What are the top Public Schools in N. Arlington?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not in Arlington, but you might find Falls Church City more walkable than North Arlington. They are known for superb schools, even moreso than Arlington.

Clarify this please?

I havent used a car in weeks in Clarendon so I also ? the better walkability. This area was like 99
Or something on that walkabilty program...even a higher than a very large portion of DC proper.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thinking about moving into the Jamestown district and have heard negative things about the principal and turnover of teachers. It looks like they will be getting a new principal in July. Anyone have any thoughts on this good/bad/other?

I think you mean you read some outlier reviews on greatschools.com that alleged this.

Jamestown is great. We moved into the district at the end of last year and couldn't be happier. Night and day compared to our old Alexandria City Public elementary school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'd probably look for something in Yorktown vs. Washington-Lee since W-L is overcrowded and getting more so all the time.

This is false. Current projections show both N. Arlington middle and high schools at WELL over capacity within the next 5 years (even with both high schools just completing/finishing up additions). I believe both middle schools and HS were in the 130% capacity range. If I were moving to Clarendon area, I'd not count on going to Swanson or Williamsburg. I think there's a very good chance that some of those neighborhoods will be redirected to Thomas Jefferson MS in the coming years.

As someone who used to work in the real estate industry, I would caution you about buying a home in an area and expecting to go to a specific school. That can change at any given time. ESPECIALLY in the current climate of overcrowded schools in N. Arlington. There is NO guarantee that the school your children will currently go to will be the same in 5 years.

Forget about the middle school and high school level -- the N. Arlington elementary schools are also severely overcrowded. As soon as they remodeled Nottingham, they had to bring in trailers. We're in the Nottingham district but go to one of the choice/lottery schools and are much happier. Had to meet the Nottingham principal as part of the process for applying to one of the choice schools and she didn't make a very good impression. We have friends whose kids go to Nottingham - they like the school but wish it wasn't so monochromatic/cookie cutter (i.e., no diversity/bubble atmosphere)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Forget about the middle school and high school level -- the N. Arlington elementary schools are also severely overcrowded. As soon as they remodeled Nottingham, they had to bring in trailers. We're in the Nottingham district but go to one of the choice/lottery schools and are much happier. Had to meet the Nottingham principal as part of the process for applying to one of the choice schools and she didn't make a very good impression. We have friends whose kids go to Nottingham - they like the school but wish it wasn't so monochromatic/cookie cutter (i.e., no diversity/bubble atmosphere)

With all due respect to your friends, their kids are attending a cookie cutter/non-diverse school because they chose to live in a cookie cutter/non-diverse neighborhood. If you move to the middle of 22207, you're not going to find elementary schools with huge percentages of minority or FARMS or ESL or anything else that might qualify a school as being diverse.

Great school. Most Arlington schools are. But if you're looking for diversity then Nottingham, Jamestown, Taylor are not the places for your kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Forget about the middle school and high school level -- the N. Arlington elementary schools are also severely overcrowded. As soon as they remodeled Nottingham, they had to bring in trailers. We're in the Nottingham district but go to one of the choice/lottery schools and are much happier. Had to meet the Nottingham principal as part of the process for applying to one of the choice schools and she didn't make a very good impression. We have friends whose kids go to Nottingham - they like the school but wish it wasn't so monochromatic/cookie cutter (i.e., no diversity/bubble atmosphere)

With all due respect to your friends, their kids are attending a cookie cutter/non-diverse school because they chose to live in a cookie cutter/non-diverse neighborhood. If you move to the middle of 22207, you're not going to find elementary schools with huge percentages of minority or FARMS or ESL or anything else that might qualify a school as being diverse.

Great school. Most Arlington schools are. But if you're looking for diversity then Nottingham, Jamestown, Taylor are not the places for your kids.

I'm the one who made the initial comment. There are plenty of non-whites/non-European whites in the zip code -- Asians (both E. Asia and Indian subcontinent), Middle Easterners, Latinos and some African-Americans. There certainly are on our street, right near Yorktown HS. What I suspect actually happens is that many of these families look at non-Nottingham options that are available -- Drew Montessori, ATS, Claremont, and Barrett -- and send their kids to those schools. And of course there are plenty of white parents who choose these options as well. That's what's great about Arlington - the amount of school choice at the elementary school level is a big plus.

I agree that our friends made their choice and then in true stereotypical liberal fashion (and I'm liberal, LOL), say that they wish there was more diversity. Our family made a different choice and we're certainly happy with it. The world at large is not all blond-hair/blue eyes - I remember our tour of Nottingham a few years back and looking at the class pictures hanging outside classrooms; most of the kids were indeed not just white, but blond (not that there's anything wrong with blond people!). It just struck me as very odd.

