Looking to move to DC and overwhelmed by school system!

[Anonymous]

OP here- thanks everyone!
We actually live in a suburb right now and our commutes to our jobs in the city (Capitol Hill for my husband, Tenleytown for me) are draining our souls. Suburbs may happen in our future, but we really miss urban living and that's the environment we want to raise young kids in- where we have all of our friends and connections. Also, there is no way we are going to stay in a 2 bedroom condo for 11 years, so moving will absolutely have to happen in the future and that's a part of life. I moved in 6th grade and I turned out okay, so I think our kids can handle it too. I really appreciate the thoughts on potential neighborhoods!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While I am sure it is not a universal experience, my friends who have moved to the suburbs have described their years with very small children as extremely isolating and the worst years of their lives. Living in an EOTP neighborhood with lots of small children, I have not felt isolated at all in these years. We chose to buy in DC prekids planning to take advantage of DC’s prek program and knowing that we may need to move later on if the schools weren’t working for us. We were lucky and lotteried into a DCI feeder so currently have no plans to move. For what it’s worth, the average amount of time that an American owns a single home is something like 7 years. Your first home is very unlikely to be your forever home so I recommend that you stay conservative in your home purchase so you have more options later on.

Correct, this is not a universal experience.

Also, how old are your kids? I'm guessing still in elementary. DCI does not look as good close up as it does from the distance of PK.

Winning the PK lottery just postponed your crisis, it didn't get rid of it.

It's also ridiculous in these threads when people act like your options are (1) terrific, vibrant city neighborhood with lots of kids and convenient transit and all the amenities, or (2) far flung suburb where you have to drive to get your mail. It's not that binary. I know plenty of car dependent people in DC (including some in Petworth), and I know folks in suburbs that are walkable, community oriented, and lively.

Yeah, i actually don't think elementary school parents should be able to give their advice to this OP. Too many elementary schools are totally fine, and they have NO clue how stressful it is to reach middle school and try to find a sufficiently viable path EOTP.

And I'm saying that as someone who found a path and is set through 12th (BASIS and both my kids are good fits there). And we have similarly well situation friends (Latin, lotteried for JR feeders, surfed through mediocre middle schools and then ended up at Banneker or Walls).

The exhilaration of navigating this is real.

But we have many friends who had had to move before middle school, who are stuck in poor schools, and who wish they had just moved earlier and saved themselves stress and their kids a subpar education while they figured it out. This is a significant population and it's a brutal outcome.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here- thanks everyone!
We actually live in a suburb right now and our commutes to our jobs in the city (Capitol Hill for my husband, Tenleytown for me) are draining our souls. Suburbs may happen in our future, but we really miss urban living and that's the environment we want to raise young kids in- where we have all of our friends and connections. Also, there is no way we are going to stay in a 2 bedroom condo for 11 years, so moving will absolutely have to happen in the future and that's a part of life. I moved in 6th grade and I turned out okay, so I think our kids can handle it too. I really appreciate the thoughts on potential neighborhoods!

If you genuinely are open to moving later, you should move to Dupont and get in bounds for Ross. Urban feel but a very high quality school, midway between your commutes, huge community feel. There are so many apartments in bounds, too -- I think an office-to-residential conversion is coming on line this spring with 2/3 bedrooms?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While I am sure it is not a universal experience, my friends who have moved to the suburbs have described their years with very small children as extremely isolating and the worst years of their lives. Living in an EOTP neighborhood with lots of small children, I have not felt isolated at all in these years. We chose to buy in DC prekids planning to take advantage of DC’s prek program and knowing that we may need to move later on if the schools weren’t working for us. We were lucky and lotteried into a DCI feeder so currently have no plans to move. For what it’s worth, the average amount of time that an American owns a single home is something like 7 years. Your first home is very unlikely to be your forever home so I recommend that you stay conservative in your home purchase so you have more options later on.

Correct, this is not a universal experience.

Also, how old are your kids? I'm guessing still in elementary. DCI does not look as good close up as it does from the distance of PK.

Winning the PK lottery just postponed your crisis, it didn't get rid of it.

It's also ridiculous in these threads when people act like your options are (1) terrific, vibrant city neighborhood with lots of kids and convenient transit and all the amenities, or (2) far flung suburb where you have to drive to get your mail. It's not that binary. I know plenty of car dependent people in DC (including some in Petworth), and I know folks in suburbs that are walkable, community oriented, and lively.

Yeah, i actually don't think elementary school parents should be able to give their advice to this OP. Too many elementary schools are totally fine, and they have NO clue how stressful it is to reach middle school and try to find a sufficiently viable path EOTP.

And I'm saying that as someone who found a path and is set through 12th (BASIS and both my kids are good fits there). And we have similarly well situation friends (Latin, lotteried for JR feeders, surfed through mediocre middle schools and then ended up at Banneker or Walls).

