Looking to move for a better public school
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
you don't need to come here for that answer - there are census data and school demographic data online. |
Anonymous
|
NW High School/Matsunaga, McNair, Great Seneca, or Diamond ES
Mature neighborhoods with most of the houses 15-20 yo. A 2001 SFH in the Matsunaga neighborhoods go for about $600-650k. |
Anonymous
|
If I were you, I would consider Takoma Park MS cluster.
Solid school, your kids would have opportunity for magnet. Find good Elementary in that cluster. For HS your kids would have options with consortium, and your home school will be Blair. Crowded but given magnets (probably not accessible), still OK school. At least your will have solid for ES and MS. You may need to pay for HS, but that would be only 4 years vs.12. |
Anonymous
At $4k a month, you could EASILY get a $750k home with $100k down, first mortgage for $600k over 30 years and second loan for $50k over 15 years. For that, you can buy pretty much anywhere in Rockville, including most of Rockville's 20854 zip code. |
Anonymous
|
Rockville.
|
Anonymous
| Ironically Rockville has Twinbrook which is just yuck. It is probably the school OP is looking to get away from. |
Anonymous
I liked these areas before too. Location was a big issue for us though and it didn't really work for us. Although we didn't look into Great Seneca Creek. I think it's a newer school but for some reason I got the impression it wasn't that great. It looks like it is a Focus school: http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/regulatoryaccountability/glance/currentyear/schools/02340.pdf Looked into the area that feeds into McNair briefly. I heard from someone that the area is kind of crowded but don't know how well they really know the area. There does seem to be a lot of townhomes in that area. Looking on the map, I think one of the reasons why the homes there might be on the cheaper side is because it looks like the train tracks run right behind the neighborhood. (didn't confirm this or look into it further) At the time we looked, the homes in that area were fixer uppers or sounded like they had some issues. So the idea that I have for the pricing of homes in that area might not be accurate and skewed by those homes. |
Anonymous
There are plenty of Rockville neighborhoods outside to twin brook that are less than $750k: Fallsmead Fallswood Rockshire Horizon Hill Potomac Woods College Gardens Orchard Ridge Stratton Falls Ridge |
Anonymous
Yeah, I hesitated to include GSC on the list, but it seems to be better than a lot of what you would find in Germantown, Gaithersburg, and Rockville. I know a couple of families who attend and they seem pretty happy - same goes for McNair, though I am not as familiar with the neighborhoods. We have been pretty happy with Matsunaga, and the surrounding neighborhoods are solid. There is not much room for further housing construction in the region, so student populations should have peaked by now. Also, there are published plans to build a new ES that in theory will take some of the weight off McNair and Matsunaga. I am hoping the eventual opening of the new 270 exit at Watkins Mill will alleviate some of the traffic... http://www.germantownpulse.net/single-post/2016/07/18/Gov-Hogan-Announces-1296-million-for-Watkins-Mill-Interchange |
Anonymous
You can not find a decent single family home for a family of 5 for less than $750, especially going to Wootton. Maybe Richard Montgomery but that high school is not that good. The IB is good but the rest is, um no. |
Anonymous
That's total garbage. Outside the IB, RM is actually quite good. Yes, there is a population of about 400 highly achieving Magnet IB students. There is also a similarly-sized population of lower performing students. The remaining 1400 students are well capable, achieving students who work very hard and come from middle to upper class families. There are numerous opportunities to achieve and learn. No, it is not the pressure cooker that Wootton is; it does offer higher diversity and a realistic outlook on society. I would never want my kids to go to Wootton. Performance may be high on paper, but the environment is not a friendly one. If you are worried about SES, RM has high diversity. On the high end, Rose Hill, Horizon Hill, and Falls Grove have houses $700k to $1.1m. On the middle side, College Gardens, Potomac Woods, etc., have houses $500k to $700k. On the lower side, Twinbrook and various other areas have houses under $400k. It's well diverse and a great school. Julius West even tests well with the same population minus the IB Magnet. You just have some bias against RM. |
Anonymous
+1 |
Anonymous
Why is the non RBIM HS not good? |
Anonymous
PP probably thinks it's not good because the school is diverse. |
Anonymous
The same reasons OP is trying to find a better school. |