Good schools EoTP

[Anonymous]

Yup.

BASIS or Bethesda.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting but is that good or bad? I would have thought that SH would be more popular than that by now.

I think a lot of the people who want to attend already live IB or attend a feeder, so there aren't that many people trying to waitlist in.

It’s also too late. We’ll be making the decision to stay or sell in April after lottery results come out if not sooner. We can’t wait until July to see what happens with the waitlist.

This approach is overly dramatic. You could indeed wait. You wouldn't need to call a realtor the minute lottery results come out in April. You could always rent a place in Bethesda in August if you lacked lottery luck beforehand, then buy later on in the same school district. It's been done before.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting but is that good or bad? I would have thought that SH would be more popular than that by now.

I think a lot of the people who want to attend already live IB or attend a feeder, so there aren't that many people trying to waitlist in.

It’s also too late. We’ll be making the decision to stay or sell in April after lottery results come out if not sooner. We can’t wait until July to see what happens with the waitlist.

This approach is overly dramatic. You could indeed wait. You wouldn't need to call a realtor the minute lottery results come out in April. You could always rent a place in Bethesda in August if you lacked lottery luck beforehand, then buy later on in the same school district. It's been done before.

Oh yes. “Stop being dramatic - just have enough money to pay rent and your mortgage at the same time indefinitely!”

[Anonymous]

You could sublet a place in Bethesda for a few months if you didn't get off wait lists over the summer. We have neighbors who did that in MoCo or NOVA in the fall of 6th grade before buying. Others waited to get off WLs and wound up at BASIS or Latin 1 (meaning that they're still our neighbors).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You could sublet a place in Bethesda for a few months if you didn't get off wait lists over the summer. We have neighbors who did that in MoCo or NOVA in the fall of 6th grade before buying. Others waited to get off WLs and wound up at BASIS or Latin 1 (meaning that they're still our neighbors).

Still depends on having a high enough WL number to be worth it. We are nowhere near getting in and won’t ever be.

[Anonymous]

If you’re not committed to staying where you are, why bother with BASIS? Bethesda area middle and high schools offer a much better rounded education with experienced, grown up admins in charge.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you’re not committed to staying where you are, why bother with BASIS? Bethesda area middle and high schools offer a much better rounded education with experienced, grown up admins in charge.

+1

Basis has a high teacher turnover and admin turnover.

[Anonymous]

To answer questions on the prior page, the PP is lying about attending PTO meetings in 2014 because she wants to claim that "anyone" could have predicted that Maury would become a sought after elementary back then and could have done what she did before buying IB for Maury. She wants to take credit for her kid attending a great elementary that 10 years, people did not think was that great. She rejects the idea that, to some degree, your school choices on the Hill depend on the luck of timing.

I don't know why people are so determined to convince themselves of this. I guess so they can judge friends and neighbors and random people on the internet? Maybe people don't want to admit the degree to which life is sometimes just a game of chance. The refusal to recognize one's one good fortune, and to attribute all of the good things in your life to your own choices, is common. It is also, generally, wrong.

That's why the PP is digging in so hard on her story, which is almost certainly greatly embellished. We also bought a home on the Hill in 2014, and my recollection is that inventory was painfully low and houses sold incredibly quickly unless you were paying cash. We made a list of acceptable IB schools and looked at houses for all of them. They included Maury, Brent, L-T, the Cluster, and a couple others... I can't remember as it was a while ago. We bought the best house that we could find and get our offer accepted. We didn't yet have kids and we both have demanding jobs, so the idea of attending multiple PTO meetings for schools we weren't even sure we'd attend (one thing we like about the Hill is that there are also quite a few charter options that are a reasonable commute, and we actually wound up at TR anyway despite being IB for L-T) was not even on our radar.

We were lucky to be able to afford to buy, we were lucky that the IB school continued on a good trajectory after we bought, we were lucky to get a lottery spot at a school we really like, etc. We aren't geniuses. We have friends who were not lucky in these ways and we don't think we are better than them. We think it's a huge bummer that education in DC often depends so much on privilege and luck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To answer questions on the prior page, the PP is lying about attending PTO meetings in 2014 because she wants to claim that "anyone" could have predicted that Maury would become a sought after elementary back then and could have done what she did before buying IB for Maury. She wants to take credit for her kid attending a great elementary that 10 years, people did not think was that great. She rejects the idea that, to some degree, your school choices on the Hill depend on the luck of timing.