The exhilaration of navigating this is real.

But we have many friends who had had to move before middle school, who are stuck in poor schools, and who wish they had just moved earlier and saved themselves stress and their kids a subpar education while they figured it out. This is a significant population and it's a brutal outcome.

I can’t agree more. It is so stressful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't know much about Barnard but there are a number of good options in that neighborhood.

If you tell us your budget we can tell you three or four neighborhoods to target with decent and/or up-and-coming elementary schools.

We are looking to spend max 800k for a small place (2-3 bedrooms). I previously lived in petworth in my early 20s so definitely interested in that area, but don't know much about the schools.

Thank you!

You should look into McLean Gardens in NW DC. 2-3 bedroom condos are in your price range and zoned for either Hearst-Deal-Jackson Reed or Eaton-Hardy-Macarthur.

+1 this is the best advice

+2. Couldn’t agree more, as a Petworth family with a middle schooler. We “won” the lottery and got into a Deal-JR feeder in upper elementary, but it took years of lotterying, school hopping, and putting a big kid through a September school switch to get here. And now that I know my kid’s academic needs, I can see that Deal is the best DC can offer for my DC (we turned down DCI feeders and then Basis for academic and non-academic reasons), but MCPS, Fairfax, or even Arlington would be much better academically for my advanced kid.

DC has an easy school commute on the bus, our Petworth starter home is beyond affordable, and we’re settled. But we never fully got the community that we saw in our OOB elementary schools and the stress and instability of the lottery is avoidable by buying in a community with an acceptable school pyramid. The townhouse communities in Ward 3 are great for this, as are the close-in suburbs. The one thing I really regret is not understanding the intangible benefits of living in a kid-friendly community with a neighborhood school.

So know that buying in Ward 4 means your child will lose friends throughout elementary as others win the lottery or move, kids in the neighborhood will go to a dozen different schools, and lining up a middle and high school pathway may take some hard choices and a lot of stress.

It can work out, we’re an example of that, but if your budget gives you options that avoid the lottery, then why make things harder for yourself and your kids?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't know much about Barnard but there are a number of good options in that neighborhood.

If you tell us your budget we can tell you three or four neighborhoods to target with decent and/or up-and-coming elementary schools.

We are looking to spend max 800k for a small place (2-3 bedrooms). I previously lived in petworth in my early 20s so definitely interested in that area, but don't know much about the schools.

Thank you!

You should look into McLean Gardens in NW DC. 2-3 bedroom condos are in your price range and zoned for either Hearst-Deal-Jackson Reed or Eaton-Hardy-Macarthur.

+1 this is the best advice

+2. Couldn’t agree more, as a Petworth family with a middle schooler. We “won” the lottery and got into a Deal-JR feeder in upper elementary, but it took years of lotterying, school hopping, and putting a big kid through a September school switch to get here. And now that I know my kid’s academic needs, I can see that Deal is the best DC can offer for my DC (we turned down DCI feeders and then Basis for academic and non-academic reasons), but MCPS, Fairfax, or even Arlington would be much better academically for my advanced kid.

DC has an easy school commute on the bus, our Petworth starter home is beyond affordable, and we’re settled. But we never fully got the community that we saw in our OOB elementary schools and the stress and instability of the lottery is avoidable by buying in a community with an acceptable school pyramid. The townhouse communities in Ward 3 are great for this, as are the close-in suburbs. The one thing I really regret is not understanding the intangible benefits of living in a kid-friendly community with a neighborhood school.

So know that buying in Ward 4 means your child will lose friends throughout elementary as others win the lottery or move, kids in the neighborhood will go to a dozen different schools, and lining up a middle and high school pathway may take some hard choices and a lot of stress.

It can work out, we’re an example of that, but if your budget gives you options that avoid the lottery, then why make things harder for yourself and your kids?

This is funny because we turned down deal for a DCI feeder as we did not think that dcps and Jr could handle our academically advanced kids.

Back to the point of this thread- do you hear the stress in both my and PP’s voices? You don’t want this. And honestly it doesn’t look like the situation is getting better.

[Anonymous]

I have heard that Ward 3 has the same dynamic of kids peeling off all the time (because they peel off to go to private). Is there any neighborhood in DC with acceptable schools where the majority of kids really do stick with the pyramid the whole way through? EOTP people lottery out to get better schools or move; WOTP people peel off for private.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have heard that Ward 3 has the same dynamic of kids peeling off all the time (because they peel off to go to private). Is there any neighborhood in DC with acceptable schools where the majority of kids really do stick with the pyramid the whole way through? EOTP people lottery out to get better schools or move; WOTP people peel off for private.

