Which district/pyramid would you choose?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most people hate MCPS but love their MCPS school. My kid has had amazing teachers with decades of experience. I would not make decisions based on what you read on DCUM.

Slight correction: Most people on DCUM hate MCPS.
Most people are happy with MCPS in Real Life.

In the last climate survey where they asked parents to give a grade to MCPS and another grade to their schools, very few parents gave MCPS an A (it varies somewhat by school level). Their grades for the actual schools were consistently better than those for the system as a whole. Anecdotally, I can tell our school principal does not agree with many of the things coming out of central office, though she tries to be diplomatic about it.

There are absolutely thousands of people doing amazing work in MCPS from building services to teachers to administrators. Granted, we are only in our second year at MCPS, but both of my kid's teachers have demonstrated such incredible expertise at supporting our child who has some special needs. Things I wouldn't have even thought to tell them they just figured out. My kid LOVES going to school.

But dealing with the MCPS bureaucracy can be frustrating. Our first year just felt so overwhelming and now I am realizing part of the issue is that at the top level they are constantly chasing the newest thing, and so the schools are constantly implementing new curricula, new tests, and new processes. New programs aren't always thought through fully and seem to be imposed more for performative reasons, so the school staff just have to figure out how to make it work.

So there are definitely a lot of issues, but overall my kid is happy and learning and that is what matters at the end of the day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Since you have a kid who is "very artistic, loves theatre and creative writing. Average student." is S-H an option for middle school and Duke Ellington for HS?

We thought about it. I’m not convinced by Ellington. I think she’d love it - small school, theatre. But also worried she’ll get eaten alive when she hits college and hasn’t been academically challenged enough through grades 6-12. Open to having someone tell me why I’m wrong though.

I was this kid. I went to a t5 school back when getting 95th percentile SATs and taking the hardest classes at your HS were enough. Freshman year was a shock but I figured it out and got into highly ranked graduate school. I wouldn’t let this hold you back from Duke.

[Anonymous]

I think you’ll get more for your money w Langley pyramid than you will in Arlington or FCC

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think you’ll get more for your money w Langley pyramid than you will in Arlington or FCC

Yeah, but if they want urban they don't want to be out that far.

For Arlington, OP, look at W-L and the areas zoned from Hamm. There's a lot that's dense and metro walkable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think you’ll get more for your money w Langley pyramid than you will in Arlington or FCC

Yeah, but if they want urban they don't want to be out that far.

For Arlington, OP, look at W-L and the areas zoned from Hamm. There's a lot that's dense and metro walkable.

If you like older suburban/more urban and walkable:

For APS, students in the Swanson MS / W-L, or Hamm MS /W-L HS tend to walk to school (for ES, MS, and HS). It's a similar level of walkability to schools zoned to Deal Jr high / Jackson Reed HS in Upper NW DC.

Students also walk to Williamsburg MS / Yorktown HS in that section of the county, but it's further from Metro.

The neighborhoods of older, small colonials in Bethesda (that might still be in your budget) are all walkable to B-CC HS. The middle schools are far away however.

[Anonymous]

We are facing a similar dilemma to the first poster. We care more about the schools than our house (we are OK with a condo). But we do want the kids to have some level of independence getting to/from school and we and the kids also prefer a more urban setting. The options above are interesting. Are all the middle schools that feed into Bethesda/Chevy Chase high school, Washington Liberty high school, and Yorktown high school similar? We are also considering Deal and MacArthur high schools in DC, but wonder if it is silly to stay in DCPS if we are going to need to move anyway.

[Anonymous]

+1 for W-L and any of the middle schools are fine. W-L has a nice community of kids and a good theater program.

[Anonymous]

OP here - PP, I’ve been doing some research based on the very kind advice on this thread, and I think I can actually help on your question! Those who know more, please correct me if any of this sounds wrong.

There are two middle schools that feed into Bethesda/Chevy Chase, and it seems that won’t change with the MCPS boundary redrawing process. Westland MS is southwest of “downtown” Bethesda and has the middle years IB program. It’s in a very affluent, suburban area. I can’t really tell if it’s “good” or just has high scores because the children are privileged. Silver Creek MS is way up in Kensington and gets kind of a bad rap, which I get the sense is partly to due with the fact that it’s a much more diverse school, including by SES. Some people say it is warm, small, community based. Others say there are problems with drugs and discipline. Not really sure what to think. The one thing you’ll see is that neither of these is at all close to Bethesda Chevy Chase HS so there’s some bus time involved with whichever you choose/can afford.

I am less in the know about Virginia but have been trying to learn. I’m not very into Yorktown - I think if we went with Virginia we’d be looking at Washington Liberty. Arlington Public Schools is probably redrawing middle school boundaries which makes it hard to know where the lines might be, but my overall sense is that two good middle schools (some would say more?) feed into Washington-Liberty. Dorothy Hamm MS is very popular, more affluent, great administration but some drawbacks in their programming. Swanson MS is more diverse, a crappy building, but has some wonderful programs and people also seem happy there more or less.

