Good schools EoTP

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After reading your story, I'm wondering why you didn't see the writing on the wall for MS somewhere between 2014 and the present.

Our situation wasn't all that different from yours in 2014. We had bought a place IB for JO Wilson, before kids. We worked hard to spruce the house up, sold up, and bought a bigger fixer upper IB for Maury in 2014, now with 2 toddlers. We bought house #2 after sitting in on Brent, Maury, Watkins/Cluster and Ludlow PTA meetings, to get a feel for the lay of the land where rising Hill elementary schools were concerned. We attended open houses at Eliot-Hine and Stuart Hobson before we bought house #2. We started looking at PARCC scores for EH and SH and asking about advanced classes.

Several years ago, upon discovering that some Hill families were not getting off the BASIS 5th grade WL, and that Latin 1 was becoming very difficult to access, we started saving for parochial MS. We researched parochial school options as Plan B in case lottery luck wasn't in the cards, which was time consuming. We didn't get into BASIS, Latin 1 or Inspired Teaching last year, so returned to Maury for 5th. Our only option for 6th grade in the public system this past spring was DCI. We decided against the long, complicated commute and studying a random language. Our oldest will start at a parochial MS in VA in the fall, which we can afford.

It sounds like you didn't dig deep enough, you didn't look far enough ahead, took too much well-intentioned advice at face value.

Timing is the difference. You bought a place off H Street 10 (or more) years ago. Prices skyrocketed. You were then able to trade in for a house IB for Maury right before the modernization (so before prices skyrocketed for houses IB for Maury). Thus you were never in the same position as a person buying their first home in the area in 2014, before having kids. You benefitted from two fortuitous things that you had limited control over.

It sounds like you got lucky but chalked it up to attending PTO meetings for multiple elementaries before you had kids at school age, which is weird. You were fortunate to be the right age and in the right point in your career, and married, and with access to the right amount of capital in order to by 2012 or earlier. You aren’t a genius.

Good luck with the MS lottery next year. I’m sure you’ll find something.

Not weird, shrewd given that PP was about to sink her savings into a property. Kudos to her for scoping out the elementary school landscape as she was able. PTO meetings are generally open to the public, and you get a good feel for a school community by attending one, for free. More prospective DCPS parents should do that.

Maybe under some circumstances, but in 2014, the Maury PTO was about to go through a bunch of arguments about swing space for the renovation. Maybe the PP has an unusual ability to discern the future of a school from those meetings, but my experience on two different PTOs is that most of those meetings don't give you a great feel for the school. You can find out how involved parents are, but the truth is that most Hill elementaries have a pretty active core parent group. The meetings will give you a sense of the personalities on the current PTO, but those will change as people's kids age out and new people join the school. I guess the biggest piece of information would be that you can find out how much money the PTO has, what their big fundraisers bring in, and how they spend that money. But this can seem opaque to someone who has never had kids in school. Schools have different enrollments, Title 1 schools get different sources of funding that can impact programs, and so on. Plus it can change so much from year to year. Do you really think a PTO meeting in 2014 will give you a sense of a school's quality in 2022? Come on.

I personally think this strategy makes total sense if you already have school age kids and are deciding where to move, but if you are looking at schools your kid(s) might attend in a few years, it might help you avoid a school with a crappy culture but it's not going to tell you much beyond that (and you might actually overlook a school that could be great due to one awful person on the PTO who won't even be there when your kids go).

Also, just selfishly, I would really no enjoy a situation where every PTO meeting is full of prospective parents (who may not even have kids yet) auditioning our school to decide if they want to buy the house up the street. I'm all for doing your research but that would get extremely old very fast. Please don't do this. Just tour the school and talk to people in the neighborhood.

I'm the PP who dropped in on 4 PTO meetings (2 for each parent) before buying IB for Maury who doesn't regret the exercise. We didn't bother anybody at the meetings - we sat quietly at the back observing. At Brent, the principal did almost all the talking, droning on while parents sat mute. At Watkins, the meeting was chaotic, the atmosphere seemed tense, parent leaders seemed too woke for us and the dark, crumbling building (pre renovation) didn't appeal. At Ludlow, a brand new principal seemed overwhelmed as pushy UMC in-boundary parents of little kids gave her a hard time.

The Maury meeting was the only one that seemed very productive. The principal impressed us and parent presenters seemed organized and on the ball. We learned about the planned renovation and came away feeling like hitching our wagon to Maury's rising star would work out despite the aggravation of a swing space campus for 18 months and Eliot Hine seeming dead-ended. We also attended an LSAT meeting at Maury later on.

