good neighborhood school vs. city-wide or charter school

[Anonymous]

Entering the lottery and trying to decide whether to pref the good neighborhood school or the city-wide school that is further away, but generally more highly regarded. Anyone who made such a decision able to weigh the pros and cons for me? Thanks.

[Anonymous]

For preschool or elementary school? There is no doubt in my mind that I would go with our neighborhood school if I considered mine good (which I don't). In fact, we are seriously considering moving for kindergarten in-boundary for a good school even if we get into a good charter. There are so many benefits to neighborhood schools--play dates/friends who live nearby and convenience chief among them--and these I see as really essential in elementary school. Even if we got into a relatively nearby charter, my child's friends would be from all over the city. I think the sense of community you get from a good neighborhood school cannot be matched by charters, even among the ones where the parents are most involved.

[Anonymous]

I'm assuming this is for PS.

We do not like our IB school, so we chose a city-wide charter a few years back that is a 15 minute drive from the house, but generally on the way to and from work for my commute. If it were 15 minutes the other way, we would have had to do beforecare or make some other change to make it work. With the little ones if the timing of your morning commute is important, keep that in mind.

Play dates, however, have not been a problem to schedule. Enough families at the school live in our neighborhood or nearby, so we've been lucky.

[Anonymous]

The distance is such a blessing or a heartache depending on your situation. Our school, growing but not yet the envy of DCUM, is blocks from our house and we can walk. That is so, so much better than driving up/down North Capitol 30 minutes and trying to figure out what to do with my car and get to my office, all between 8:00 and 9:00 a.m. We are going to have day care and school in different places this year with a new baby and I wonder how it is possible for people to run around as far as they do.

[Anonymous]

Having had experience at both, I think the previous poster overstates the case for the neighborhood school, but is generally correct.

We found the parent involvement at the neighborhood school to be higher. Of course, that could be due to a variety of factors unrelated to distance from school, but personally, I would be less inclined to schlep across town on a weeknight for a school event, so I do think there is some causation involved.

We also enjoy seeing other parents out and about in the neighborhood and that obviously didn't happen nearly as often w/r/t the citywide school.

Maybe the friend issue would become more significant as the years went by, but most of our child's close friends do not go to school with her, so that really wasn't an issue.

Assuming the schools are of relatively equal quality, I would rate distance as the most important factor. How far is "further away"? Our citywide school was still in the neighborhood, but I can't imagine having a 20-30 minute commute each morning to school, and then re-commuting to work. The cost of that stress of the entire family should be weighed against the benefit of a marginally better school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Having had experience at both, I think the previous poster overstates the case for the neighborhood school, but is generally correct.

We found the parent involvement at the neighborhood school to be higher. Of course, that could be due to a variety of factors unrelated to distance from school, but personally, I would be less inclined to schlep across town on a weeknight for a school event, so I do think there is some causation involved.

We also enjoy seeing other parents out and about in the neighborhood and that obviously didn't happen nearly as often w/r/t the citywide school.

Maybe the friend issue would become more significant as the years went by, but most of our child's close friends do not go to school with her, so that really wasn't an issue.

Assuming the schools are of relatively equal quality, I would rate distance as the most important factor. How far is "further away"? Our citywide school was still in the neighborhood, but I can't imagine having a 20-30 minute commute each morning to school, and then re-commuting to work. The cost of that stress of the entire family should be weighed against the benefit of a marginally better school.

Sorry! By previous poster I meant the second post.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Having had experience at both, I think the previous poster overstates the case for the neighborhood school, but is generally correct.

We found the parent involvement at the neighborhood school to be higher. Of course, that could be due to a variety of factors unrelated to distance from school, but personally, I would be less inclined to schlep across town on a weeknight for a school event, so I do think there is some causation involved.

We also enjoy seeing other parents out and about in the neighborhood and that obviously didn't happen nearly as often w/r/t the citywide school.

Maybe the friend issue would become more significant as the years went by, but most of our child's close friends do not go to school with her, so that really wasn't an issue.

Assuming the schools are of relatively equal quality, I would rate distance as the most important factor. How far is "further away"? Our citywide school was still in the neighborhood, but I can't imagine having a 20-30 minute commute each morning to school, and then re-commuting to work. The cost of that stress of the entire family should be weighed against the benefit of a marginally better school.

I think this is key - how much better would the charter be than the neighborhood school? If your neighborhood is "good" then if you get into a charter that you consider "great" it may be worth it, assuming it's not too long to get there. But if you're talking about a good school vs. a school that is just a little better, I'd stick with the good school.

[Anonymous]

OP here. Yes, for pre-school, but we would hope to stay at whatever school we start in through 5th grade. These posts have been helpful. Keep them coming! For what it is worth, the IB school is a few blocks away, and the city-wide school we are considering would be a 30-min walk (at an adult pace) or a 10-min drive, not in the complete opposite direction of work, but not directly in the path either. I do not think the schools are exactly equal. If I did, I would give the IB school the edge automatically b/c of proximity. The city-wide school is definitely more established and probably has fewer teachers "who no one wants to have."