So I guess the bottom line is that I don’t think it’s entirely accurate to say they are the same, but there are pros and cons to all. Same with Deal and Hardy in DCPS. It probably depends on your kid and then your budget. We are going through the same analyses! I commiserate - this is painful.

[Anonymous]

Re above post, Arlington has no plans to redraw middle school boundaries. A prior push to redraw boundaries was stopped, and then an enrollment audit was completed. So the middle school boundaries are not changing. They were last redrawn in 2018.

I disagree about Swanson. It’s a beautiful, historic, colonial revival building not unlike Alice Deal in NW DC. Just smaller in size. Sure it could use a renovation, but that goes for the other middle schools too, except for Dorothy Hamm which was just renovated.

[Anonymous]

Thank you to the PPs! Very helpful. I am suprised that Yorktown didn't make the cut and it's that different from WL. Does anyone else have an opinion?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thank you to the PPs! Very helpful. I am suprised that Yorktown didn't make the cut and it's that different from WL. Does anyone else have an opinion?

Yorktown is a more sports-oriented school, but fine academically as well. If you crave walkability and transit, coming from the city, the neighborhoods closer to W-L are probably more your thing.

Some W-L and Yorktown zoned neighborhoods in and around Westover Village are always in high demand. It’s a cozy, walkable area with Swanson MS, Cardinal ES, a Post Office, and various shops and cafes in the heart of the community. The more affordable homes are likely on the Yorktown side of the boundary, where there are smaller cape cod style homes, smaller colonials, and duplexes. The older, larger homes (or larger new builds) are east of the village center where the W-L boundary begins.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have one child in 5th grade in a public school on the hill. We rent our house and are interested in buying in the spring. Would prefer to stay in public school and buy in a location where we are satisfied(ish) with the school situation through high school. Budget is around 1.3M. Child is very artistic, loves theatre and creative writing. Average student.

We’re finding this to be such a difficult decision. Part of it is the tension between the reality that from a selfish/adult-focuser perspective, we’d prefer to stay in the city, as close to downtown as possible. Even if we embrace the idea of moving to the suburbs, where to go is tricky. People with kids in MCPS seem miserable, though at least by spring the boundary issue should be largely resolved. I also get that MCPS used to be the gold standard and is slipping, but could be okay with that provided we can get 7 decent years out of it. But the threads are full of people saying they’d not choose MCPS if they had to do things over again, and I’m not sure what to do with that. Trying to learn more about Virginia; apparently Fairfax is also redoing boundaries and it also feels too far from the city. Maybe Arlington? Also concerned about state wide politics. We are very interested in Jackson Reed but the budget is limiting.

A lot of this is comparing apples to oranges and I have no idea how to move this forward. I’d like to at least make some kind of shortlist so we could visit some middle school open houses. If you were in our shoes with our budget, where would you go?

Take what you read on DCUM with a grain of salt.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We’ve had a great experience at MCPS for both of our kids, including attending schools and participating in programs that are criticized here.

+1.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here - PP, I’ve been doing some research based on the very kind advice on this thread, and I think I can actually help on your question! Those who know more, please correct me if any of this sounds wrong.

There are two middle schools that feed into Bethesda/Chevy Chase, and it seems that won’t change with the MCPS boundary redrawing process. Westland MS is southwest of “downtown” Bethesda and has the middle years IB program. It’s in a very affluent, suburban area. I can’t really tell if it’s “good” or just has high scores because the children are privileged. Silver Creek MS is way up in Kensington and gets kind of a bad rap, which I get the sense is partly to due with the fact that it’s a much more diverse school, including by SES. Some people say it is warm, small, community based. Others say there are problems with drugs and discipline. Not really sure what to think. The one thing you’ll see is that neither of these is at all close to Bethesda Chevy Chase HS so there’s some bus time involved with whichever you choose/can afford.

I am less in the know about Virginia but have been trying to learn. I’m not very into Yorktown - I think if we went with Virginia we’d be looking at Washington Liberty. Arlington Public Schools is probably redrawing middle school boundaries which makes it hard to know where the lines might be, but my overall sense is that two good middle schools (some would say more?) feed into Washington-Liberty. Dorothy Hamm MS is very popular, more affluent, great administration but some drawbacks in their programming. Swanson MS is more diverse, a crappy building, but has some wonderful programs and people also seem happy there more or less.

So I guess the bottom line is that I don’t think it’s entirely accurate to say they are the same, but there are pros and cons to all. Same with Deal and Hardy in DCPS. It probably depends on your kid and then your budget. We are going through the same analyses! I commiserate - this is painful.

My kid is in 8th grade at Silver Creek and loves it. It is a very well run school and actually offers academic challenge (which is not what I read about other MS in MCPS).

[Anonymous]

Any additional thoughts about the value of a smaller county school system (Arlington) vs MCPS or FCPS. County school systems seem impossibly large, but the only option around here except FCC ($$$) and ACPS (otherwise challenging)