Tours of several of the school were also useful, but we took the PR spiels we heard on them with a grain of salt.

[Anonymous]

I'm not buying that there's a shortage of seats in DC private schools that run you 35K+ a year. Over the years, every Hill family we know who wanted a tony private found one willing to enroll their kid, if not a Top 5 school.

You're referring to my point 7 pages ago that it's not a solid exit plan to airily say "oh we'll just go private." There is an intense scarcity of seats in the excellent, top private high schools, all of which are in upper NW except Potomac. To your point, if an EoTP family is just looking for an escape route from Eastern or Cardozo and will go anywhere, then I agree. They'll find some school, any school, that will accept their non-violent teenager. All the schools these now cost $30K.

A vast majority of these are Catholic, and it's not Catholic bashing to say that there are a lot of DCUMers who say -- in their own words -- that they don't want to send their not-Catholic kids (especially females, now) to schools with mandatory weekly Mass and mandatory catechism courses. ie, Stone Ridge, Gonzaga, St. Anselm's, St. John's, Bishop Ireton, DeMatha, Good Counsel and to a lesser extent, Visi, GP (who aren't in the mix bc they essentially admit only legacies or athletic recruits).

You think these Catholic-eschewers EoTP will get into Maret or Sidwell at 9th grade or even 6th. I disagree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I'm not buying that there's a shortage of seats in DC private schools that run you 35K+ a year. Over the years, every Hill family we know who wanted a tony private found one willing to enroll their kid, if not a Top 5 school.

You're referring to my point 7 pages ago that it's not a solid exit plan to airily say "oh we'll just go private." There is an intense scarcity of seats in the excellent, top private high schools, all of which are in upper NW except Potomac. To your point, if an EoTP family is just looking for an escape route from Eastern or Cardozo and will go anywhere, then I agree. They'll find some school, any school, that will accept their non-violent teenager. All the schools these now cost $30K.

A vast majority of these are Catholic, and it's not Catholic bashing to say that there are a lot of DCUMers who say -- in their own words -- that they don't want to send their not-Catholic kids (especially females, now) to schools with mandatory weekly Mass and mandatory catechism courses. ie, Stone Ridge, Gonzaga, St. Anselm's, St. John's, Bishop Ireton, DeMatha, Good Counsel and to a lesser extent, Visi, GP (who aren't in the mix bc they essentially admit only legacies or athletic recruits).

You think these Catholic-eschewers EoTP will get into Maret or Sidwell at 9th grade or even 6th. I disagree.

Mandatory weekly Mass and mandatory catechism are not a thing at the schools you list and the fact that you don’t know that undercuts the rest of your post.

[Anonymous]

Patting yourself on the back because you made what turned out to be a very fortuitous real estate choice and getting angry at families who are simply trying the best they can is a bad look, and I suspect it will come back to bite you.

PP you're responding to, and I appreciate your lengthy explanation. Sincere question: why did you decide (as a couple, yes? possibly with a remote idea of kids?) to purchase a home where you did, and then stay there for years, rather than spending the same exact number of dollars to buy a home located in a zip with a proven record of schools? ie, was it a real estate appreciation play? did you assume you'd break up with each other, so no kids? did you think, "yeah kids someday" but assign higher value to commute & walkable restaurants?

I believe you when you say your friends were reassuring re: schools evolving, and I get that you relied in part on that. Did you consider exact-same-price homes in, say, Rockville, Kensington, or City of Fairfax?

I know young, childless couples who did just that -- bought a split-level near the Glenmont or Twinbrook metros, for example. One couple bought a 1970 house in Reston with no curb appeal. To a person, these then-childless people are as PPs describes: Asian or African 1st gens or immigrants themselves, from places like Ghana, India, Morocco. DC wasn't even on their radar for a SFH purchase although several lived there in condos

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I'm not buying that there's a shortage of seats in DC private schools that run you 35K+ a year. Over the years, every Hill family we know who wanted a tony private found one willing to enroll their kid, if not a Top 5 school.

You're referring to my point 7 pages ago that it's not a solid exit plan to airily say "oh we'll just go private." There is an intense scarcity of seats in the excellent, top private high schools, all of which are in upper NW except Potomac. To your point, if an EoTP family is just looking for an escape route from Eastern or Cardozo and will go anywhere, then I agree. They'll find some school, any school, that will accept their non-violent teenager. All the schools these now cost $30K.

A vast majority of these are Catholic, and it's not Catholic bashing to say that there are a lot of DCUMers who say -- in their own words -- that they don't want to send their not-Catholic kids (especially females, now) to schools with mandatory weekly Mass and mandatory catechism courses. ie, Stone Ridge, Gonzaga, St. Anselm's, St. John's, Bishop Ireton, DeMatha, Good Counsel and to a lesser extent, Visi, GP (who aren't in the mix bc they essentially admit only legacies or athletic recruits).

