Which district/pyramid would you choose?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thank you to the PPs! Very helpful. I am suprised that Yorktown didn't make the cut and it's that different from WL. Does anyone else have an opinion?

Yorktown is a more sports-oriented school, but fine academically as well. If you crave walkability and transit, coming from the city, the neighborhoods closer to W-L are probably more your thing.

Some W-L and Yorktown zoned neighborhoods in and around Westover Village are always in high demand. It’s a cozy, walkable area with Swanson MS, Cardinal ES, a Post Office, and various shops and cafes in the heart of the community. The more affordable homes are likely on the Yorktown side of the boundary, where there are smaller cape cod style homes, smaller colonials, and duplexes. The older, larger homes (or larger new builds) are east of the village center where the W-L boundary begins.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have one child in 5th grade in a public school on the hill. We rent our house and are interested in buying in the spring. Would prefer to stay in public school and buy in a location where we are satisfied(ish) with the school situation through high school. Budget is around 1.3M. Child is very artistic, loves theatre and creative writing. Average student.

We’re finding this to be such a difficult decision. Part of it is the tension between the reality that from a selfish/adult-focuser perspective, we’d prefer to stay in the city, as close to downtown as possible. Even if we embrace the idea of moving to the suburbs, where to go is tricky. People with kids in MCPS seem miserable, though at least by spring the boundary issue should be largely resolved. I also get that MCPS used to be the gold standard and is slipping, but could be okay with that provided we can get 7 decent years out of it. But the threads are full of people saying they’d not choose MCPS if they had to do things over again, and I’m not sure what to do with that. Trying to learn more about Virginia; apparently Fairfax is also redoing boundaries and it also feels too far from the city. Maybe Arlington? Also concerned about state wide politics. We are very interested in Jackson Reed but the budget is limiting.

A lot of this is comparing apples to oranges and I have no idea how to move this forward. I’d like to at least make some kind of shortlist so we could visit some middle school open houses. If you were in our shoes with our budget, where would you go?

Take what you read on DCUM with a grain of salt.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We’ve had a great experience at MCPS for both of our kids, including attending schools and participating in programs that are criticized here.

+1.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here - PP, I’ve been doing some research based on the very kind advice on this thread, and I think I can actually help on your question! Those who know more, please correct me if any of this sounds wrong.

There are two middle schools that feed into Bethesda/Chevy Chase, and it seems that won’t change with the MCPS boundary redrawing process. Westland MS is southwest of “downtown” Bethesda and has the middle years IB program. It’s in a very affluent, suburban area. I can’t really tell if it’s “good” or just has high scores because the children are privileged. Silver Creek MS is way up in Kensington and gets kind of a bad rap, which I get the sense is partly to due with the fact that it’s a much more diverse school, including by SES. Some people say it is warm, small, community based. Others say there are problems with drugs and discipline. Not really sure what to think. The one thing you’ll see is that neither of these is at all close to Bethesda Chevy Chase HS so there’s some bus time involved with whichever you choose/can afford.

I am less in the know about Virginia but have been trying to learn. I’m not very into Yorktown - I think if we went with Virginia we’d be looking at Washington Liberty. Arlington Public Schools is probably redrawing middle school boundaries which makes it hard to know where the lines might be, but my overall sense is that two good middle schools (some would say more?) feed into Washington-Liberty. Dorothy Hamm MS is very popular, more affluent, great administration but some drawbacks in their programming. Swanson MS is more diverse, a crappy building, but has some wonderful programs and people also seem happy there more or less.

So I guess the bottom line is that I don’t think it’s entirely accurate to say they are the same, but there are pros and cons to all. Same with Deal and Hardy in DCPS. It probably depends on your kid and then your budget. We are going through the same analyses! I commiserate - this is painful.

My kid is in 8th grade at Silver Creek and loves it. It is a very well run school and actually offers academic challenge (which is not what I read about other MS in MCPS).

[Anonymous]

Any additional thoughts about the value of a smaller county school system (Arlington) vs MCPS or FCPS. County school systems seem impossibly large, but the only option around here except FCC ($$$) and ACPS (otherwise challenging)

[Anonymous]

Arlington principals tend to stay a long time in their schools, sometimes decades in a row: 20-30 years. In FCPS, principals routinely come and go sometimes in as little as one or two years.

I don’t know much about ACPS, but while Alexandria is small, some new controversy always comes up like the Jefferson Houston middle school plans.