Hearst or Inspired Teaching?

[Anonymous]

Trying to make the same decision. Any feedback for the current situations at these schools? TIA!

[Anonymous]

Please go with Hearst--small school setting, track record, great location, great parents. Teachers with experience, great and reasonably priced aftercare. People love to hype IT but if you look at their upper grades, the school is totally different. Hearst is much more diverse. And, after all these years IT is still trying to work out the kinks. I am not a Hearst or IT parent, by the way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Please go with Hearst--small school setting, track record, great location, great parents. Teachers with experience, great and reasonably priced aftercare. People love to hype IT but if you look at their upper grades, the school is totally different. Hearst is much more diverse. And, after all these years IT is still trying to work out the kinks. I am not a Hearst or IT parent, by the way.

IT upper grade parent here. IT has small school setting, track record (looking great but still in progress), great location and great parents. So that seems like a wash. Most of the lead teachers have extesnive experience. The few that don't have >10 years experience are because they are former residents that the parents begged the school to keep them. IMO, the upper grades are great. Not sure what you were implying about being totally different. Yes it's small but the families are diverse, have great teachers and a fantastic upper school principal. With that said, we have friends that have left IT to go to Hearst and we have friends that have turned down IT to go to Hearst (mainly for commute reasons or access to Deal). However, we do still have a few IB Hearst families at IT. Personally I think you can't go wrong. They are both great schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Please go with Hearst--small school setting, track record, great location, great parents. Teachers with experience, great and reasonably priced aftercare. People love to hype IT but if you look at their upper grades, the school is totally different. Hearst is much more diverse. And, after all these years IT is still trying to work out the kinks. I am not a Hearst or IT parent, by the way.

Also, I'm not sure what you mean by working the kinks out after "all these years", but IT is in it's 4th year (3rd year testing) and our kids are doing quite well. In fact, they are about par with Hearst who has been around for quite some time, That's impressive. Not knocking Hearst. I would absolutely send my kid there.

[Anonymous]

We are OOB Hearst parents and have friend with kids at IT (2nd, and preschool). They are excited to be at a well regarded charter and to have met other cool well educated parents, my one friend with a 2nd grader says her DD loves her teacher and they think the work group model has been good for her. If you haven't toured both campuses definitely do so asap.
We moved to Hearst from our darn-good EOTP DCPS because of the higher test scores, the dedicated green space - check out the oak tree lined soccer field - the slightly better income and racial diversity, feeds to Deal and Wilson, location next door to Sidwell, but also the incredible array of after school activity choices the PTA has arranged, offered right on campus (karate, dance, robotics, Spanish, art, sports teams etc. etc. )
I'd say you are in a great position to be choosing between the two schools. And yes the commute is a major factor, do not underestimate what a pain in the ass it might be if one of the two school locations is a problem for you. Especially if you have a wide bodied SUV, trying to squeeze down DC streets cross town with the other time-stresses parents is no picnic.

[Anonymous]

I would be practical and go with the Deal feed, wouldn't even be a big choice in my mind.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are OOB Hearst parents and have friend with kids at IT (2nd, and preschool). They are excited to be at a well regarded charter and to have met other cool well educated parents, my one friend with a 2nd grader says her DD loves her teacher and they think the work group model has been good for her. If you haven't toured both campuses definitely do so asap.
We moved to Hearst from our darn-good EOTP DCPS because of the higher test scores, the dedicated green space - check out the oak tree lined soccer field - the slightly better income and racial diversity, feeds to Deal and Wilson, location next door to Sidwell, but also the incredible array of after school activity choices the PTA has arranged, offered right on campus (karate, dance, robotics, Spanish, art, sports teams etc. etc. )
I'd say you are in a great position to be choosing between the two schools. And yes the commute is a major factor, do not underestimate what a pain in the ass it might be if one of the two school locations is a problem for you. Especially if you have a wide bodied SUV, trying to squeeze down DC streets cross town with the other time-stresses parents is no picnic.

IT parent here. Hearst sounds amazing (especially the aftercare)! Congrats OP/PP that has the choice. I say check them both out in person and figure out commute before school gets out so you have a good sense of commute for both during the school year.

[Anonymous]

the Hearst PTA is super engaged, reach out to them and meet some real Hearst families!