You think these Catholic-eschewers EoTP will get into Maret or Sidwell at 9th grade or even 6th. I disagree.

Mandatory weekly Mass and mandatory catechism are not a thing at the schools you list and the fact that you don’t know that undercuts the rest of your post.

Maybe you need to acquaint yourself with the curriculum guides at several of these schools? Pls at least do so before making your decision for high school. Unless it's about sports, then obviously prioritize the athletic program!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Patting yourself on the back because you made what turned out to be a very fortuitous real estate choice and getting angry at families who are simply trying the best they can is a bad look, and I suspect it will come back to bite you.

PP you're responding to, and I appreciate your lengthy explanation. Sincere question: why did you decide (as a couple, yes? possibly with a remote idea of kids?) to purchase a home where you did, and then stay there for years, rather than spending the same exact number of dollars to buy a home located in a zip with a proven record of schools? ie, was it a real estate appreciation play? did you assume you'd break up with each other, so no kids? did you think, "yeah kids someday" but assign higher value to commute & walkable restaurants?

I believe you when you say your friends were reassuring re: schools evolving, and I get that you relied in part on that. Did you consider exact-same-price homes in, say, Rockville, Kensington, or City of Fairfax?

I know young, childless couples who did just that -- bought a split-level near the Glenmont or Twinbrook metros, for example. One couple bought a 1970 house in Reston with no curb appeal. To a person, these then-childless people are as PPs describes: Asian or African 1st gens or immigrants themselves, from places like Ghana, India, Morocco. DC wasn't even on their radar for a SFH purchase although several lived there in condos

I think it's a little nuts to buy a house in a far suburban school district when you aren't yet pregnant! If it's Takoma or SS or CC or Bethesda, fine, but Rockville? Honestly, you really want that long long commute for so many years for a school you don't have a child in? I had a friend who did that and it took her five years to get pregnant, and then another five years before her kid started K at that supposedly wonderful school. Ten years of paying and driving and in that time, you could decide to move away anyway, or MoCo could re-boundary, or your school could stop being so appealing, or whatever. I would definitely go for the short commute.

[Anonymous]

What does "EOTP" stand for? Never seen this acronym

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What does "EOTP" stand for? Never seen this acronym

East of the Park (Rock Creek park)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I'm not buying that there's a shortage of seats in DC private schools that run you 35K+ a year. Over the years, every Hill family we know who wanted a tony private found one willing to enroll their kid, if not a Top 5 school.

You're referring to my point 7 pages ago that it's not a solid exit plan to airily say "oh we'll just go private." There is an intense scarcity of seats in the excellent, top private high schools, all of which are in upper NW except Potomac. To your point, if an EoTP family is just looking for an escape route from Eastern or Cardozo and will go anywhere, then I agree. They'll find some school, any school, that will accept their non-violent teenager. All the schools these now cost $30K.

A vast majority of these are Catholic, and it's not Catholic bashing to say that there are a lot of DCUMers who say -- in their own words -- that they don't want to send their not-Catholic kids (especially females, now) to schools with mandatory weekly Mass and mandatory catechism courses. ie, Stone Ridge, Gonzaga, St. Anselm's, St. John's, Bishop Ireton, DeMatha, Good Counsel and to a lesser extent, Visi, GP (who aren't in the mix bc they essentially admit only legacies or athletic recruits).

You think these Catholic-eschewers EoTP will get into Maret or Sidwell at 9th grade or even 6th. I disagree.

IMHO, if you're a parent hell bent on sending your children attending a "top high school," don't live on CH, even if you're rich. If you think that your offspring can get a good education anyway, few places are as wonderful to live as the Hill.

Around our block, one kid who we've known all his life is off to an Ivy in the fall, from BASIS. Another senior is off to a different Ivy from Latin. Neighbors home schooled for middle school, after pulling out of DCI, mainly because the commute was too much for them. Their girl is now a straight-A student at a top Catholic school (from an atheist family, she says she zones out during Mass).

To be sure, there are no perfect solutions where schooling is concerned for Hill denizens. Some of us plan to muddle through just the same.

Signed
Triple Ivy League grad (BA, MA, PhD) parent who attended a HS ranked in the bottom third in my state

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After reading your story, I'm wondering why you didn't see the writing on the wall for MS somewhere between 2014 and the present.

