What would you do? (Advice re: housing/schools)

[Anonymous]

There are reasonably priced townhomes in Falls Church (FFX Co) that are walking dist to West Falls Church (orange line) area that feed into Haycock, Longfellow & McLean (awesome schools).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are reasonably priced townhomes in Falls Church (FFX Co) that are walking dist to West Falls Church (orange line) area that feed into Haycock, Longfellow & McLean (awesome schools).

They're in a good location relative to school boundaries/location, too. They seem pretty safe from redistricting. Haycock is an excellent school, but it's also very overcrowded with huge class sizes. Also, it only offers half-day K, possibly causing a child-care issue for the other half of the day. It seems as though her child is still too young to know whether she'd thrive with large class sizes or do better in a school with smaller class sizes, even though it may not have the same test scores/demographics as Haycock.

[Anonymous]

OP here - just read the last few suggestions - thanks to everyone who posted. Some very helpful posts!

A friend of mine is a teacher at Wakefield - my impressions about Wakefield are from him. Not a "bad" school, but there are better ones in the area. Good point about Wakefield not being worse than Hayfield or West Potomac, though - if I was going to consider South Fairfax, then it's a good point that I should consider South Arlington instead, for commuting reasons.

I don't really have issues with Alexandria, other than that a lot of it is 395-dependent and that road can get hairy in places. (just like 66.) I actually love Old Town and would live there in a heartbeat if I could afford a centrally-located rowhouse. But in this area, if you spend most of your time in one area, you don't always know much about other areas. just never considered living there because my jobs have all been in DC, Arlington, Tysons (plus one in Bethesda) so it made sense to live on Orange line. (It's a less dramatic version of the "don't cross the river" issue some folks have - most won't move from maryland to virginia, for example.)

It's hard to get good information about Fairfax schools. Test scores only tell so much. Anecdotes from coworkers only tell so much. I went to a school that was a solid middle-of-the-road option in a very good school district, so that's kind of what I want for my daughter - a good mix of gifted/normal kids, some diversity.

oh - and to answer one poster, I did consider trying for daycare near my office, but I figured I was more likely to change jobs than to move, in the next 3-5 years. And daycare is supposed to be more expensive and very, very hard to find in downtown DC/Penn Quarter. (childcare near the house also makes more sense for weekly telecommute days.) I have considered changing jobs, but right now I have a very family-friendly boss and schedule and if I stay here 3 more years I can get a full pension, which may be worth 3 more years of bad commuting.

[Anonymous]

The Hayfield schools are good, the neighborhoods are nice and a reasonable drive to either Huntington or Springfield metros (or take the bus to same). I think you would like the area quite well and your commute time is unlikely to be 3 hours a day. The Huntington station is on the yellow line, so a trip in to Gallery Place for the Verizon Center area is a piece of cake!

[Anonymous]

I'm the 11/20 13:08 post from previosu page.

Is a child care situation closer to your home not an option? That seems like the easiest short term solution.