same higher test scores there also.

I think in parts of Vienna, it's even higher.

I think Wolftrap ES in Vienna has 86% white.

In McLean, Chesterbrook also has 80% white.

Great Falls ES has 79%.

[Anonymous]

An example of that...Haycock ES in Falls Church (but Fairfax County) is 64% caucasian and consistently scores with 90-99% pass rates on the SOLs with typically 75%+ scoring pass advanced.

Falls Church City schools typically also score in the 90's...but starting in 6th grade, their mathematics scores drop to a pass rate in the 70's and it stays there at least until 8th grade. I can't find stats on their pass advanced percentages.

That is a stark contrast to Haycock's 09-10 scores where 99.1% of 6th graders passed and 80.6% scored pass advanced.

[Anonymous]

I've heard great things about the schools, but the one thing that is weird to me is that they break the schools out by K-1 (Mt. Daniel) and then 2-4, 5-7 (middle school) and 8th grade is with the high schoolers. For families with more than one child it seems like it would be one huge headache to always have kids in different schools. Maybe someone who is in that district can comment on that.

I'd also worry about DD being an 8th grader in school with a bunch of 11-12th graders.

[Anonymous]

The reason that the schools ended up divided that way is that they kept running out of space.
They ran out of room at Mt Daniel and kept moving grades over to TJES.
Then they ran out of room at TJES and moved grades out to MEH.

I would definitely not want my 5th grader in with 7th graders. They're on totally different planets. And 8th graders in with HS-ers...yuk. I want my kids to think that they're little as long as possible. I much prefer the traditional k-6, 7-8, 9-12 spread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:An example of that...Haycock ES in Falls Church (but Fairfax County) is 64% caucasian and consistently scores with 90-99% pass rates on the SOLs with typically 75%+ scoring pass advanced.

Falls Church City schools typically also score in the 90's...but starting in 6th grade, their mathematics scores drop to a pass rate in the 70's and it stays there at least until 8th grade. I can't find stats on their pass advanced percentages.

That is a stark contrast to Haycock's 09-10 scores where 99.1% of 6th graders passed and 80.6% scored pass advanced.

Not to take anything away from Haycock's performance, but Haycock is an AAP Center, so the results are expected to be high.