Our situation wasn't all that different from yours in 2014. We had bought a place IB for JO Wilson, before kids. We worked hard to spruce the house up, sold up, and bought a bigger fixer upper IB for Maury in 2014, now with 2 toddlers. We bought house #2 after sitting in on Brent, Maury, Watkins/Cluster and Ludlow PTA meetings, to get a feel for the lay of the land where rising Hill elementary schools were concerned. We attended open houses at Eliot-Hine and Stuart Hobson before we bought house #2. We started looking at PARCC scores for EH and SH and asking about advanced classes.

Several years ago, upon discovering that some Hill families were not getting off the BASIS 5th grade WL, and that Latin 1 was becoming very difficult to access, we started saving for parochial MS. We researched parochial school options as Plan B in case lottery luck wasn't in the cards, which was time consuming. We didn't get into BASIS, Latin 1 or Inspired Teaching last year, so returned to Maury for 5th. Our only option for 6th grade in the public system this past spring was DCI. We decided against the long, complicated commute and studying a random language. Our oldest will start at a parochial MS in VA in the fall, which we can afford.

It sounds like you didn't dig deep enough, you didn't look far enough ahead, took too much well-intentioned advice at face value.

Timing is the difference. You bought a place off H Street 10 (or more) years ago. Prices skyrocketed. You were then able to trade in for a house IB for Maury right before the modernization (so before prices skyrocketed for houses IB for Maury). Thus you were never in the same position as a person buying their first home in the area in 2014, before having kids. You benefitted from two fortuitous things that you had limited control over.

It sounds like you got lucky but chalked it up to attending PTO meetings for multiple elementaries before you had kids at school age, which is weird. You were fortunate to be the right age and in the right point in your career, and married, and with access to the right amount of capital in order to by 2012 or earlier. You aren’t a genius.

Good luck with the MS lottery next year. I’m sure you’ll find something.

Not weird, shrewd given that PP was about to sink her savings into a property. Kudos to her for scoping out the elementary school landscape as she was able. PTO meetings are generally open to the public, and you get a good feel for a school community by attending one, for free. More prospective DCPS parents should do that.

Maybe under some circumstances, but in 2014, the Maury PTO was about to go through a bunch of arguments about swing space for the renovation. Maybe the PP has an unusual ability to discern the future of a school from those meetings, but my experience on two different PTOs is that most of those meetings don't give you a great feel for the school. You can find out how involved parents are, but the truth is that most Hill elementaries have a pretty active core parent group. The meetings will give you a sense of the personalities on the current PTO, but those will change as people's kids age out and new people join the school. I guess the biggest piece of information would be that you can find out how much money the PTO has, what their big fundraisers bring in, and how they spend that money. But this can seem opaque to someone who has never had kids in school. Schools have different enrollments, Title 1 schools get different sources of funding that can impact programs, and so on. Plus it can change so much from year to year. Do you really think a PTO meeting in 2014 will give you a sense of a school's quality in 2022? Come on.

I personally think this strategy makes total sense if you already have school age kids and are deciding where to move, but if you are looking at schools your kid(s) might attend in a few years, it might help you avoid a school with a crappy culture but it's not going to tell you much beyond that (and you might actually overlook a school that could be great due to one awful person on the PTO who won't even be there when your kids go).

Also, just selfishly, I would really no enjoy a situation where every PTO meeting is full of prospective parents (who may not even have kids yet) auditioning our school to decide if they want to buy the house up the street. I'm all for doing your research but that would get extremely old very fast. Please don't do this. Just tour the school and talk to people in the neighborhood.

I'm the PP who dropped in on 4 PTO meetings (2 for each parent) before buying IB for Maury who doesn't regret the exercise. We didn't bother anybody at the meetings - we sat quietly at the back observing. At Brent, the principal did almost all the talking, droning on while parents sat mute. At Watkins, the meeting was chaotic, the atmosphere seemed tense, parent leaders seemed too woke for us and the dark, crumbling building (pre renovation) didn't appeal. At Ludlow, a brand new principal seemed overwhelmed as pushy UMC in-boundary parents of little kids gave her a hard time.

The Maury meeting was the only one that seemed very productive. The principal impressed us and parent presenters seemed organized and on the ball. We learned about the planned renovation and came away feeling like hitching our wagon to Maury's rising star would work out despite the aggravation of a swing space campus for 18 months and Eliot Hine seeming dead-ended. We also attended an LSAT meeting at Maury later on.

Tours of several of the school were also useful, but we took the PR spiels we heard on them with a grain of salt.

OK, now I'm pretty sure you're a troll who is unfamiliar with PTO meetings in general. PTO meetings are never run by principals and sometimes principals don't even attend (they are always invited and ours makes about 90% of meetings but occasionally there is a last minute conflict).

