Switching from a parish school to a bigger private school

[Anonymous]

I'd love some feedback from anyone, but especially someone who has made similar moves. Our 7 year old is beginning 2nd grade at our local Catholic school. We're in PG County and not moving as my husband and I are both UMD affiliated. We've been happy with the school so far - it is a warm, welcoming community and the class sizes have been small. However, both the Kindergarten and 1st grade teachers have ID-ed DD as TAG based on 99th percentile achievement testing scores and classroom performance. Both have gone out of their way to give her additional work and to tailor a curricula to her so she'd be challenged in the classroom. However, the 1st grade teacher has a specialization in gifted ed with her masters degree and said she feels like DD might thrive more in a more challenging environment. DD gets along well with all her classmates and is a really kind easy-going child, but she is starting to feel a little "different" than her classmates. (small class, no one else working at her grade level on math/reading etc.) She has some close friends from extracurricular activities that are similar in terms of ability and interests. We've really worked on supplementing with activities and books and such so she can sort of satisfy some of her intellectual curiosity - she'll be testing for CTY soon which should give her even more outlets. However, given the 1st grade teacher's thoughts on it and this new expression of feeling a little "different" at school (DD only just seems to be bothered by this) due to working on other material, now DH and I are considering moving her to a different school for 3rd grade.

Stone Ridge was suggested to us as it is also Catholic and we were told it is more challenging academically. Holton was the other school we were told to look at. We'll do the open houses and such, but any feedback about either school would be great. Here are some specific concerns if anyone might be able to address them:

- We make about 95K combined income (both academics, so it's never going to be much more than that) and have another younger DD and a 3rd baby due in the fall. Obviously we would need some sort of financial aid to make either of those schools possible. Any thoughts on likelihood of financial aid would be helpful.

- There seems to be a lot of bashing of both of these schools (though in fairness pretty much every school seems to get bashed and loved on these forums) on these forums, and we don't know anyone at either, so it is hard to assess what is legit and not - thoughts on academic rigor, kindness of the school community, social activism, etc. would be very welcome

- We are very liberal Catholics - this seems like an obvious fit for Stone Ridge. For any other Catholics at either school, how much of a factor should this be?

- At either school, would it be a huge social burden on my child to be on financial aid? Honestly we'd rather her "fit" somewhere less rigorous than feel ostracized at a great school because she doesn't vacation in the right places or something.

- At Stone Ridge, would it be a huge social disadvantage to be entering in a "weird" year rather than PreK/Kinder, middle school, or high school?

If any posters have children who switched from a parochial school to one of these schools (or perhaps another that we should be considering?) how did the transition go for your child?

Thanks in advance for any responses. My husband and I are not DC natives, nor do we come from money, so navigating this whole process is a little overwhelming right now.

[Anonymous]

You work at UMD? Why not look into university park elementary? There are many "gifted" kids there, and your kid will feel right at home.

[Anonymous]

The commute from PG county to Holton or Stone Ridge, then back to UMd., would be utter hell.

[Anonymous]

We don't live in University Park and when we were looking at houses we were not thrilled with the 35+ kids per kinder class they had at the time. My daughter had a kinder class of 11 at her school and that was well worth it to us when we compared notes with friends at UP that year.

[Anonymous]

How do you arrive at the conclusion that Stone Ridge is for "Liberal Catholics"? I think you are way off base.

The people that send their daughters to Stone Ridge and their sons to Georgetown Prep and Gonzaga are decidely not Liberals either politically or in their approach to the Catholic faith. They are largely Irish and are practicing Catholics. Not an Obama sticker on any of those Benz's. You might look for a Catholic School in Tacoma Park and not Bethesda.

[Anonymous]

I meant liberal in terms of Catholicism, not political orientation - sorry (though we would definitely fall on that end of the political spectrum as well, but we are not vocal about it at all). Sacred Heart (as far as religious orders in the Catholic faith go) tends to be more liberal in ideology. I don't mean from a political standpoint with other families at the school, simply that the mission and goals, while faith based, are on the more liberal side of the Catholic spectrum - more social justice oriented and service oriented. A really narrowly construed orthodoxy in approach to non-canonical teachings would be tough for us though - think Opus Dei approach to some non-canonical matters. My point was that being a Catholic at a Catholic school seems like a pretty obvious fit, whereas switching to Holton- well I just don't know anything about it in terms of whether that matters or not. I can talk faith and canon with anyone. I pretty much avoid talking politics whenever possible - people just get too angry about it these days and I'm not into arguing for the sake of arguing, I'd rather let it go. Lord knows we're used to being in a political minority, we lived in Arizona and Texas prior to living here, so that's not a concern for us. I have no problem being a political minority as it is hard to see how a) anyone would know - no stickers on our car and b) how that would really impact our child much -surely 3rd graders won't look online to see if our family donated to the GOP and then shun our child if we didn't, right? Again, I went all through Catholic school and my child is currently at a Catholic school and we've never seen anything like that happening. If that is the culture at SR then that would be a major concern for us.

