Moving to Arlington or Fairfax Country - Question re being near metro in good high school district

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

whatshername wrote:Thank you all so much for your replies - this is really all very helpful.

I'm a little familiar with Arlington, but not with Fairfax, and we would consider both areas. I wish I could find a "street map" that showed where exactly the metro runs. Right now if I see a street address, I have to Google how far it is from a metro stop. I have seen metro maps, but they don't have street names on them. (Am I making sense?) The goal was to be able to walk a half mile to the metro and avoid driving ... in either school district. We had not considered commute time on the metro however as was wisely pointed out. In an ideal world a commute time of 30 minutes or less would be wonderful, but "ideal" might also be "impossible". It seems we will have to decide what is more important - length of metro commute or school district.

What people say here about Yorktown vs. Washington-Lee is interesting. On "paper" (ie in schooldigger dot com), Yorktown is shown to be a better school - perhaps one cannot judge completely by that though. I did not know WL had an IB program.

To answer some other questions, yes I stay home. Oh and the 1.75 did refer to bathrooms - I meant we'd prefer one and 3/4 bath house, three bedroom. A "tear down" on a small lot is just fine. We'd prefer a stand alone small house as opposed to a town home or condo.

I maybe should also clarify that even though I have been mentioning high schools, oldest child is actually still a toddler. I just find it easier to start looking at housing areas by the high school and then work my way down to the elementary schools. One can have a good elementary school in a so-so high school district, but usually good high school districts have pretty good feeder schools. Perhaps I should also clarify that we will be renting for awhile (once we arrive in VA) and making a decision about buying after we rent ... right now I'd like to get started (soon) at looking at different areas to scope things out.

I read with interest the discussion between Arlington and Fairfax schools. We have not decided on that yet either. I am more familiar with the Arlington area, and still need to visit the area where the Fairfax school district is. I understand there is "city" and "county" school districts and it seems the country school district is better.

The last time I was in Arlington I did see a 1100 square foot house near-ish to Courthouse metro for around one million three hundred thousand. Thus I assume that being close to the metro and also close to DC drives up property value. That same house in Kansas (we are not from Kansas) might sell for $50,000 lol. (I laugh so as not to cry.)

The GreatSchools/SchoolDigger scores definitely need to be taken with a grain of salt. They are more reflective of the income profile of the surrounding neighborhood and diversity (or lack thereof) in the school population than anything else. Yes, W-L gets a lower rating than Yorktown. That seems to be mainly because Yorktown is more universally high-income, most of the area zoned to it is expensive single-family homes. W-L has a significant low-income population but also a substantial high-income population plus, as a PP noted, it attracts high-achieving kids from across the county for the IB program. It's just a much more diverse school. Lower income and immigrant students tend to score lower on the state tests that are the basis of ratings and the GreatSchools algorithm now penalizes schools that have more diverse populations and a test score gap between White/non-White students. You can look at the actual data on the Virginia Dept of Ed web site and run reports for schools among students with your family's profile to see how kids like yours are doing.

No, gs and schooldigger are spot on. I don't want the school dumbed down and money spent to basically daycare

[Anonymous]

And this attitude is why it's important to actually look at the school's test scores. You may want to avoid poor kids by going to Yorktown, but for non-economically disadvantages students, the pass-advanced rates are generally either higher at W-L or similar between the two schools.

W-L higher:
Reading- 22 at W-L vs 16 at Yorktown
Writing -- 60 at W-L vs. 52 at Yorktown
Chemistry -- 44 at W-L vs 27 at Yorktown

Yorktown higher for Algebra 2 -- 18 at W-L vs 20 at Yorktown

Equal for Biology -- both 35.

But both schools have total pass rates of over 90. Other than Yorktown seemingly having a problem with Chemistry, none of these score differences would sway me from one school to the other. I'd choose based on the specific house/commute and also consider APS vs. Fairfax based on things like interest in the AAP program vs. APS's approach of (inconsistently) serving gifted students .

[Anonymous]

whatshername wrote:Thank you all so much for your replies - this is really all very helpful.

I'm a little familiar with Arlington, but not with Fairfax, and we would consider both areas. I wish I could find a "street map" that showed where exactly the metro runs. Right now if I see a street address, I have to Google how far it is from a metro stop. I have seen metro maps, but they don't have street names on them. (Am I making sense?) The goal was to be able to walk a half mile to the metro and avoid driving ... in either school district. We had not considered commute time on the metro however as was wisely pointed out. In an ideal world a commute time of 30 minutes or less would be wonderful, but "ideal" might also be "impossible". It seems we will have to decide what is more important - length of metro commute or school district.

What people say here about Yorktown vs. Washington-Lee is interesting. On "paper" (ie in schooldigger dot com), Yorktown is shown to be a better school - perhaps one cannot judge completely by that though. I did not know WL had an IB program.

To answer some other questions, yes I stay home. Oh and the 1.75 did refer to bathrooms - I meant we'd prefer one and 3/4 bath house, three bedroom. A "tear down" on a small lot is just fine. We'd prefer a stand alone small house as opposed to a town home or condo.

I maybe should also clarify that even though I have been mentioning high schools, oldest child is actually still a toddler. I just find it easier to start looking at housing areas by the high school and then work my way down to the elementary schools. One can have a good elementary school in a so-so high school district, but usually good high school districts have pretty good feeder schools. Perhaps I should also clarify that we will be renting for awhile (once we arrive in VA) and making a decision about buying after we rent ... right now I'd like to get started (soon) at looking at different areas to scope things out.