PTO meetings are run by the PTO, which is composed of parent volunteers. It's usually run by the elected president. It's common for most attending parents to "sit mute" during PTO meetings, but generally it will be the president running things and handing the floor over to different board members to discuss various issues like fundraising, upcoming volunteer opportunities, etc. These are not "parent presenters" -- they ARE the PTO. The principal or a teacher rep might speak for a bit on a specific issue, but they will be invited by the PTO to come talk to that issue, or sometimes the principal is asked to give a general rundown on some ongoing stuff if that's appropriate. Our principal generally speaks for 5-10 minutes and would have no idea how to run the meeting -- they have a totally different job from the PTO and are very busy with that, it would be weird to have a principal who was was talking about the nuts and bolts of a volunteer event run by the PTO or something. They are running the school.

Our principal does do monthly online chats with the community where parents (and kids!) can ask questions, and that's a great way to get to know the principal. Also school tours. The PTO meetings are not a great way to get to know the principal or the school administration generally -- it's a separate organization that is focused on fundraising, after school and volunteer events, and helping meet school needs/requests (via fundraising and volunteering). Principals are focused on school administration. These are connected but distinct aspects of the school community.

[Anonymous]

We are on the Hill and love it and our oldest is loving Peabody. We are starting private school in Kindergarden. I haven't seen school options EOTP that work for our family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After reading your story, I'm wondering why you didn't see the writing on the wall for MS somewhere between 2014 and the present.

Our situation wasn't all that different from yours in 2014. We had bought a place IB for JO Wilson, before kids. We worked hard to spruce the house up, sold up, and bought a bigger fixer upper IB for Maury in 2014, now with 2 toddlers. We bought house #2 after sitting in on Brent, Maury, Watkins/Cluster and Ludlow PTA meetings, to get a feel for the lay of the land where rising Hill elementary schools were concerned. We attended open houses at Eliot-Hine and Stuart Hobson before we bought house #2. We started looking at PARCC scores for EH and SH and asking about advanced classes.

Several years ago, upon discovering that some Hill families were not getting off the BASIS 5th grade WL, and that Latin 1 was becoming very difficult to access, we started saving for parochial MS. We researched parochial school options as Plan B in case lottery luck wasn't in the cards, which was time consuming. We didn't get into BASIS, Latin 1 or Inspired Teaching last year, so returned to Maury for 5th. Our only option for 6th grade in the public system this past spring was DCI. We decided against the long, complicated commute and studying a random language. Our oldest will start at a parochial MS in VA in the fall, which we can afford.

It sounds like you didn't dig deep enough, you didn't look far enough ahead, took too much well-intentioned advice at face value.

Timing is the difference. You bought a place off H Street 10 (or more) years ago. Prices skyrocketed. You were then able to trade in for a house IB for Maury right before the modernization (so before prices skyrocketed for houses IB for Maury). Thus you were never in the same position as a person buying their first home in the area in 2014, before having kids. You benefitted from two fortuitous things that you had limited control over.

It sounds like you got lucky but chalked it up to attending PTO meetings for multiple elementaries before you had kids at school age, which is weird. You were fortunate to be the right age and in the right point in your career, and married, and with access to the right amount of capital in order to by 2012 or earlier. You aren’t a genius.

Good luck with the MS lottery next year. I’m sure you’ll find something.

Not weird, shrewd given that PP was about to sink her savings into a property. Kudos to her for scoping out the elementary school landscape as she was able. PTO meetings are generally open to the public, and you get a good feel for a school community by attending one, for free. More prospective DCPS parents should do that.

Maybe under some circumstances, but in 2014, the Maury PTO was about to go through a bunch of arguments about swing space for the renovation. Maybe the PP has an unusual ability to discern the future of a school from those meetings, but my experience on two different PTOs is that most of those meetings don't give you a great feel for the school. You can find out how involved parents are, but the truth is that most Hill elementaries have a pretty active core parent group. The meetings will give you a sense of the personalities on the current PTO, but those will change as people's kids age out and new people join the school. I guess the biggest piece of information would be that you can find out how much money the PTO has, what their big fundraisers bring in, and how they spend that money. But this can seem opaque to someone who has never had kids in school. Schools have different enrollments, Title 1 schools get different sources of funding that can impact programs, and so on. Plus it can change so much from year to year. Do you really think a PTO meeting in 2014 will give you a sense of a school's quality in 2022? Come on.

