How far would you drive across town for K?
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Anonymous
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10:00 again. Let me also say that DC is an only child so my commitments aren't stretched to the limit. Because of social, work, ECs, etc., DC, DH, and I usually only really sit down to dinner together 2-3 times a week but that's because the teen schedule has changed greatly. Sometimes, the three of us don't even get that much but not because of the commute.
My DC is a teen but if I had to do it over again, I'm not so sure. |
Anonymous
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OP, there are a lot of factors here that you can't even know about yet. All I can say is, if the school is really that fabulous, you might consider moving. There is no school that is worth the stress of a commute on a family, day in and day out, for years to come. Every day can turn into a challenge, and even "best case scenarios" with the traffic, etc. -- which happen maybe 60 - 70% of the time -- are still hard.
Also, I can promise you that no other parents are going to go out of their way to arrange playdates, birthday party carpools, etc. This becomes even more of a problem as your child moves into the elementary grades. S/he will truly be the kid who lives "on the other side of town" and you will find very few accommodations for this. |
Anonymous
| i'm going to guess you live on capital hill and are thinking of a NWDC school? if so, i would echo what other posters say about asking for other families in the neighborhood who might be willing to set up a carpool arrangement. i'd also practice the trip a couple of days to see what it would really be like, at the time you would really be doing it. might be that you can go early enough to miss the really awful traffic, or find out your drive time would be right in the thick of it. if this is for K, i think you can manage the play dates and social events reasonably well, but it might get harder later, when more stuff happens in the afternoon/evening and not on weekends. |
Anonymous
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It depends on the make up of the school - if most of the kids at the school also live "on the other side of town" your child will likely feel left out at times and you will feel like you are always driving. If the "dream school" pulls from a wider geographic area, most people will be used to the drive and most kids will have school friends and sports friends and neighborhood friends.
We have two kids in privates, one in a more "neighborhood" school where we live about 8 miles (and across the river) away. There are only a few other kids in the class not in the neighborhood and everything is centered in the neighborhood, including non-school related sports and other ECs. We drive a lot and find many parents unwilling to "cross the river". Our other DC goes to a school about 12 miles away, but it is not really a neighborhood school. There are many kids from many different neighborhoods. Parents have driven (and carpooled) for bday parties up to 30+ minutes away, before middle school sports, kids are involved in different teams from their different communities. We feel more a part of the school community for the school that is slightly farther away and I think it is because we are not "different" for not living in the neighborhood. |
Anonymous
| What about carpooling? If your DC signs on to this far-away school, you can ask the office about other students living in your 'hood. Y'all can organize carpooling until your DC is old enough to commute solo by Metro bus (which thousands of kids do every day). Carpooling won't solve the 'forgotten water bottle' syndrome, but then on the other hand, kids learn natural consequences, i.e. "You left the bottle behind, kid, so kiss it goodbye cuz we can't go back across town to fetch it!" |
Anonymous
| We moved. Now we are less than a mile from our school. When the kids are older, they will walk to school. We used to live 45 min plus from school. That got old very very quickly. |
Anonymous
Just to present a different point of view, I will share that my DC goes to a private school across town but is very good friends with neighborhood kids who attend the public school. It is not a given that your child won't have neighborhood friends without attending the neighborhood school. Many factors go into this. Our DC also has play dates with school friends. As kids get older they tend to have more activities and fewer play dates, of course. |
Anonymous
yep not OP but this is me...logistics and cost are factors...and yep we applied knowing this upfront. We got into a cheaper closer school also (didn't know upfront that child would get into both)...and are most likely going to select the cheaper closer school. |
Anonymous
OP here. I'm actually not at all worried about the friend issue right now. We don't mind traveling to different parts of the city for play dates and often do so on our own on the weekends. I'm also not worried about DC not knowing kids in the neighborhood, since we're at the neighborhood school right now and have made friends there. Just the commute... |
Anonymous
| I'm not considering private in part because I'm happy with my NWDC public elementary school but one thing you should also consider is extra-curriculars as your kid gets older. DH and I both work full time and I want DS to take music lessons soon (currently in K) but I literally can't figure out how/when to do it since we get home at 6pm and he goes to bed at 8pm. And we live within a 5 minute walk from school and I have a 20 minute commute to work. Does the private offer really excellent after-care where you can get those kinds of extras? If so, maybe but otherwise, I wouldn't. |
Anonymous
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The calculus is different for everyone. It sounds as though you have more reasons to attend the closer neighborhood school than we do.
We do 15 miles each way/30 round trip. But our public school was never a good option for us. And one spouse stays at home, the other has a lot of job flexibility and can help on many days with pickups. It sounds like those factors are both different for you. The commute for us is long and I would love to move in the direction of the school (which I would also like to do in order to get more house for the money). My spouse is less inclined to do that, though, so as not to move us further away from other schools we might consider. In our case, the school is in fact our dream school and the commute is totally worth it. It sounds as though your variables are different, though. PS -- Don't sweat the fact that you didn't decide all this first. This is not like that other thread in which a middle schooler was disappointed by not being allowed to attend a school she'd applied to; you have a kindergartener who won't know any significant disappointment either way. And it's often good to have kept your options open. |
Anonymous
| We are leaving DC for VA to be closer to our child's new school. Commute just is not worth it (and the school is!). |
Anonymous
I think that is a really strange response or, perhaps, @$$ backwards way of figuring out whether the school worked for your family. Deciding on whether to apply is theoretical, but completing and submitting an applications, that's an act. |