At some point, the County is going to have to either redraw school boundaries (political suicide, LOL) or open up more schools - the Big 4 DCUM Arlington schools (Tuckahoe, Nottingham, Jamestown, Taylor) are all pretty overcrowded and the (mostly) white influx continues, as reflected in rising real estate values.

[Anonymous]

People in North Arlington chose a white-bread life. They should admit they actually like seeing the sea of blond kids and just get on with it.

[Anonymous]

I ended up in a white-bread neighborhood and school, but I didn't have much choice- the other houses I liked, in my price range, in 'hoods with good commutes, were either in 60+% FARMS eligible school boundaries, in schools where my daughter would have been one of 20% white or less, or they were North Arlington houses that were very close to South Arlington and would lose property value if they got redistricted from W-L to Wakefield. I'm not crazy about the total lack of diversity (racial or economic) but I like it better than the alternative, which is my daughter being too "different" from her peers. there's very little true diversity in Arlington. An 80% Hispanic or 65% FARMS school is not much more "diverse" than an 85% white one. (we couldn't find anything we liked that was worth the $ in Glebe, Barrett, Longbranch or Key/SF.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I ended up in a white-bread neighborhood and school, but I didn't have much choice- the other houses I liked, in my price range, in 'hoods with good commutes, were either in 60+% FARMS eligible school boundaries, in schools where my daughter would have been one of 20% white or less, or they were North Arlington houses that were very close to South Arlington and would lose property value if they got redistricted from W-L to Wakefield. I'm not crazy about the total lack of diversity (racial or economic) but I like it better than the alternative, which is my daughter being too "different" from her peers. there's very little true diversity in Arlington. An 80% Hispanic or 65% FARMS school is not much more "diverse" than an 85% white one. (we couldn't find anything we liked that was worth the $ in Glebe, Barrett, Longbranch or Key/SF.)

There are the Claremont/Key options, which are roughly 40/40 Hispanic/White, and 20% African-American/Asian as well. I think only in DCUM land is Wakefield HS treated as a horrifying option. We know plenty of white parents whose kids are/will be at Wakefield and who like the school a great deal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thinking about moving into the Jamestown district and have heard negative things about the principal and turnover of teachers. It looks like they will be getting a new principal in July. Anyone have any thoughts on this good/bad/other?

I think you mean you read some outlier reviews on greatschools.com that alleged this.

Jamestown is great. We moved into the district at the end of last year and couldn't be happier. Night and day compared to our old Alexandria City Public elementary school.

Those aren't outlier reviews. The principal who retired this summer liked to assert her power over the better teachers. Those teachers then chose to move to other APS schools. But many of those parents who were unhappy with the previous principal are very happy that Mrs. Schaffner, the former asst principal, was made the new principal. Mrs. Schaffner is very smart and hard-working and those of us who've been working with her since she came to Jamestown are looking forward to her tenure as principal and think she will make it a better school.

Welcome to the neighborhood!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think only in DCUM land is Wakefield HS treated as a horrifying option. We know plenty of white parents whose kids are/will be at Wakefield and who like the school a great deal.

it's a low achieving school, whichever way you cut it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think only in DCUM land is Wakefield HS treated as a horrifying option. We know plenty of white parents whose kids are/will be at Wakefield and who like the school a great deal.

it's a low achieving school, whichever way you cut it.

It's really not - it actually does not rank very much below Yorktown and W-L in various national ratings. Again, only in DCUM Land is it a weak, scary school. If your child is growing with educated parents who expose him/her to lots of opportunities, your child will do just fine. Wakefield has lots of AP classes and lots of opportunities for bright students, but I know it's scary for so many DCUM parents to contemplate sending their cocooned fragile darlings to schools where there are, gasp, lots of dark people.

More broadly, there are very few offices in America staffed only with people who graduated Harvard and even if your darling graduates top grades from Yorktown, his/her chances at the Ivies are not very high. I'm a lawyer and work with colleagues who went to all types of schools growing up - guess what, my office has attorneys from Ivy League schools and much lesser schools and it's not the ones from top schools who're necessarily in management.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People in North Arlington chose a white-bread life. They should admit they actually like seeing the sea of blond kids and just get on with it.

LOL - so true!

[Anonymous]

I live in North Arlington, 22205, and on my street there's an AA family, a Jewish family, Ukranian family, a French\Italian family, an Indian family and a gay couple. I'm also one of 3 Asian American families on my block.

[Anonymous]

PP here, I can also walk to EFC metro and bike to the library\westover market and have easy access to the bike trail.

[Anonymous]

22207 - our street has an African-American family, 3 Latino families and 2 Asian families