I personally think this strategy makes total sense if you already have school age kids and are deciding where to move, but if you are looking at schools your kid(s) might attend in a few years, it might help you avoid a school with a crappy culture but it's not going to tell you much beyond that (and you might actually overlook a school that could be great due to one awful person on the PTO who won't even be there when your kids go).

Also, just selfishly, I would really no enjoy a situation where every PTO meeting is full of prospective parents (who may not even have kids yet) auditioning our school to decide if they want to buy the house up the street. I'm all for doing your research but that would get extremely old very fast. Please don't do this. Just tour the school and talk to people in the neighborhood.

I'm the PP who dropped in on 4 PTO meetings (2 for each parent) before buying IB for Maury who doesn't regret the exercise. We didn't bother anybody at the meetings - we sat quietly at the back observing. At Brent, the principal did almost all the talking, droning on while parents sat mute. At Watkins, the meeting was chaotic, the atmosphere seemed tense, parent leaders seemed too woke for us and the dark, crumbling building (pre renovation) didn't appeal. At Ludlow, a brand new principal seemed overwhelmed as pushy UMC in-boundary parents of little kids gave her a hard time.

The Maury meeting was the only one that seemed very productive. The principal impressed us and parent presenters seemed organized and on the ball. We learned about the planned renovation and came away feeling like hitching our wagon to Maury's rising star would work out despite the aggravation of a swing space campus for 18 months and Eliot Hine seeming dead-ended. We also attended an LSAT meeting at Maury later on.

Tours of several of the school were also useful, but we took the PR spiels we heard on them with a grain of salt.

OK, now I'm pretty sure you're a troll who is unfamiliar with PTO meetings in general. PTO meetings are never run by principals and sometimes principals don't even attend (they are always invited and ours makes about 90% of meetings but occasionally there is a last minute conflict).

PTO meetings are run by the PTO, which is composed of parent volunteers. It's usually run by the elected president. It's common for most attending parents to "sit mute" during PTO meetings, but generally it will be the president running things and handing the floor over to different board members to discuss various issues like fundraising, upcoming volunteer opportunities, etc. These are not "parent presenters" -- they ARE the PTO. The principal or a teacher rep might speak for a bit on a specific issue, but they will be invited by the PTO to come talk to that issue, or sometimes the principal is asked to give a general rundown on some ongoing stuff if that's appropriate. Our principal generally speaks for 5-10 minutes and would have no idea how to run the meeting -- they have a totally different job from the PTO and are very busy with that, it would be weird to have a principal who was was talking about the nuts and bolts of a volunteer event run by the PTO or something. They are running the school.

Our principal does do monthly online chats with the community where parents (and kids!) can ask questions, and that's a great way to get to know the principal. Also school tours. The PTO meetings are not a great way to get to know the principal or the school administration generally -- it's a separate organization that is focused on fundraising, after school and volunteer events, and helping meet school needs/requests (via fundraising and volunteering). Principals are focused on school administration. These are connected but distinct aspects of the school community.

Oh and I forgot to mention that you would not have heard about the "planned renovation" at a 2014 Maury PTO meeting. The renovation was in very early stages then and I don't even thing they identified potential swing spaces until 2016. It might have been a line item on an agenda but no details would have been presented because they would not have existed at that point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I'm not buying that there's a shortage of seats in DC private schools that run you 35K+ a year. Over the years, every Hill family we know who wanted a tony private found one willing to enroll their kid, if not a Top 5 school.

You're referring to my point 7 pages ago that it's not a solid exit plan to airily say "oh we'll just go private." There is an intense scarcity of seats in the excellent, top private high schools, all of which are in upper NW except Potomac. To your point, if an EoTP family is just looking for an escape route from Eastern or Cardozo and will go anywhere, then I agree. They'll find some school, any school, that will accept their non-violent teenager. All the schools these now cost $30K.

A vast majority of these are Catholic, and it's not Catholic bashing to say that there are a lot of DCUMers who say -- in their own words -- that they don't want to send their not-Catholic kids (especially females, now) to schools with mandatory weekly Mass and mandatory catechism courses. ie, Stone Ridge, Gonzaga, St. Anselm's, St. John's, Bishop Ireton, DeMatha, Good Counsel and to a lesser extent, Visi, GP (who aren't in the mix bc they essentially admit only legacies or athletic recruits).

You think these Catholic-eschewers EoTP will get into Maret or Sidwell at 9th grade or even 6th. I disagree.

IMHO, if you're a parent hell bent on sending your children attending a "top high school," don't live on CH, even if you're rich. If you think that your offspring can get a good education anyway, few places are as wonderful to live as the Hill.

