Tell me about Silver Spring
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Anonymous
| I live in DC but in the last year had business in Silver Spring that took me there many times. I grew to like the town very much. I looked up the 20910 zip code. That's where I was. I'd be happy living there. |
Anonymous
Actually, South Four Corners is East of Sligo Creek and that's 20901. West of Sligo Creek is called Forest Estates and that's 20902. I've lived in both areas and love the community feel and down to earth people. |
Anonymous
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Really prefer it to DC. We were city people and moved to DC... and I think Silver Spring was more what we were looking for. Yeah, it's kind of suburban. Yeah, downtown has a ton of chain stores. But... they are useful chain stores. And downtown also has a lot of great unique institutions. Create Arts and Highwood theater for kids are awesome. I've heard Roundabout is too. Levine Music is now there... and probably other stuff I am missing. We were trying to buy really close to downtown and ended up in Sligo Park Hills, which is a good geographical balance between Silver Spring and Takoma Park. (And Takoma Park's community center has a ton of great kid stuff too. Dungeons and Dragons, martial arts, and... I don't know. Sports.) All in all it has the feel of a neighborhood where your kids can roam, which is what I was looking for.
I have been extremely, extremely impressed with East Silver Spring Elementary. I know it's not on the "best" lists, but they really seem engaged with the kids and the community is inclusive and excellent. So much more so than our more highly rated former DCPS. I've toured both Takoma Park MS and Silver Spring International MS, and I really liked them both as well. Inventory seems to go fast in the area... but with good reason. Since we moved here, I'm just starting to explore the stuff farther out, and it also looks good. Silver Spring has this kind of middle-class vibe that seems really diverse and also really stable. Really wish we'd come here sooner. |
Anonymous
You know, I'm super glad to hear this. We are another happy ESS family and have found the teachers to be almost uniformly excellent (with one exception that is no longer at the school), the community to be supportive and inclusive, and the academic standards to be high. I've also been impressed with my child's peers. Yes, there are other middle class kids with highly educated English-speaking parents, but I'm most impressed with the kids who speak Amharic, Somali, Arabic, Pashto, etc. at home and who still do well in English. We've also consistently had class sizes between 15 and 19, which gives the teachers room to engage with kids who are working at different levels. There are things I would change, like making sure the new assistant principal has the temperament to act as a counterbalance to the principal's occasional sternness, but it has been a great experience for us and I am glad to see another happy family. We also really love our neighborhood (on the other side of Piney Branch). It is friendly, with lots of young kids, and easy to walk to fun activities and stores downtown. Yes, a Michael's isn't a cool hipster artisan craft shop, but it is enormously useful when you want to pick up some crafts to do on a rainy or blistering day. One of my kids is trying Highwood's Art Squared camp this summer, so we'll see how it goes. We saw one of their shows earlier this year and it was great, for a bunch of young kids and teens doing "real theater." |
Anonymous
| The sound of traffic on Georgia Ave in the rain sounds like the ocean. |
Anonymous
Well said and I couldn't agree more. For a second, I thought I wrote this until you said you are at ESS. I could have written this post, except we are at Sligo Creek Elementary. What I love most about Silver Spring is that it has a small city/town vibe, but it is urban and diverse. We live in walking distance to DTSS, and we usually run into neighbors/classmates on our errands or at the parks. I hope that the vibe doesn't change, but I fear that it might as word gets out. And, when we were looking, we were considering both ESS and SCES-- we couldn't find anything in that neighborhood at the time. |
Anonymous
What makes this school a dealbreaker? Is it based anything besides the greatschools statistics? Wonder what the experience is like for bright English speaking students. With the 90% FARMS, 77% hispanic demographic situation, I'm guessing a lot of kids go there to learn English for the first time. I've seen really nice affordable houses zoned for this elementary school and I'm trying to justify being able to send kids there (5 years from now). |
Anonymous
With that budget, I'd look in our area around South Four Corners 20901. Specifically the neighborhoods off and around Lanark Way. We've been here for 3 years and love it! |
Anonymous
I don't have a child at NHE, so will start there. This is all second-hand. Folks we know at the school are pretty "meh" about it, including Latino families (although not recent immigrants). It's only K-2, but most families that I've talked to are just kind of biding their time until they can get out. Essentially, parts of the school zone are extremely transient, which means kids are coming in and out throughout the school year. This is disruptive and pulls a lot of attention from the "bright English speaking" students that you mention. The administration is good, the teachers are caring and professional, and the Title I funding helps quite a bit. But, at the end of the day, it's just hard to create a sustained classroom environment someplace where kids are arriving all the time, and leaving all the time. |
Anonymous
Resident of 20910 for over a decade. My kids have loved living here. I can't speak first hand about the ES because we did private Catholic schools until MS, but MS (TPMS) and HS (Blair) have been great. Walkability score in the 90s. Pretty friendly neighbors. Despite DCUM claims that this the Wild Wild West, our only personal experience with a crime was a "hit and run" damage to my car during the night. |
Anonymous
I used to live in Highland View and was zoned for New Hampshire Estates, even though the house was very close to Highland View ES. Moved to the western part of the county and haven't looked back. |