[Anonymous]

There is a Screen on the Green at Hearst on Friday night, come out and meet some families! The movie is Big Hero 6, activities start at 6:30, movie starts around 8:20.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Please go with Hearst--small school setting, track record, great location, great parents. Teachers with experience, great and reasonably priced aftercare. People love to hype IT but if you look at their upper grades, the school is totally different. Hearst is much more diverse. And, after all these years IT is still trying to work out the kinks. I am not a Hearst or IT parent, by the way.

Uh, ok. Thanks for your insider view on these two schools.

OP what grade is this for?

Agree that commute is a big factor. Do the math on the home-school-work triangle and decide how much of your life you're prepared to spend in a car or bus.

[Anonymous]

There was a family that came from Hearst to ITS thinking the grass was greener and quickly realized it wasn't and was able to get back into Hearst mid year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There was a family that came from Hearst to ITS thinking the grass was greener and quickly realized it wasn't and was able to get back into Hearst mid year.

Agree especially being IB at Hearst. It all comes down to commute to me. Our close friends left ITS after first year for Hearst. Although they have nothing but raving things to say about ITS, their commute to Hearst is half of ITS.

[Anonymous]

OP, they are both great schools. We preferred (and got into) Hearst because of commute and middle school, but if we were near ITS, we would have preferred that. Where are you located? Which school is more convenient? Good luc!

[Anonymous]

My kids started at IT and we moved to Hearst. I have nothing but nice things to say about IT, although I am several years removed now. It was a great community. I would pretty much parrot the sentiments expressed by the OOB Hearst parent up thread. For my family, Hearst was hands down the best option. My kids left IT kicking and screaming, but after the first month, never looked back.

As noted, they are both good options so I would say that it is a wholly personal choice. There is a Screen on the Green tomorrow as someone noted. The whole school will be there and it is a perfect opportunity for you to get a sense of the community. I would urge you to look for a similar event at IT.

The parents at both schools are very engaged, so that is a wash. I believe Hearst does have better after care options, but depending on where you live, the commute to Hearst might be fairly stressful and you could lose a lot of family time crossing the city.

I will end by saying that THERE IS NO PERFECT SCHOOL. If you're looking for nirvana, it doesn't exist--not even in the burbs. And even if you find a school that you really like, it will still have its up years and down years; years where your kid gets the best teacher and years where they end up with a dud; years where the administration is great and years where it takes a turn for the worse; years where the parents divide into camps and battle over some issue and years where they all sing, kumbaya.

I have more than one kid and have been through more schools than I can remember at this point. I've seen it all . Just find a school that serves your child well and has at least 80% of what's important to you. Then prepare yourself to roll with the changes over time .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kids started at IT and we moved to Hearst. I have nothing but nice things to say about IT, although I am several years removed now. It was a great community. I would pretty much parrot the sentiments expressed by the OOB Hearst parent up thread. For my family, Hearst was hands down the best option. My kids left IT kicking and screaming, but after the first month, never looked back.

As noted, they are both good options so I would say that it is a wholly personal choice. There is a Screen on the Green tomorrow as someone noted. The whole school will be there and it is a perfect opportunity for you to get a sense of the community. I would urge you to look for a similar event at IT.

The parents at both schools are very engaged, so that is a wash. I believe Hearst does have better after care options, but depending on where you live, the commute to Hearst might be fairly stressful and you could lose a lot of family time crossing the city.

I will end by saying that THERE IS NO PERFECT SCHOOL. If you're looking for nirvana, it doesn't exist--not even in the burbs. And even if you find a school that you really like, it will still have its up years and down years; years where your kid gets the best teacher and years where they end up with a dud; years where the administration is great and years where it takes a turn for the worse; years where the parents divide into camps and battle over some issue and years where they all sing, kumbaya.

I have more than one kid and have been through more schools than I can remember at this point. I've seen it all . Just find a school that serves your child well and has at least 80% of what's important to you. Then prepare yourself to roll with the changes over time .

Great post! IT parent here. I will add that aftercare at ITS is pretty nice via the YMCA. It's relatively affordable considering they include winter and spring breaks. We hope it will be as good as last year (when we were onsite and had swimming, cooking and rock climbing) when they bring more specials/sports next school year. We have a friend that has left the Y aftercare to take part of a new aftercare program being offered by DPR behind the school at Edgewood Rec Center. They come pick up the kids after school and run a traditional aftercare program (homework help, snack etc). She said they are doing tennis lessons once a week and then switch playing various sports in the field outside. Oh yeah and its FREE! I think it's for ages 5+ though.