I like Capitol Hill but worry about High School.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can just rent in Bethesda for 4 years. Think of it as living abroad and then move back when your kid is done with high school

or stay if your kid wants to go to UMD, so you get in-state tuition.

[Anonymous]

The DC private schools are now just a hair shy of $50K.
With required fees you are looking at $100K for 2 kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP- if you are lucky in the lottery or can afford private, or are willing to bet on getting into walls, you stay. If not you move or settle for eastern. We rolled the dice for many years staying, and now are forced to move, because Elliott hine doesn’t meet our standards (neither does eastern). The vast majority of our friends had better options because they were luckier or have more money. Leaving is sad but the reality for some. Good luck! We will miss the hill immensely.

Who settles for Eastern? We've been on the Hill since the mid 1990s don't know anybody in the neighborhood who sends their teens there, not even low SES neighbors (they send their kids to charters like KIPP). Eastern's catchment area is around 2/3s white these days while the school has a handful of white students (literally).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can just rent in Bethesda for 4 years. Think of it as living abroad and then move back when your kid is done with high school

or stay if your kid wants to go to UMD, so you get in-state tuition.

Not OP, but this is actually a great option.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can just rent in Bethesda for 4 years. Think of it as living abroad and then move back when your kid is done with high school

This is my plan if we don't end up with a high school path my kids and I feel good about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is this a troll post?

Does a real city person not know about ANY other options than Wilson HS vs moving to *McLean*?!?!?

Read up on charters or just move to your people in Virginia.

Yep, Bethesda and Rosslyn/Clarendon are probably almost as city as Capital Hill, maybe more so unless you consider ‘city’ == ‘crime’

Rosslyn/Clarendon and Bethesda are definitely more city than freaking Tenleytown!

Are you 25 OP? Most people outgrow their “city-mouse, country-mouse” obsession.

And OMG, Sidwell?? ROFL. literally.

So it sounds like $80k for private school is a stretch you need to avoid, don’t want to gamble on charters, and want... whatever ‘city’ means. Walkable to metro? Walkable to grocery store and library? Walkable to parks? Property crime? What are you looking for?

It’s not a city mouse country mouse issue, it’s that we like Capitol Hill and moving to a cookie-cutter neighborhood just sounds very unappealing. Our kids can go to the museums, or they could before Covid. I won’t get into the details but it comes down to Capitol Hill is a wonderful neighborhood. However if we had to say stay in DC, which we’d like to, Moving up to North West sounds pretty good. Yes metro accessibility and walk ability are huge primary considerations we don’t wanna have to commute 15 miles each way or staying an hour of traffic or anything like that. I think you’re right with the charter school ideas.

I can't even with you. You understand the commute from, like Rosslyn, crazy fast to Capitol Hill, whether by metro or car.

Why are you schlepping for lesser quality schools (and APS does have issues, but Yorktown/WL still seems to perform better than Wilson) just to claim you live in the "city" @ Tenleytown?

You aren't finding "cooking-cutter" houses until you get to the greenfield development in the exurbs.

Oh, and guess what, rowhouses are the DEFINITION of cookie cutters, they are literally all the same except for color. So old cookies, makes them stale? (And I love DC rowhouses, BTW, just OP is ridiculous on multiple levels).

This is hilarious. My exact thought when OP said he didn’t want to move to a cookie cutter neighborhood. We moved to the burbs from the hill a few years ago. Our new neighborhood has way more diverse housing stock than the hill. We’ve got colonials, craftsman, modern, mid century, etc.

[Anonymous]

OP, there are several application high schools in the District that you can easily access from the Hill. Your bigger worry should be MS which is much harder to manage. For HS you have Walls (academic magnet), Banneker (academic magnet), McKinley Tech (STEM magnet), Bard Early College (academic magnet), Duke Ellington (arts magnet), Phelps (vo-tech magnet), and Columbia Heights Education Campus (language magnet). There are also some Catholic HS options easily accessible from the Hill that are under $20K/year -- Gonzaga, Seton, DeMatha, for example. And I'm not sure what the PP is saying about there not being any teens -- my 2 teens and many others are roving all over the place, pre-Covid. They are tending to be pretty responsible during Covid, though I still see pairs walking around.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We live in Capitol Hill. The terms on our street (who aren’t unicorns in the sense that there are like 6 families with them on a one block street) go to Latin (multiple), Basis, SWW (multiple), Duke Ellington and private (SJC and NCS).

