The challenge of buying for schools
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Anonymous
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It’s a trade-off, but a good one. It’s hyper focus on your kids as it should be. Get in the Whitman district or equivalent, and stay there until your youngest reaches 18.
from the perspective of kids, I’d much rather be in a 1970s house in the Whitman or Churchill districts than let’s say a brand new build stunner in the WJ/BCC or lower clusters for example. |
Anonymous
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Buy a house that you like and can see yourself staying in long term. As someone whose kids are nearing the end of high school and starting college, I really don’t think the school district matters that much to a student’s trajectory.
If the school is truly “bad”, there is always a way out through pupil placement into another school for an academy-type program. Private school or a homeschool group may also be an option. Despite how important schools seem to you while your kids are young, kids grow up quickly. I bought a nice house in a neighborhood zoned for schools that are avoided and I don’t regret it one bit. |
Anonymous
| This board's obsession with "good" (ie rich) schools is kind of sad. God forbid your kid ever be exposed to anything outside of the most extreme privilege. I'm sure they'll all be empathetic and resilient adults. |
Anonymous
I mean, I agree, though I do think when house hunting often the issue is not that people have to be in the best schools, so much that they are trying to avoid failing schools. And while I think the concept of a "best" school is highly debatable, the existence of "worst" schools is not -- some schools are dysfunctional, poorly funded, bleeding teachers, have awful or inconsistent administration, etc. And sadly this does tend to coincide with having school populations of lower income families, because they have less power to do anything about it. Yes there are people on this board who think only certain schools in very wealthy districts are worth sending your kids (and if you can't buy there, then you "have" to go private, and it's assumed that's a possibility). But there are a lot more people who would be happy at a whole range of schools but are just trying to avoid a school that will actively limit their children. And it's sometimes hard to tell the difference between a failing school and one that is perfectly good but has a diverse population that will actually be good for kids, especially when you are peering in as prospective buyers and have less opportunity to get to know the school before deciding where to go. |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
You do know the research on high-achieving schools being a significant risk factor for later mental health problems, right? You must, since you value education so highly. |
Anonymous
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Are you sure the schools you don't like are actually bad? It sounds like the houses you like feed to schools with more poor kids in them, which often leads to lower test scores and lower rankings but doesn't actually mean they aren't great schools. In fact they can often have better class sizes and other resources.
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Anonymous
| Our school is consider “bad” by many people on here. The people who actually attend the school love it. The teachers are engaged and excellent. The kids are thriving. Everyone who goes loves it. But 70% of the school qualifies for free lunch, so all of a sudden it’s a “bad” school. It is not. It’s an excellent school where children from all types of backgrounds are thriving. And better yet, the kids that go there are learning what the real world looks like. It’s not just white SUVs and blonde moms and that’s a good thing. |
Anonymous
I love my house in Fairfax City. And most of the neighborhoods around me were built in the 50s and 60s, not 80s and 90s. Plus, everyone in the surrounding Fairfax County looks down their noses at Ffx HS, because why would you live here when you could be in the Frost-Woodson pyramid?
FWIW, OP, Fairfax City is very nice with a good mix of housing options, a nice walkable downtown, and great schools (we've been very happy with Daniel's Run Elem and our friends with middle and high schoolers are happy there). There's one particular neighborhood that I refused to live in, because all the houses are weirdly laid out and ugly (with those tiny windows in the front and lots of strange renovations to try to make them work better), but there were plenty of other neighborhoods to look at. |
Anonymous
...Because you have to live in it every day. -not OP |
Anonymous
Shhhh |
Anonymous
A school doesn’t suddenly end up 70% FARMS and deemed “bad.” It takes years of higher-income and better-educated families gradually leaving an area because they’ve seen how their kids get ignored and taken for granted in the public schools, while most of the focus is on trying to get ESOL and FARMS kids to a basic competency level. So you can trash the “blonde moms” all you want, but it’s a broader demographic that also includes Asian families and higher-income Black families that is leaving you to your super-majority FARMS paradise. |
Anonymous
Eh. I used to think this way but I'm now watching firsthand in our neighborhood and surrounding area as families opt for a "prestigious' catholic school over a well funded and awesome (but diverse) public. The catholic school has larger classes, less experienced and less qualified teachers, and a VERY conservative world view that doesn't generally align with that of the families who attend, but hey it's what everyone else is doing and no concerns that your kids might hear Spanish at lunch. Not a lot of though or investigation going into the decision at all. Some of the moms are brunettes, though. |
Anonymous
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We purchased a house for schools and neighborhood. Our neighborhood has lots of similarly-aged children and parents that we hang out with on a daily basis. It's great.
We moved away from a gorgeous and historic 4 bedroom house to a ugly house and NO RAGRETS.  Our kids are thriving and we're slowly making the most with our house.
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Anonymous
Where did you go? I need that atmosphere. |