wolftrap / thoreau / madison vs westbriar / kilmer / marshall?

[Anonymous]

deciding between these two schools (and home in their areas), and hoping to get some insight. Spoke with Westbriar principal, and really liked the school, while wolftrap seemed a bit more distant and slightly colder. Adding that my girl is adopted, not white, and will need to move into the school half-way through the 1st term, early October. Which elementary is more likely to foster a smooth transition, and a great environment down the line or my 1st grader?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:deciding between these two schools (and home in their areas), and hoping to get some insight. Spoke with Westbriar principal, and really liked the school, while wolftrap seemed a bit more distant and slightly colder. Adding that my girl is adopted, not white, and will need to move into the school half-way through the 1st term, early October. Which elementary is more likely to foster a smooth transition, and a great environment down the line or my 1st grader?

Wolftrap is a warm school community, but it's definitely one of the whitest schools in the county, so you'd see more non-white faces at Westbriar. I also suspect Westbriar is more accustomed to students moving into the school district after the school year has started.

FYI - Wolftrap feeds into Kilmer, not Thoreau, and about 1/2 of Wolftrap feeds into Marshall, not Madison.

[Anonymous]

Either is good. Check the AAP [GT] assignments. You might not know what options will present and it would be really easy if Kilmer was the base middle school.

[Anonymous]

Westbriar is a smaller school. Wolftrap, while still not large, is larger and may be less personal. That said, I find Wolftrap already to be a relatively small place and we've just started. I know moms at both schools who love it there. Both have active PTA's. Westbriar has some combination classes which can be good or bad. Wolftrap has the benefit of local level GT if your child is headed that route. I just went out of town and outside of NOVA can very white. Within NOVA you are going to encounter many races wherever you go. There is no such thing as a white school in NOVA anymore. There are two adopted kindergarteners that I know of this year at Wolftrap and one at Westbriar, so either way your child will not be the only adopted child either. Westbriar I think does feed into Marshall. Wolftrap students seem to have the choice of the two schools. If they want to do IB or some other coursework at Marshall like Chinese, they can go to Marshall, otherwise the children closer to town go to Madison.

[Anonymous]

Also note Westbriar's SACC list is a lot shorter than Wolftrap's if you need that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Westbriar I think does feed into Marshall. Wolftrap students seem to have the choice of the two schools. If they want to do IB or some other coursework at Marshall like Chinese, they can go to Marshall, otherwise the children closer to town go to Madison.

Wolftrap and Westbriar both feed into Kilmer, not Thoreau. They each then split between Marshall and Madison. At Wolftrap, it's about a 50-50 split, though Wolftrap is listed as part of the Madison "pyramid" for FCPS administrative purposes. At Westbriar, the split is about 80-20, with most of the students assigned to Marshall. The only part of the Westbriar zone that feeds into Madison is the area south of Old Courthouse Road near the Cardinal Hill swim club, and a few blocks north of Old Courthouse Road that are in the Town of Vienna. Students assigned to Madison can transfer to Marshall if they want to take IB courses, and students assigned to Marshall can transfer to Madison if they want to take AP courses. About the same number of students transfer from Madison to Marshall as transfer from Marshall to Madison.

Westbriar is slightly smaller than Wolftrap, but neither school is particularly big by FCPS standards (each has fewer than 600 students).