But not having any perspective on a non-Catholic school I don't know if there might be a certain stigma attached to being Catholic or not. That seems unlikely to me, but again, I don't know the school culture so I thought I'd ask.

The commute would be a bloody nightmare. That is definitely a consideration. Honestly we weren't anticipating even considering a switch. She's been pretty happy at her current school so far and we've been very happy with the community. We always felt like we could supplement academically and that school at that age was really about community and interacting with others. I've been really thrown by her teacher suggesting we should find something more challenging for her though so I think we should at least look into it. We figured she'd go through 8th at her current school and then we'd look to get her into a more rigorous high school based on her interests at the time. But timelines may have to change if we're doing her a disservice in some way by keeping her where she is.

We're at the beginning of this process for sure and just trying to get some feedback since we don't know families at either school. (We do know families at Visi and GP and Gonzaga and St. Anselm's, but that doesn't really help much for a younger child and 3 of those don't help for a girl either).

As far as a Catholic school in TP or Bethesda, are there any parish schools that would be considered academically challenging? I don't know the MoCo parishes at all. We're certainly open to any ideas at this point. As far as the public schools go, we would have done the lottery for the Montessori at Goddard but by the time we knew we were relocating to Maryland the lottery was closed. We had to make kind of quick decisions about schools and we felt lucky to get her in to her current school since our move was so late and past admissions cycles for most schools. She thrived in Montessori primary prior to coming here, but being out for 2 years we can't get her back into a Montessori system now.

[Anonymous]

yes, university park has 35+ kids. but there aren't many choices in the area. People who have tried commuting to private schools in wealthy areas generally give up after a year. As a previous poster said, it is hell. Most kids actually do very well at UP. There are many children of faculty, and so they have many friends that are very academically inclined. They have a wonderful science fair program and music program. It does take active parenting, though. You need to supplement at home.

If you are going to commute such a distance to take your kid to school, maybe you are better off just moving to Montegomery or Howard county. Then you drop you kid off and commute yourself, instead of driving your kid there and back. It halves the commute time.

[Anonymous]

PP, where do the UP kids go for middle school? That was another concern we had because we do have friends in that neighborhood and they said you either have to uproot or do private for middle school. My daughter's school seems to inherit a lot of UP kids come middle school grades. I don't really see moving a few minutes away if we end up with larger classes and we still have to do a lot of supplementing at home, though I guess your point is the kids are smarter so she'd have more in common with her classmates?

Moving to MoCo isn't a great option for us since we bought the house relatively recently and we really like our neighborhood. It lets us remain a 1 car family (DH bikes to work) and keeps my daughter close to the friends she has from her extracurriculars, and those are the friends she connects with the best. I think we can uproot her from school, but uprooting her from everything she knows would be hard on her. Plus proximity to UMD is also critical given my wonky work schedule. I basically work three 1/2 mornings on campus and then teach a couple of nights a week on campus, so it isn't an 8-5 where I go and stay - there's a fair amount off back and forth and living 5 minutes away has been really helpful.

Maybe the commute would be too much, though I did a 45 minute commute to school for 9 years as a kid and thought it was worth it at the time. My mom claims it was worth it too, but I may not be as stoic as her about fighting traffic both ways. Then again, most everyone at DD's school ends up doing a similar commute for HS (and spread out over a few siblings that ends up being way more than just 4 years) and they seem to live with it. Maybe at open houses my questions should focus on carpooling opportunities...

[Anonymous]

OP again - speaking of commute, at the point that we're fighting rush hour to Bethesda, it really wouldn't take much longer to go North to the Baltimore area, if at all since we're close to 95 and 295. Again, we are not from this area so my familiarity with schools is limited to the ones we know families at, but are there any really strong private schools north of College Park, maybe even in Baltimore that are considered good for smart girls and have solid math/science curricula?

[Anonymous]

For middle school, many people move. Many people do move to the Catholic schools or form car pools to do the horrible commute to other private schools. Many people do go to Hyattsville middle. They have a really excellent performing arts program and a very dedicated parent community, but there is some hostility towards the program in the school board from southern pg county, so who knows if it will survive in the current economy.

