Considering moving to PG County from LI

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP, I live in PG. The accepted knowledge around here is that most of the elementary schools are acceptable, but when you get into middle and high school, it's a lot more tricky. I live here on the assumption that we will try to work with the elementary schools and probably choose private for middle and high school.

OP here. While that is your choice and I respect it, but doesn't that defeat the purpose of you paying taxes to support public education only to pay additional monies for private school? Again I'm not criticizing you. That is like parents who live in Garden City NY ( a very wealthy place on LI with very good schools) sending their kids to private school. Why?

Why is there such a disconnect (the best I can describe it) between the elementary/middle schools and high schools? I know everything is test driven (which I'm not a huge fan of) but if you come from a good elementary/middle school why and how does the performance at the high school level drop?

We live in PG for several reasons:
1. DH works in PG and I am a SAHM, but I wanted to stay nearer to DC if/when I go back to work.
2. Our lovely home would cost about 500k more in any area with "good" schools. I felt, even with MD's higher taxes, this cancels out the cost of private school.
3. Our kids are still babies. Hopefully the schools will improve, but I'm going to hold my breath.

Given those factors, PG seemed like the best decision for us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP, I live in PG. The accepted knowledge around here is that most of the elementary schools are acceptable, but when you get into middle and high school, it's a lot more tricky. I live here on the assumption that we will try to work with the elementary schools and probably choose private for middle and high school.

OP here. While that is your choice and I respect it, but doesn't that defeat the purpose of you paying taxes to support public education only to pay additional monies for private school? Again I'm not criticizing you. That is like parents who live in Garden City NY ( a very wealthy place on LI with very good schools) sending their kids to private school. Why?

Why is there such a disconnect (the best I can describe it) between the elementary/middle schools and high schools? I know everything is test driven (which I'm not a huge fan of) but if you come from a good elementary/middle school why and how does the performance at the high school level drop?

We live in PG for several reasons:
1. DH works in PG and I am a SAHM, but I wanted to stay nearer to DC if/when I go back to work.
2. Our lovely home would cost about 500k more in any area with "good" schools. I felt, even with MD's higher taxes, this cancels out the cost of private school.
3. Our kids are still babies. Hopefully the schools will improve, but I'm going to hold my breath.

Given those factors, PG seemed like the best decision for us.

I understand. My kids are elementary school age and everything you pointed out I have considered as well. Housing in PG is very affordable but I worry about the schools as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP, I live in PG. The accepted knowledge around here is that most of the elementary schools are acceptable, but when you get into middle and high school, it's a lot more tricky. I live here on the assumption that we will try to work with the elementary schools and probably choose private for middle and high school.

OP here. While that is your choice and I respect it, but doesn't that defeat the purpose of you paying taxes to support public education only to pay additional monies for private school? Again I'm not criticizing you. That is like parents who live in Garden City NY ( a very wealthy place on LI with very good schools) sending their kids to private school. Why?

Why is there such a disconnect (the best I can describe it) between the elementary/middle schools and high schools? I know everything is test driven (which I'm not a huge fan of) but if you come from a good elementary/middle school why and how does the performance at the high school level drop?

This is because of the wider "feeder" area for all of the high schools....for example, one high school could have four middle school feeder schools. Two of them could have stellar scores, the other two have terrible scores, (and yes, that is geographically possible for schools feeding into one high school, it can cover quite a large area in some parts of the county), so when you have everyone in the same high school then that's what you get. I personally chose where I bought my home based on middle school because I do not want to pay for private until high school. There are many fewer high performing middle schools in the county than elementary schools, so that could help you narrow your search. I do not think there are any proposed boundary changes soon (correct me if I'm wrong), so you could be pretty secure in your choice for now, and if there were proposed boundary changes could be part of the process to ensure where you live does not get written out of the boundary for the school you want. Good luck!

Thank you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP, I live in PG. The accepted knowledge around here is that most of the elementary schools are acceptable, but when you get into middle and high school, it's a lot more tricky. I live here on the assumption that we will try to work with the elementary schools and probably choose private for middle and high school.