I read with interest the discussion between Arlington and Fairfax schools. We have not decided on that yet either. I am more familiar with the Arlington area, and still need to visit the area where the Fairfax school district is. I understand there is "city" and "county" school districts and it seems the country school district is better.

The last time I was in Arlington I did see a 1100 square foot house near-ish to Courthouse metro for around one million three hundred thousand. Thus I assume that being close to the metro and also close to DC drives up property value. That same house in Kansas (we are not from Kansas) might sell for $50,000 lol. (I laugh so as not to cry.)

Here is the thing, if your child is on the AP or IB track and you are an engaged parent, you are not going to go wrong with the vast majority of the schools in FCPS or APS. The schools in the area, with few exceptions, are very strong. Involved parents are going to see that their kids are engaged and will likely flourish at the vast majority of the schools in the region.

FCPS offer some great language immersion programs that start in Kindergarten and First Grade that were attractive to me. Part of the reason that I liked the area we bought in was that the base school was a language immersion school. My, now DH then boyfriend, thought I was crazy to be asking about schools as we were looking. I had no clue if we were going to have kids, but I loved having the option if we did. DS is currently in the language immersion program and we are very happy with that choice.

School boundaries are going to shift sometime in the near future in FCPS and APS so buying a house based on a specific pyramid right now could turn out differently then you think. If you have your heart set on a specific school, make damn sure that you buy really close to that school so that you reduce the chances of the boundary shifting. Keep in mind that shifting demographics are going to greatly effect many schools. South Lakes has been steadily improving after a boundary shift about 10 years ago. Herndon High School is struggling due to a large increase in low SES kids, many who happen the be ESL and over crowding.

The top schools in the area are likely to not change. There is more then enough money in the McLean and Langley area that the SES demographics are not going to change and the kids attending those pyramids are going to be the kids of well educated, moderately well off to extraordinarily well off, parents. The PTAs will provide funding for extra curricular activities, parents will be tracking progress in school, the status quo is not likely to shift.

But there are a lot of other solid pyramids that are less obvious and where kids are doing great. So you can spend a lot of money and buy into some place that is not going to see much change or looking some place else that is improving/likely to improve as Amazon employees buy more land in the area for less money. The money that you save on a mortgage goes into savings and if you are not happy witht he high school you send your kid to private.

There are plenty of good to great schools opportunities available, near a metro stop, that are well under a million dollars.

[Anonymous]

Best bet for under a million will be Vienna metro/Madison HS. We love Vienna, though my DH works in Tysons and I work from home 80%.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Best bet for under a million will be Vienna metro/Madison HS. We love Vienna, though my DH works in Tysons and I work from home 80%.

+1 I don't think I'd want to go farther out than Vienna to commute to DC.

If you want to dig into the test score results yourself, this is the report generator: https://p1pe.doe.virginia.gov/apex/f?p=152:1:9639347077172:::::

[Anonymous]

To see the Metro lines over street maps, go to Google Maps and add the "Transit" layer. And if you search on "dc metro stops" it will display the metro stops as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To see the Metro lines over street maps, go to Google Maps and add the "Transit" layer. And if you search on "dc metro stops" it will display the metro stops as well.

https://ibb.co/hsJH0pc

[Anonymous]

And you can save your work location in Redfin and it will calculate the commute time for any house you look at. To save the extra step of looking that up yourself.

[Anonymous]

this one shows 40 min to metro center
https://www.redfin.com/VA/McLean/1917-Westmoreland-St-22101/home/9474499

[Anonymous]

Buy this one - cute, good schools, and close to Metro.
https://www.redfin.com/VA/Arlington/6406-Washington-Blvd-22205/home/11239433

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Buy this one - cute, good schools, and close to Metro.
https://www.redfin.com/VA/Arlington/6406-Washington-Blvd-22205/home/11239433

^ and 25 min to Metro Center according to Redfin.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Buy this one - cute, good schools, and close to Metro.
https://www.redfin.com/VA/Arlington/6406-Washington-Blvd-22205/home/11239433

^ and 25 min to Metro Center according to Redfin.

That once has been off and on the market since January. Most buyers don't want to be right on a busy road.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Buy this one - cute, good schools, and close to Metro.
https://www.redfin.com/VA/Arlington/6406-Washington-Blvd-22205/home/11239433

^ and 25 min to Metro Center according to Redfin.

Not sure i'd want to be right on Washington Blvd but YMMV

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Buy this one - cute, good schools, and close to Metro.
https://www.redfin.com/VA/Arlington/6406-Washington-Blvd-22205/home/11239433

^ and 25 min to Metro Center according to Redfin.

Not sure i'd want to be right on Washington Blvd but YMMV

I normally agree but this one has something that would really reduce my concerns... the circular driveway so you never have to back out into the busy street.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Buy this one - cute, good schools, and close to Metro.
https://www.redfin.com/VA/Arlington/6406-Washington-Blvd-22205/home/11239433

^ and 25 min to Metro Center according to Redfin.

That once has been off and on the market since January. Most buyers don't want to be right on a busy road.

Agree but the circular drive and fenced backyard would mitigate some of those concerns. It's just so darn cute and reasonably priced.