If I were you, I'd try dry runs of the commute every day for a week, and see how exhausted you are. That should help you decide if you can take it for the entire school year.
It won't be 45 minutes. More like an hour each way (so for you, a total of 4 hours per day).

[Anonymous]

It won't be 45 minutes. More like an hour each way (so for you, a total of 4 hours per day).

This is true, and is worth a stand-alone quote.

[Anonymous]

That is a good idea. I'll give that a shot and see if I can stand it. 9:02 - in your experience when the UP kids switch to other private schools for middle school, which ones do they gravitate towards and are they able to transition smoothly? I know the kids from our school do fine when they go off to Visi and Gonzaga and GP and St. Anselm's (though that is at middle school for St. A's), but from the boards it sounds like SR and Holton would be considerably more challenging than any of those other schools.

Ugh, all of this is hard. You want to do the right thing by your kids, but figuring out what that is in advance with schools is tough. You can't really know a school or know how it will fit/work until you're in it I guess. I think I'm also getting spooked by the college kids I teach, the vast majority of whom seem underprepared to do the work, poor at critical thinking, and unable to write proficiently. I wonder how much of it is the kid and how much of it is just lack of good education.

Thanks for all your comments so far. It's helping to clarify some things.

[Anonymous]

CTY is expensive by the way.

With a new baby I think commuting to the far side of bethesda (holton) would be a killer. You have to think of your entire family - not just one child. What about Sandy Spring? I know someone who switched to there from a catholic school and is very happy. Not sure the commute is any better though.

I have a child at a parish school who is 99% + too. Yes he tracked ahead when he was K,1,2 but a lot of kids caught up by 3rd. Now the difference isn't so obvious. You might consider waiting a bit longer.

Another thought is to move to tacoma park and get into Mont county where your DD can qualify for GT. Sorry i don't know much about PG gift and talented programs.

[Anonymous]

Thanks PP. I worked for CTY camps when I was in college. They are expensive, but in my experience they were totally worth it for GT kids. I am still in touch with many of my campers and they are still in touch with each other. Amazing experiences and a really wonderful global network. We work hard to do other things to supplement too - I lead an all girls OM team for DD that is sponsored through UMD's women in engineering group, we have a very active Scout troop, we keep her well-supplied with great books and such, but CTY is really a great resource if you can swing it financially, so we'll try.

You bring up a good point about catching up. Though honestly I don't think it will happen in my daughter's grade. If she was the grade up or the grade down I think it would. I'm not sure why we're in a sort of lopsided year in terms of lack of spread ability-wise. It's very odd and the rest of the school isn't like that. She had a peer that challenged her intellectually in kinder but his family moved overseas. Maybe there will be some new student influx at some point that will shake things up though.

It also brings up a great point about how to judge GT. I see so many posters on these forums that think their child is Einstein. I really don't relate to that. My husband and I were both high IQ, GT identified kids - in his public school he was bored and apathetic until high school. My Catholic school tried bumping me up a few grades (nightmare) and when that went poorly they just gave me a separate curriculum to work (much better). We both ended up with advanced degrees and in fields that we love, even if they aren't particularly lucrative.

Our child seems "normal" to us. We know she's bright, but honestly I wouldn't say that is her outstanding quality - I'd say it is her unflagging kindness and generosity. So again, we just haven't felt it is that big of a deal to push her by finding a super-competitive school so long as we could supplement, as really in the grand scheme of things, if you're really smart, it evens out to a degree come grad school anyways. But then her teacher is supposed to be the GT expert - and while we're academics, that doesn't mean we know jack about education as a field. We know about our fields and our niche areas and we teach adults (or very large children trying to learn to be adults in many cases). Totally different ball game I think. So now there's this bug in our ear about doing more for her, giving her more opportunities, not holding her back. Maybe that's misguided, but it came from someone we respect and whose business is to know about these things. Again, ugh.

And yes, commute with a baby is not something to look forward to.

Also, is it a bit concerning that no one from Stone Ridge or Holton has popped in to say how great the school is?

[Anonymous]

As an academic teaching at UMD, have you ever thought about applying to private schools about a teaching position? I don't know you field, but most college academics can teach high school courses. PhD's abound a local private schools. If you were to land a job at an all-girls private school, you could commute daily with your daughter to school, teach classes and return home each afternoon with her--no two round trips and teaching night classes. Your salary would be commensurate with what you're earning now and the tuition would be a fraction of what you would be expected to pay. And if your child should have an emergency, you're on site. Don't forget that girls schools have "brother" schools nearby who might need a teacher in your field. Stone Ridge has Georgetown Prep, Holton Arms has Landon, National Cathedral School has St. Albans, etc.