My honest take is no. Early Ed is good. Early elementary is okay…. But as kids get older it goes from troubling to unacceptable. The best case option you can get is a solid charter with a path through high school. And even then it’s not perfect.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have heard that Ward 3 has the same dynamic of kids peeling off all the time (because they peel off to go to private). Is there any neighborhood in DC with acceptable schools where the majority of kids really do stick with the pyramid the whole way through? EOTP people lottery out to get better schools or move; WOTP people peel off for private.

It’s school by school WOTP. Some Deal feeders (Hearst for example) have more neighborhood buy in. Some (Mann, Key) treat DCPS elementaries as a temporary stop on their way to private.

[Anonymous]

Which ones have more middle school buy-in besides Hearst?

[Anonymous]

More than 70% of Janney kids go to Deal every year. I believe Lafayette and Murch may be even higher.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Which ones have more middle school buy-in besides Hearst?

My kids are at Murch and still in early elementary but from what I've gathered from other families (including many with older sibs already in middle school) a significant portion of the graduating Murch class goes on to Deal.

[Anonymous]

Is it actually bad for kids to have to meet new peers at those transition points? It happens anyway, when a bunch of elementary schools feed into a middle school. I guess the hardest thing is just not having peers in your neighborhood.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here's what a DCPS teacher friend told me when I was in a similar spot:

1) PK is done will throughout the district.
2) Schools change very rapidly in DC. It's hard to plan ahead (especially for things like middle school) when your kid is just a twinkle in your eye.

So, she encouraged me to just buy in a neighborhood we liked and figure it out later. So that's what we did. We sent our kids to PK and K at our "mediocre" (but great for ECE!) IB school, then lotteried to a nearby DCPS for elementary school. It's worked out great, and there were definitely acceptable schools that were getable for K/1st in reasonable commute to our house (and I think that's true most places, MAYBE not east of the river). And we now have way more info (and, let's be honest, more money, home equity, and options) as we look towards middle school.

Bottom line: Pick a house you like in a neighborhood you like and figure out the schools later.

That being said - some schools I like are Ross, Garrison, Powell, John Lewis, Whittier, and Seaton.

This is so true.

We did just that BUT we also looked for an area that had a lot of families. We figured they must know something. That is how we landed in Brookland. Turned out the IB was not ideal but we ended up in one of the many good charter schools in the area, and several years later moved to another neighborhood.

No need to plan too far ahead, these things do change.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While I am sure it is not a universal experience, my friends who have moved to the suburbs have described their years with very small children as extremely isolating and the worst years of their lives. Living in an EOTP neighborhood with lots of small children, I have not felt isolated at all in these years. We chose to buy in DC prekids planning to take advantage of DC’s prek program and knowing that we may need to move later on if the schools weren’t working for us. We were lucky and lotteried into a DCI feeder so currently have no plans to move. For what it’s worth, the average amount of time that an American owns a single home is something like 7 years. Your first home is very unlikely to be your forever home so I recommend that you stay conservative in your home purchase so you have more options later on.

Correct, this is not a universal experience.

Also, how old are your kids? I'm guessing still in elementary. DCI does not look as good close up as it does from the distance of PK.

Winning the PK lottery just postponed your crisis, it didn't get rid of it.

It's also ridiculous in these threads when people act like your options are (1) terrific, vibrant city neighborhood with lots of kids and convenient transit and all the amenities, or (2) far flung suburb where you have to drive to get your mail. It's not that binary. I know plenty of car dependent people in DC (including some in Petworth), and I know folks in suburbs that are walkable, community oriented, and lively.

Yeah, i actually don't think elementary school parents should be able to give their advice to this OP. Too many elementary schools are totally fine, and they have NO clue how stressful it is to reach middle school and try to find a sufficiently viable path EOTP.

And I'm saying that as someone who found a path and is set through 12th (BASIS and both my kids are good fits there). And we have similarly well situation friends (Latin, lotteried for JR feeders, surfed through mediocre middle schools and then ended up at Banneker or Walls).

The exhilaration of navigating this is real.

But we have many friends who had had to move before middle school, who are stuck in poor schools, and who wish they had just moved earlier and saved themselves stress and their kids a subpar education while they figured it out. This is a significant population and it's a brutal outcome.

I actually did just advise the OP to buy the place they like and worry later. They don't even have a baby - they're not even pregnant yet! I guess we were ok with moving house later on - years later (renting out original home, actually). And I do have middle school kids.

I think at this stage of life that they're at, living in the city is better. The lottery at age 3 of a first child (some 5 years away perhaps) can start to tell you what's possible. If you don't like it and are very risk averse, that's when you consider your next steps. Giving you about 10 years in a home to build equity before moving again should you need to.

It's brutal out here but it isn't that brutal if you are willing to be open to relocating, even just within the city. In a decade who knows what these schools will be like.