Moving to NOVA in a year - looking for good elementary schools that feed to good middle schools & HS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP--there are zillions of threads on this. Please take the time to read them instead of starting a new one.

Assume you are a stay at homer with shit tons of time on your hands. That's not a reality for those of us that work.

DP. Rule #1 in asking for help is "do not insult the people you ask for help."

You didn't offer "help" so no harm done.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Public schools outside of Tj are all highly flawed. You should stay in DC and go private.

This is your standard response to anyone considering NoVa for its public schools. Not sure if you have an exaggerated view of TJ, or if it's just how to you try to convince people to avoid parts of NoVa, but it's getting boring and it's not helpful for OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm the PP who recommended the West Springfield pyramid. Our situation was that we were going to have to move anyway so we looked for the best schools in an area where we could afford to rent. We did online research, drove around neighborhoods, and then made two maps - one with all the places where we could expect to find a nice home and one with all the schools that we liked. Then we overlaid them. That narrowed the search. We were going to need SACC (School Age Child Care) and the sign-up is a year in advance. Fairfax County only lets you sign up for two schools (if you don't sign up the day that the sign-up opens (and I mean, within minutes of the phone lines opening - good luck getting in). That limited our choices further. We narrowed it down to two elementary schools and then, when we searched for a place to live, we knew that we only needed to look in those two small elementary school districts, since we only had child care there. It helped focus the search.

Anyway, that was our process. Your situation might be different but we really like our area and the schools, so it worked out for us.

Thanks so much for the tip of SACC! I would not have thought of that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP--there are zillions of threads on this. Please take the time to read them instead of starting a new one.

Assume you are a stay at homer with shit tons of time on your hands. That's not a reality for those of us that work.

And for those of us who put in a lot of time writing a response I don't want to have to keep re-writing my tips/advice when this same question comes up every single week.

Here's a good question: If that is your position, why did you even bother responding?! Clearly you have time on your hands!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Areas around Woodson, Lake Braddock and Robinson would all be in your commute range and there is pretty wide variation in budgets from low 400s for a townhouse to a bunch of SFH in the upper 400-600Ks up to +1 million in a few pockets . Those high schools are good and all the ES in those systems are solid (don't bother with "Great Schools" ranks--they are really distorted--look at the data on the FCPS websites). Lake Braddock and Robinson are both 7-12th secondary schools. Woodson has Frost as a middle school. Commute via 495/395 is about 40-50 min in rush hour of course depending on exact location/time of commute or 40-45 min by express VRE train.

Very helpful advice. I appreciate you taking time to respond

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Terra Center in Burke Center. Your child would feed into Robinson Secondary.

+1. All depends on your budget, though. We love the Burke area, plus two VRE stations (takes about 40 minutes to get to L'Enfant).

Some of the posters here have just been plain nasty, ignore them.

OP here. I second your sentiments and thank you for offering your advice

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Terra Center in Burke Center. Your child would feed into Robinson Secondary.

+1. All depends on your budget, though. We love the Burke area, plus two VRE stations (takes about 40 minutes to get to L'Enfant).

Some of the posters here have just been plain nasty, ignore them.

OP here. I second your sentiments and thank you for offering your advice

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What’s your budget? Where in DC?

$900,000 - $1 million. Presently in Petworth.

Look at homes that feed into Yorktown in Arlington County
McLean, Langley, Marshall, Madison in Fairfax County
George Mason in Falls Church City

[Anonymous]

I still think it's a silly question. There is no "good" or "bad" school. There are schools that have certain qualities to them and ones that are in different locations and come with different price points for buying a home. OP's question is way too vague.

[Anonymous]

Fairfax or Chantilly have good schools in the Rocky Run/Chantilly High pyramid

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Fairfax or Chantilly have good schools in the Rocky Run/Chantilly High pyramid

I'd submit that's getting a bit far out given OP's preference for a commute to DC in the 45-60 minute range.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP--there are zillions of threads on this. Please take the time to read them instead of starting a new one.

Assume you are a stay at homer with shit tons of time on your hands. That's not a reality for those of us that work.

DP. Rule #1 in asking for help is "do not insult the people you ask for help."

+1

OP is a B. Not going out of my way to answer her ambiguous question.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What’s your budget? Where in DC?

$900,000 - $1 million. Presently in Petworth.

Top 3 schools, after TJ, are Langley, McLean, Oakton. You can find homes in your price point in these pyramids. Good luck!

[Anonymous]

I highly recommend Falls Church City (Henderson, George Mason).
It’s a small school district with small class and fantastic schools.
You can definitely find a house in your price range and it’s highly walkable to it probably will be less of culture shock for you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Terra Center in Burke Center. Your child would feed into Robinson Secondary.

+1 all of the Robinson and Lake Braddock pyramid schools are good options