Spoken from a white person's point of view. If you are not white, then it won't feel diverse enough..a black person or Asian (Chinese, Korean, Indian etc) will be hard put to find friends of your own race there. The moms are cliquish for sure. From what my child tells me, even among kids, the white kids hang out together, hispanics together and the Asians and blacks are left to form their own group..Of course my DC does not realize that the groups are race based but I do. OP, if you are Asian and want your child to form friendships with more Asian children, go to Travilah. If you are black and want your child to form friendships with other black kids, go to Rachel Carson or Diamond. If you are white or hispanic, you will love Jones Ln. There are fewer choices for other minorities. |
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PP here. Rachel Carson also lots of Asian kids.
At least Jones Ln has a mix of kids. If you go to Poolesville and you are not white, your child will stick out like a sore thumb. While others may think friendships should not be based on race, even children gravitate to people of their own kind. I've always wondered how that happens. There is a reason why white people do not like Ashburn or Chantilly in VA. Go there and half the kids will be Asian. Highly competitive and stressful for non Asians. |
I think it depends on the neighborhood, and honestly if there are a lot of stay at home moms versus full time working moms. In my neighborhood most of the households seem to have two working parents, and its not a very friendly or in your business type of neighborhood. I'm a working mom so I don't really have time to really get to close with the other parents in the neighborhood. I wish the neighborhood was a bit more friendly to be honest, but not necessarily to the extent that I've seen in Potomac Chase. |
1 in 3 children (33%) at Poolesville ES is not white. For comparison, 1 in 5 fingers on a hand (20%) is a thumb - unless you're a muppet, then it's 1 in 4 (25%). If half of the kids in Ashburn or Chantilly are Asian-American, what are the other half? |
This X100. In Travilah, there were some SAHMs but mostly two income families so it was hard to get to know anyone until later in elementary school. The asian kids and white kids all mixed together in friendships/didn't self segregate like the Jone Lane poster was describing. |
The Jones Lane moms are pretty nice ! It’s a fun community to be part of. |
Sounds like Wootton. |
Only if you're white! |
| JLES and the surrounding schools(Darnestown, Travilah, TMES) are all great options. OP you are making a good choice the area is very nice! |
| One of the problems with Jones Lane, is the PTA. It's run by a few moms (all white) who have a habit of not involving other moms that they don't like into the PTA. The moms they usually don't like are non whte moms, i.e. Asian and Hispanic. This results in a very cliquey and non inclusive feeling for other parents who want to get involved but can't bc of these moms. |
+1 I had this problem with the parents at the PTA a couple of years ago too. My children currently do not attend jones lane anymore, they are in middle school. But I had the same experience as the PP. I thought it would improve but it seems to have stayed the same. That’s a shame, bc there are plenty of moms available to help if they are just given an opportunity, but it seems like the PTA moms just want to give the illusion of trying to include all, but in reality all they want is their own people. |
https://www.google.com/amp/amp.fox5dc.com/news/local-news/gaithersburg-elementary-school-pta-teams-up-with-lyft-to-get-parents-to-school-too https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2052942094827167&id=246703358784392 https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1806720986115947&id=246703358784392 Perhaps there are some cliquey parents at Jones Lane (isn't that true at every school) but there are also PTA parents doing a lot of good and advocating for the needs of all families at the school. |
DP here. This is what we hesitated about this school when we were looking in the QO area. We came from a diverse school in MOCO and while looking in the QO neighborhood a couple of years ago, we noticed that there were a lot of white families. Nothing wrong with that but it just seemed out of the ordinary considering that we live in such a diverse county and something I wasn't used to coming from the previous school. I'm Asian by the way, and my kids are half white. That said I heard it was a great school and we would've probably bought there had we found the right house, but I'm not gonna lie, this aspect of the school would've slightly made me uncomfortable. Maybe I would've gotten over that feeling at some point. |
Yes, the whole darnestown area is very weird - the neighborhoods are not diverse at all, so MCPS sends a neighborhood with FARMs to them, which makes the schools very diverse. |
Exactly, mcps buses children from far away in areas with diverse background to jones Lane elementary, it results in division between home children and those bussed children. Escpecially when it comes to friendships and after school activities. I don't really understand why mcps does it. |