I don't know why people are so determined to convince themselves of this. I guess so they can judge friends and neighbors and random people on the internet? Maybe people don't want to admit the degree to which life is sometimes just a game of chance. The refusal to recognize one's one good fortune, and to attribute all of the good things in your life to your own choices, is common. It is also, generally, wrong.

That's why the PP is digging in so hard on her story, which is almost certainly greatly embellished. We also bought a home on the Hill in 2014, and my recollection is that inventory was painfully low and houses sold incredibly quickly unless you were paying cash. We made a list of acceptable IB schools and looked at houses for all of them. They included Maury, Brent, L-T, the Cluster, and a couple others... I can't remember as it was a while ago. We bought the best house that we could find and get our offer accepted. We didn't yet have kids and we both have demanding jobs, so the idea of attending multiple PTO meetings for schools we weren't even sure we'd attend (one thing we like about the Hill is that there are also quite a few charter options that are a reasonable commute, and we actually wound up at TR anyway despite being IB for L-T) was not even on our radar.

We were lucky to be able to afford to buy, we were lucky that the IB school continued on a good trajectory after we bought, we were lucky to get a lottery spot at a school we really like, etc. We aren't geniuses. We have friends who were not lucky in these ways and we don't think we are better than them. We think it's a huge bummer that education in DC often depends so much on privilege and luck.

BS. There were really only 2 safe DCPS elementary choices on the Hill in 2014, schools that could get you to the upper grades without a lot of stress. They were Brent and Maury. Watkins was already struggling in the face of competition from charters. Ludlow had unstable leadership and very few umc families in the upper grades. Brent's principal was really pissing parents off by favoring teacher and parent factions. Maury had the kickass Canadian. Houses in the Brent district were more expensive than those in the Maury area. You didn't need to sit in on a PTO meeting to figure any of this out, but I'm not surprised if a few parents of toddlers did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you’re not committed to staying where you are, why bother with BASIS? Bethesda area middle and high schools offer a much better rounded education with experienced, grown up admins in charge.

+1

Basis has a high teacher turnover and admin turnover.

BASIS also has hopeless facilities, no gym, outdoor space, sports facilities, stage, music program, not much natural light. Students can't even study a language until 8th grade. Bethesda. Language instruction starts in 4th or 5th grade in MoCo and the math is just as advanced. Science teaching may be better at BASIS, but that's about it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you’re not committed to staying where you are, why bother with BASIS? Bethesda area middle and high schools offer a much better rounded education with experienced, grown up admins in charge.

+1

Basis has a high teacher turnover and admin turnover.

BASIS also has hopeless facilities, no gym, outdoor space, sports facilities, stage, music program, not much natural light. Students can't even study a language until 8th grade. Bethesda. Language instruction starts in 4th or 5th grade in MoCo and the math is just as advanced. Science teaching may be better at BASIS, but that's about it.

Lol - you all act like Bethesda is the only acceptable option in MC

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you’re not committed to staying where you are, why bother with BASIS? Bethesda area middle and high schools offer a much better rounded education with experienced, grown up admins in charge.

+1

Basis has a high teacher turnover and admin turnover.

False.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you’re not committed to staying where you are, why bother with BASIS? Bethesda area middle and high schools offer a much better rounded education with experienced, grown up admins in charge.

God not you again. Are you 85 years old and still ranting about youngsters trespassing on your lawn?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you’re not committed to staying where you are, why bother with BASIS? Bethesda area middle and high schools offer a much better rounded education with experienced, grown up admins in charge.

+1

Basis has a high teacher turnover and admin turnover.

BASIS also has hopeless facilities, no gym, outdoor space, sports facilities, stage, music program, not much natural light. Students can't even study a language until 8th grade. Bethesda. Language instruction starts in 4th or 5th grade in MoCo and the math is just as advanced. Science teaching may be better at BASIS, but that's about it.

Wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you’re not committed to staying where you are, why bother with BASIS? Bethesda area middle and high schools offer a much better rounded education with experienced, grown up admins in charge.

+1

Basis has a high teacher turnover and admin turnover.

False.

27% of faculty and staff left in 2020. The data is not out yet for this year but from my personal knowledge there will be lots of new faces at the Hs level.