[Anonymous]

I can't imagine you'll be walking there. The schools I have visited do not allow strollers to be stored, so you would have to bring the stroller back with you if you went that route. I would expect a 10 minute drive. However, note that on another thread (the "what factors are you weighting as you make your decisions" thread), one parent said that you should at least double the estimated time to drive/bus/metro to a school, to account for walking to/from bus/metro/car, parking, getting the kid in the carseat, etc. This made us really rethink our rankings with respect to convenience. We ended up ranking our in-boundary school and others right around us (none of which is a good school) higher than we otherwise would. Getting around with a preschooler is hard. There are a few charters we applied to and if we got in (highly unlikely) we would probably move closer to the charter, assuming we liked it.

[Anonymous]

We did not consider our neighborhood school but we would not have considered it even if it was a great school. We want and got into an immersion language charter so a 10 minute drive instead of a 10 minute walk from our house. Really depends on what you want in a school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Yes, for pre-school, but we would hope to stay at whatever school we start in through 5th grade. These posts have been helpful. Keep them coming! For what it is worth, the IB school is a few blocks away, and the city-wide school we are considering would be a 30-min walk (at an adult pace) or a 10-min drive, not in the complete opposite direction of work, but not directly in the path either. I do not think the schools are exactly equal. If I did, I would give the IB school the edge automatically b/c of proximity. The city-wide school is definitely more established and probably has fewer teachers "who no one wants to have."

But, would you really be walking those few blocks? Or would you end up driving anyway? Trying to get a 3-4 year old to walk a few blocks may take you more than 10 minutes in any event. And as someone else noted, you really can't use a stroller unless you plan on walking it back home. I'm not saying this is universal, but the vast majority of parents I see walking their kids to school are stay at home moms.

That's not to say that driving 5 minutes is still not a heck of a lot better than driving 15 minutes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are a few charters we applied to and if we got in (highly unlikely) we would probably move closer to the charter, assuming we liked it.

I think this is one of the most exciting possibilities - that in the places where schools have closed due to lack of kids and charters have moved in, high-SES folks from other parts of the City might move close to their kid's school and live in places like Edgewood or Manor Park. This is a cool prospect.

[Anonymous]

I'm dealing with a similar question. Just visited our IB school (across the street), which is EOTP, and loved the PS and PK program. I was so impressed with the facilities, teachers and staff. Would probably consider going through K. But where does that leave me? Also, I have started to consider that maybe the somewhat sought-after charters near my house, whose test scores, btw, are equally dismal, might not even be as good as my local PS at early childhood. This is all to say that these decisions are very stressful. I'm actually thinking of making Spanish language a key factor in my decision (which none of these schools have, incidentally) just to make my ranking easier no matter what the commute. My child speaks Spanish and I hate for him to lose it.

[Anonymous]

We live on Capitol Hill and our child goes to Two Rivers. The school is exactly two miles away from our house in SE. While Two Rivers is obviously a city wide school, we've found that nearly all of her friends live in the greater Capitol Hill area so it really feels like a neighborhood school. She plays soccer with classmates through Soccer on the Hill and we always run into school friends at Eastern Market and Yards Park.

I don't know anyone from the neighborhood who goes to Mundo Verdo or Stokes, and I only know of one child who goes to IT and another who goes to Sela. Yu Ying is sort of the exception -- I know a few kids there. So this thread made me curious -- are other charter schools like Two Rivers in that they have a large percentage of students from a specific geographic location? Or is our experience just an anomaly? I would think that many folks would want to go to a school that is relatively close and I'd this is the case, the charter school may actually feel looked a neighborhood school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We live on Capitol Hill and our child goes to Two Rivers. The school is exactly two miles away from our house in SE. While Two Rivers is obviously a city wide school, we've found that nearly all of her friends live in the greater Capitol Hill area so it really feels like a neighborhood school. She plays soccer with classmates through Soccer on the Hill and we always run into school friends at Eastern Market and Yards Park.

I don't know anyone from the neighborhood who goes to Mundo Verdo or Stokes, and I only know of one child who goes to IT and another who goes to Sela. Yu Ying is sort of the exception -- I know a few kids there. So this thread made me curious -- are other charter schools like Two Rivers in that they have a large percentage of students from a specific geographic location? Or is our experience just an anomaly? I would think that many folks would want to go to a school that is relatively close and I'd this is the case, the charter school may actually feel looked a neighborhood school.

Except that now, the chances that you'll get into any sought-after charter are very slim--let alone one near you. I think people are willing to make the commute if they luck out, even if across time--but at great personal cost in terms of commute time.