Current parents at Shepherd

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I started the thread about West, also wondering why it's not a more discussed option. I wonder if maybe both are not highly sought after in part because they are on the north side of town, the opposite direction of many parents' commutes.

Shepherd and West aren't bad, just not great and that's probably why they don't garner much interest on this forum. West was one of our six picks this year for PS3, but we got into our IB (Barnard) as we expected. But, if it turned out West was our school for the next year or two, I think it would have been fine. I will offer the only personal connection I have to West, which is really not much...for the last 8 years or so we have spent lots of summer time at Upshur Pool and I remember there was one West parent booster who was always there incessently talking up the school, trying to get neighborhood buy-in, etc. After a while it started to feel like one of those situtation where the harder someone pushed the more I realized I probably didn't want the school because if it needed so much "selling" then what exactly was wrong with the place? Anyway, that was with our first child and we got a spot for her in the school we wanted so it didn't matter.

I don't agree with this post. I live in the neighborhood. People seem to really like the school. I find that there aren't many Shepherd Park or Colonial Village residents on this blog. I say that b/c anytime someone mentions Shepherd Park or Colonial Village, people are SHOCKED that they've never heard of it.

My son attends a charter school. The only reason he doesn't attend Shepherd is because he had already been at his charter for 4 years before we moved to the neighborhood. I just didn't want to move him. I would have happily chosen Shepherd.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is the last time I will try to resurrect this thread. Are there any current families out there?

SP resident here. I really do think for the majority (IB and OB) of the families that go to Shepherd are happy and do not find their way onto DCUM. The PTA is active, scores are high and increasing, it has IB status and has great community relationships. You will find a lot of people that apply to Shepherd are also applying to all the major WotP schools for feeder rights to Deal.

As a general rule on DCUM. If you don't hear people talking much about a particular school then that means one of two things. 1) It's a school that serves low income students and no one on DCUM would ever consider it or 2) It's a good, solid school that current families are happy with and they're not trying to recruit other families because they don't have to. Also, because they are settled and satisfied with their school they don't visit DCUM for anything other than entertainment purposes.

There are many solid schools in DC like Shepard that don't fall under the JKLMM header, that will only pop up on DCUM if someone asks about them specifically.