Around our block, one kid who we've known all his life is off to an Ivy in the fall, from BASIS. Another senior is off to a different Ivy from Latin. Neighbors home schooled for middle school, after pulling out of DCI, mainly because the commute was too much for them. Their girl is now a straight-A student at a top Catholic school (from an atheist family, she says she zones out during Mass).

To be sure, there are no perfect solutions where schooling is concerned for Hill denizens. Some of us plan to muddle through just the same.

Signed
Triple Ivy League grad (BA, MA, PhD) parent who attended a HS ranked in the bottom third in my state

Your flaunting your ivy credentials is pretty weird but I’m curious why you believe there are few neighborhoods as great as CH? I personally believe there are several nice neighborhoods in and around DC to live in so I’m interested in learning about your mindset

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After reading your story, I'm wondering why you didn't see the writing on the wall for MS somewhere between 2014 and the present.

Our situation wasn't all that different from yours in 2014. We had bought a place IB for JO Wilson, before kids. We worked hard to spruce the house up, sold up, and bought a bigger fixer upper IB for Maury in 2014, now with 2 toddlers. We bought house #2 after sitting in on Brent, Maury, Watkins/Cluster and Ludlow PTA meetings, to get a feel for the lay of the land where rising Hill elementary schools were concerned. We attended open houses at Eliot-Hine and Stuart Hobson before we bought house #2. We started looking at PARCC scores for EH and SH and asking about advanced classes.

Several years ago, upon discovering that some Hill families were not getting off the BASIS 5th grade WL, and that Latin 1 was becoming very difficult to access, we started saving for parochial MS. We researched parochial school options as Plan B in case lottery luck wasn't in the cards, which was time consuming. We didn't get into BASIS, Latin 1 or Inspired Teaching last year, so returned to Maury for 5th. Our only option for 6th grade in the public system this past spring was DCI. We decided against the long, complicated commute and studying a random language. Our oldest will start at a parochial MS in VA in the fall, which we can afford.

It sounds like you didn't dig deep enough, you didn't look far enough ahead, took too much well-intentioned advice at face value.

Timing is the difference. You bought a place off H Street 10 (or more) years ago. Prices skyrocketed. You were then able to trade in for a house IB for Maury right before the modernization (so before prices skyrocketed for houses IB for Maury). Thus you were never in the same position as a person buying their first home in the area in 2014, before having kids. You benefitted from two fortuitous things that you had limited control over.

It sounds like you got lucky but chalked it up to attending PTO meetings for multiple elementaries before you had kids at school age, which is weird. You were fortunate to be the right age and in the right point in your career, and married, and with access to the right amount of capital in order to by 2012 or earlier. You aren’t a genius.

Good luck with the MS lottery next year. I’m sure you’ll find something.

Not weird, shrewd given that PP was about to sink her savings into a property. Kudos to her for scoping out the elementary school landscape as she was able. PTO meetings are generally open to the public, and you get a good feel for a school community by attending one, for free. More prospective DCPS parents should do that.

Maybe under some circumstances, but in 2014, the Maury PTO was about to go through a bunch of arguments about swing space for the renovation. Maybe the PP has an unusual ability to discern the future of a school from those meetings, but my experience on two different PTOs is that most of those meetings don't give you a great feel for the school. You can find out how involved parents are, but the truth is that most Hill elementaries have a pretty active core parent group. The meetings will give you a sense of the personalities on the current PTO, but those will change as people's kids age out and new people join the school. I guess the biggest piece of information would be that you can find out how much money the PTO has, what their big fundraisers bring in, and how they spend that money. But this can seem opaque to someone who has never had kids in school. Schools have different enrollments, Title 1 schools get different sources of funding that can impact programs, and so on. Plus it can change so much from year to year. Do you really think a PTO meeting in 2014 will give you a sense of a school's quality in 2022? Come on.

I personally think this strategy makes total sense if you already have school age kids and are deciding where to move, but if you are looking at schools your kid(s) might attend in a few years, it might help you avoid a school with a crappy culture but it's not going to tell you much beyond that (and you might actually overlook a school that could be great due to one awful person on the PTO who won't even be there when your kids go).

Also, just selfishly, I would really no enjoy a situation where every PTO meeting is full of prospective parents (who may not even have kids yet) auditioning our school to decide if they want to buy the house up the street. I'm all for doing your research but that would get extremely old very fast. Please don't do this. Just tour the school and talk to people in the neighborhood.

I'm the PP who dropped in on 4 PTO meetings (2 for each parent) before buying IB for Maury who doesn't regret the exercise. We didn't bother anybody at the meetings - we sat quietly at the back observing. At Brent, the principal did almost all the talking, droning on while parents sat mute. At Watkins, the meeting was chaotic, the atmosphere seemed tense, parent leaders seemed too woke for us and the dark, crumbling building (pre renovation) didn't appeal. At Ludlow, a brand new principal seemed overwhelmed as pushy UMC in-boundary parents of little kids gave her a hard time.