Same on our block -- 3 blocks from Eastern Market -- we have 3 BASIS high schoolers, 2 BASIS middle schoolers, 5 Latin kids, 2 SWW, and one private (don't remember which one) school high school. Plus at least another 10 kids who are babies or in elementary school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, there are several application high schools in the District that you can easily access from the Hill. Your bigger worry should be MS which is much harder to manage. For HS you have Walls (academic magnet), Banneker (academic magnet), McKinley Tech (STEM magnet), Bard Early College (academic magnet), Duke Ellington (arts magnet), Phelps (vo-tech magnet), and Columbia Heights Education Campus (language magnet). There are also some Catholic HS options easily accessible from the Hill that are under $20K/year -- Gonzaga, Seton, DeMatha, for example. And I'm not sure what the PP is saying about there not being any teens -- my 2 teens and many others are roving all over the place, pre-Covid. They are tending to be pretty responsible during Covid, though I still see pairs walking around.

. NP, your magnet HS list sounds great on paper, PP. Unfortunately, the sad reality is that only Walls has a good cohort of high SES students. And only Walls has a good cohort of white students (the Hill is mostly white now). Gonzaga is more than 20k now, around 25K and only for boys of course.

[Anonymous]

Search on DCPS school profiles to see magnet school profiles. Every white parent isn’t Going to be OK with 2% white at Banneker and McKinkey Tech. Let’s not pretend that these programs are acceptable alternatives to Eastern for more than a tiny % of high SES parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This Hill dweller doesn’t even know that Eastern is in NE? I’m thinking troll.

You aren’t up on your Hill marketing; its like Dupont Circle or Bethesda, its large enough to have its own military.

https://www.compass.com/neighborhood-guides/dc/capitol-hill/

[Anonymous]

Is there a girls' school that is a close-in equivalent of Gonzaga or St. Anselms Abbey or Dematha?

[Anonymous]

have you checked the private schools forum? I mean, I've heard of NCS and Visitation but I can't be sure of the overall scene.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Search on DCPS school profiles to see magnet school profiles. Every white parent isn’t Going to be OK with 2% white at Banneker and McKinkey Tech. Let’s not pretend that these programs are acceptable alternatives to Eastern for more than a tiny % of high SES parents.

Barf. Is your kid afraid of Latinos and Black people? I bet they aren't, even if you are.

Plus, if you have a white kid and he and some of his friends apply, the school wouldn't even be 2% white anymore...unless your kid is too dumb to get in.

Look, if you are worried because you need a school with some specific percentage of white people but you also need to live in a city I'm sure you can work something out, but it's more of a you issue than a school issue, and not one I want DC government to spend any time solving.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, there are several application high schools in the District that you can easily access from the Hill. Your bigger worry should be MS which is much harder to manage. For HS you have Walls (academic magnet), Banneker (academic magnet), McKinley Tech (STEM magnet), Bard Early College (academic magnet), Duke Ellington (arts magnet), Phelps (vo-tech magnet), and Columbia Heights Education Campus (language magnet). There are also some Catholic HS options easily accessible from the Hill that are under $20K/year -- Gonzaga, Seton, DeMatha, for example. And I'm not sure what the PP is saying about there not being any teens -- my 2 teens and many others are roving all over the place, pre-Covid. They are tending to be pretty responsible during Covid, though I still see pairs walking around.

. NP, your magnet HS list sounds great on paper, PP. Unfortunately, the sad reality is that only Walls has a good cohort of high SES students. And only Walls has a good cohort of white students (the Hill is mostly white now). Gonzaga is more than 20k now, around 25K and only for boys of course.

Well, there it is. Does OP know that the whitest middle school (Stuart-Hobson) on the Hill is only 13% white? might as well worry about that too if whiteness is her metric.
Other than maybe Watkins, are any of Stuart-Hobson's feeders even going to be white enough for her?

OP, you don't really love the city if all you love is the museums and your short commute but you're worried about your teenagers being in school with other teenagers whose parents also want to live in DC. You love museums, and your own convenience.