Which NoVa MS-HS for this kid?
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Anonymous
A large percentage of APS go to these $100k membership fee country clubs?? |
Anonymous
Are you not familiar with North Arlington or McLean? |
Anonymous
I live in N. Arlington, and only 1 family I know that belongs to this CC still sends their kids to public school. The rest send to private. My kids went to Swanson/W-L and it has been a great experience. I highly recommend. |
Anonymous
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I can name a handful of Yorktown, W-L, and McLean families that are members of the two Arlington country clubs.
To be helpful to OP, country club culture does not define the public school experience here. Nor does pool membership. But many families/students know other families/students from nearby schools. Everyone tends to get along. |
Anonymous
OP here. Would love to hear more about these opinions. Our kid is very grade level but she’s very artistic and creative with no interest in sports. Not sure if that would make FCC a good fit or not. Thanks to all of you we went to see Washington-Liberty and Dorothy Mann and surrounding neighborhoods, plus Falls Church City. Arlington seems great. FCC does feel a lot more suburban to us, which I’m trying to be open to. |
Anonymous
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There are one or two posters on this forum that have gripes with the new Falls Church middle-high school campus. It's also a small-town school system with less transience than Arlington where there are more military kids due to Fort Myer, not to mention the foreign service families.
Falls Church does feel suburban but Metro is close by, and there are new trendy restaurants opening up. We are not a Falls Chruch family, so that's the limit of my knowledge. For W-L, there are some IB electives that are open to non-IB students, like the popular IB Film class. So an AP-focused student is not only limited to just AP classes. Note that for students that choose not to walk to school, APS subsidizes Metro and ART bus fare for students, just like DCPS. |
Anonymous
FCCPS is very sports-centric. If your kid isn’t into sports, they will be in the minority. It’s a very small, cliquey district. I think a lot of this sports focus is driven by the small size of the school—with exceptions for the best teams, every kid can be on a sports team every season (and not just XC or track). The teams actually need more kids because it’s hard to field large enough teams with such a small student body. The admin also keeps introducing more sports and seriously hyping others (football and cheerleading have exploded in popularity over the past couple of years), so there’s an even greater need for more kids to play more sports. I’m not anti-sports at all, and my kids do a variety of sports and non-sport activities, but I think anyone moving to FCCPS should be aware that it is a very sports-focused place with arts, music, etc taking a noticeable backseat in terms of participation and (especially) funding. |
Anonymous
Kenmore has a wonderful theater program but probably not as many motivated peers. Some areas that go to Kenmore also feed into W&L generally north of Rt 50 |
Anonymous
I have kids at Wms and YHS. There definitely is a WGCC contingent but they basically use it for golf and the gym. They don’t only hang out with each other. The ones that I know that belong there and also go to public grew up in Arlington and went to the public schools here. The rest have jumped ship for private. |
Anonymous
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This thread is nuts.
I have kids at Yorktown. No "everyone" in N Arlington does not belong to a country club. Yes, over the years many people get to know each other and the kids do too. Because of activities that are across schools and because of split feeder schools. It's a nice thing! Yorktown has very strong arts programs. WL's choir program is basically dead right now but apparently their longtime choir teacher is about to retire so it will likely rebuild. I mention OP since you say your child is creative, interested in arts. Not sure if you specified what area of arts. |
Anonymous
How is the W-L choir dead? Our neighbors kids were in the choir a couple years ago when they won the Christmas carol radio contest and a trip to perform in NYC. The W-L choir director is well liked and has led the school's choir department for 30 years, racking up dozens of awards. That sounds like a successful program to me. |
Anonymous
| Lol do people just make up BS? I live in Arlington and we are zoned for Tuckahoe Elementary. No one in my neighborhood is a member of a country club. Many have pool memberships though and yes some of these pools are in McLean. |
Anonymous
Reading through the posts, the comments are fairly measured. No one's saying everyone is a member of a country club. There are two country clubs in Arlington so it's inevitable there are some public school families with memberships. There are also high ranking military families with kids in the public schools, and it's natural they'd be members at Army Navy. |
Anonymous
Number of kids participating in program. |
Anonymous
There are about 20 kids in the chamber choir at W-L this year. That's the most advanced choir. |