The Maury meeting was the only one that seemed very productive. The principal impressed us and parent presenters seemed organized and on the ball. We learned about the planned renovation and came away feeling like hitching our wagon to Maury's rising star would work out despite the aggravation of a swing space campus for 18 months and Eliot Hine seeming dead-ended. We also attended an LSAT meeting at Maury later on.

Tours of several of the school were also useful, but we took the PR spiels we heard on them with a grain of salt.

OK, now I'm pretty sure you're a troll who is unfamiliar with PTO meetings in general. PTO meetings are never run by principals and sometimes principals don't even attend (they are always invited and ours makes about 90% of meetings but occasionally there is a last minute conflict).

PTO meetings are run by the PTO, which is composed of parent volunteers. It's usually run by the elected president. It's common for most attending parents to "sit mute" during PTO meetings, but generally it will be the president running things and handing the floor over to different board members to discuss various issues like fundraising, upcoming volunteer opportunities, etc. These are not "parent presenters" -- they ARE the PTO. The principal or a teacher rep might speak for a bit on a specific issue, but they will be invited by the PTO to come talk to that issue, or sometimes the principal is asked to give a general rundown on some ongoing stuff if that's appropriate. Our principal generally speaks for 5-10 minutes and would have no idea how to run the meeting -- they have a totally different job from the PTO and are very busy with that, it would be weird to have a principal who was was talking about the nuts and bolts of a volunteer event run by the PTO or something. They are running the school.

Our principal does do monthly online chats with the community where parents (and kids!) can ask questions, and that's a great way to get to know the principal. Also school tours. The PTO meetings are not a great way to get to know the principal or the school administration generally -- it's a separate organization that is focused on fundraising, after school and volunteer events, and helping meet school needs/requests (via fundraising and volunteering). Principals are focused on school administration. These are connected but distinct aspects of the school community.

Oh and I forgot to mention that you would not have heard about the "planned renovation" at a 2014 Maury PTO meeting. The renovation was in very early stages then and I don't even thing they identified potential swing spaces until 2016. It might have been a line item on an agenda but no details would have been presented because they would not have existed at that point.

I was thinking exactly this.... Maury's renovation plans were not remotely on the table in 2014. They were surveying re: plans in the 2016-17 year. I literally have all the old emails.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I'm not buying that there's a shortage of seats in DC private schools that run you 35K+ a year. Over the years, every Hill family we know who wanted a tony private found one willing to enroll their kid, if not a Top 5 school.

You're referring to my point 7 pages ago that it's not a solid exit plan to airily say "oh we'll just go private." There is an intense scarcity of seats in the excellent, top private high schools, all of which are in upper NW except Potomac. To your point, if an EoTP family is just looking for an escape route from Eastern or Cardozo and will go anywhere, then I agree. They'll find some school, any school, that will accept their non-violent teenager. All the schools these now cost $30K.

A vast majority of these are Catholic, and it's not Catholic bashing to say that there are a lot of DCUMers who say -- in their own words -- that they don't want to send their not-Catholic kids (especially females, now) to schools with mandatory weekly Mass and mandatory catechism courses. ie, Stone Ridge, Gonzaga, St. Anselm's, St. John's, Bishop Ireton, DeMatha, Good Counsel and to a lesser extent, Visi, GP (who aren't in the mix bc they essentially admit only legacies or athletic recruits).

You think these Catholic-eschewers EoTP will get into Maret or Sidwell at 9th grade or even 6th. I disagree.

IMHO, if you're a parent hell bent on sending your children attending a "top high school," don't live on CH, even if you're rich. If you think that your offspring can get a good education anyway, few places are as wonderful to live as the Hill.

Around our block, one kid who we've known all his life is off to an Ivy in the fall, from BASIS. Another senior is off to a different Ivy from Latin. Neighbors home schooled for middle school, after pulling out of DCI, mainly because the commute was too much for them. Their girl is now a straight-A student at a top Catholic school (from an atheist family, she says she zones out during Mass).

To be sure, there are no perfect solutions where schooling is concerned for Hill denizens. Some of us plan to muddle through just the same.

Signed
Triple Ivy League grad (BA, MA, PhD) parent who attended a HS ranked in the bottom third in my state

What’s up with claiming you are a triple Ivy League grad? Are you trying to imply you are better than a single or dual Ivy grad?
You seem like a strange cookie!