Same here, we moved with the intent of choosing private schools: that said we live in a diverse neighborhood that we adore

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:[quote=Anonymous

This really depends by school though. There are many schools in MoCo that are not diverse at all, just as there are some in PG that are diverse - my DD's K class at a PG school is almost exactly 1/3 white, 1/3 black, 1/3 Hispanic. It depends on the neighborhood and that breakdown reflects our street pretty well.

My DD's K class is similar in diversity. In a class of 21 there are 6 white , 9 black and 6 hispanic children.
The biggest bonus of PG is that you can live close in to the city and not pay over $400K for a house.

Thanks for the response. Housing seemed very affordable which prompt me to ask the questions. Your breakdown along with the previous poster is something I'm looking for. The question I have is does it stay the same as you progress through to the high school level. Class size is very reasonable, but again does it stay the same through to the high school range.

For us, we would go from the diversity above to a 99% non-white school if DDs went to the local middle ( G James Gholson Middle) and high school (Fairmont Heights High School). I'm not sure about the class sizes because we are not even considering them as options due to serious safety issues at the school and low performance. We are going to work within the public school system for our kids until it is no longer feasible. If they manage to get into a charter or specialty program for middle, we will stay but if our only public school option is our local middle and high school, we will move to another county. We have 3 kids and private isn't an option.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: We have 3 kids and private isn't an option.

It depends on a number of factors, but for us, it makes financial sense to be in PG County and send our 3 kids to private school.

Our house here would cost over a million dollars in other close-in suburbs (we paid $200k, although it would probably fetch more than $400k now), and we wanted a large home with character and a short commute to our jobs in D.C.

Our three children's tuition at St. Jerome Academy in Hyattsville is less than $9500 combined. And this is a school with a national reputation, where our kids are getting a great education and achieving phenomenal test scores. And the school is truly diverse, white/black/Hispanic/Asian all well represented.

We could possibly reduce our expenses somewhat if we moved to an exurb, into a tiny house, and sent our kids to public school, but given the lifestyle we want to enjoy, PG County is easily the most affordable choice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: We have 3 kids and private isn't an option.

It depends on a number of factors, but for us, it makes financial sense to be in PG County and send our 3 kids to private school.

Our house here would cost over a million dollars in other close-in suburbs (we paid $200k, although it would probably fetch more than $400k now), and we wanted a large home with character and a short commute to our jobs in D.C.

Our three children's tuition at St. Jerome Academy in Hyattsville is less than $9500 combined. And this is a school with a national reputation, where our kids are getting a great education and achieving phenomenal test scores. And the school is truly diverse, white/black/Hispanic/Asian all well represented.

We could possibly reduce our expenses somewhat if we moved to an exurb, into a tiny house, and sent our kids to public school, but given the lifestyle we want to enjoy, PG County is easily the most affordable choice.

Where will they attend HS. St Jerome ends at 8th grade.

[Anonymous]

There are plenty of decent high school options - the Science and Tech program at Roosevelt is great, Seton, DeMatha... Lots of the parochial school kids end up all over DC and MD for high school - Visi, Gonzaga, AHC, Palotti, SJC, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are plenty of decent high school options - the Science and Tech program at Roosevelt is great, Seton, DeMatha... Lots of the parochial school kids end up all over DC and MD for high school - Visi, Gonzaga, AHC, Palotti, SJC, etc.

True but all of those schools are application based. It's no guarantee that your kid will get into any of them. For the Catholics if you are a public transfer you are at a disadvantage in terms of admittance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are plenty of decent high school options - the Science and Tech program at Roosevelt is great, Seton, DeMatha... Lots of the parochial school kids end up all over DC and MD for high school - Visi, Gonzaga, AHC, Palotti, SJC, etc.

True but all of those schools are application based. It's no guarantee that your kid will get into any of them. For the Catholics if you are a public transfer you are at a disadvantage in terms of admittance.

Is it "guaranteed" that a high school that is highly ranked while your children are in elementary school will still be good when they reach high school?