I like Capitol Hill but worry about High School.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can just rent in Bethesda for 4 years. Think of it as living abroad and then move back when your kid is done with high school

That only works if you have one child or twins. Once you get to 2 kids, its at 6 years, and what if they decide to go instate, then you are a 10-12 years renting.

Now maybe you can rent out your capitol hill house for enough to completely cover whatever you rent in Bethesda, that is possible if their rental income exceeds their CH mortgage by some huge amount.

Renting maybe cheaper than private school, I suppose?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is your kid like?

If your kid is smart and a self-starter, I actually think it could be a great opportunity--become an EMT, join the marching band, get an IB diploma, be at the top (or close to the top) of the class.

If your kid is the type who is going to match the behavior and effort of the lowest-achieving kids in his class, then honestly Wilson and McLean aren't going to be good options either. I know a kid like this and her dad pulled her out of Wilson and sent her to Burke.

Do you not think any of the charters (BASIS, Latin, Washington Leadership, Cap City, KIPP, Friendship, etc.) or selective public schools (Banneker, SWW, Ellington, McKinley, Bard, Coolidge Early College, etc.) in DC are options either? How much research have you done?

If your kid is little, don't think about it right now. If your kid is older, start looking into those options and think about why they don't meet your standards and maybe people will have other ideas for you.

EMT is not a certified program at Eastern. It is more of a pretend EMT program (my words) and yes, I looked into it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Same old story here. Have a great house on Cap Hill but might be a real stretch to spend 80k a year to send kids to private school at Sidwell or similar in 5 years. Also, don’t want to move to the burbs because we’re city folks. Really don’t want a long commute from Md or Va to Capitol Hill where work. I hear Wilson is overcrowded, but not a bad school. I’m sure this has been beaten to death but anyone have any ideas for a good place to move? Is Tenleytown good? I mean to stay in the city I have a decent high school? I just really don’t wanna have to move to McLean in a few years. Are there any new high schools that are projected to be built in DC that will provide a quality education. Eastern high school in SE is just not an option right now.

You sound so entitled, it’s unbelievable that this is not a troll.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Search on DCPS school profiles to see magnet school profiles. Every white parent isn’t Going to be OK with 2% white at Banneker and McKinkey Tech. Let’s not pretend that these programs are acceptable alternatives to Eastern for more than a tiny % of high SES parents.

Barf. Is your kid afraid of Latinos and Black people? I bet they aren't, even if you are.

Plus, if you have a white kid and he and some of his friends apply, the school wouldn't even be 2% white anymore...unless your kid is too dumb to get in.

Look, if you are worried because you need a school with some specific percentage of white people but you also need to live in a city I'm sure you can work something out, but it's more of a you issue than a school issue, and not one I want DC government to spend any time solving.

Grow up. AAs with money are even less likely to send their children to Eastern, Banneker or McKinley Tech than whites. High SES minorities families test into Walls, buy IB for Wilson, go private or move. Why? Because you need a good cohort of high SES families to have a high-functioning urban HS in this country in 2021.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Same old story here. Have a great house on Cap Hill but might be a real stretch to spend 80k a year to send kids to private school at Sidwell or similar in 5 years. Also, don’t want to move to the burbs because we’re city folks. Really don’t want a long commute from Md or Va to Capitol Hill where work. I hear Wilson is overcrowded, but not a bad school. I’m sure this has been beaten to death but anyone have any ideas for a good place to move? Is Tenleytown good? I mean to stay in the city I have a decent high school? I just really don’t wanna have to move to McLean in a few years. Are there any new high schools that are projected to be built in DC that will provide a quality education. Eastern high school in SE is just not an option right now.

You sound so entitled, it’s unbelievable that this is not a troll.

OP was a troll. S/he hasn’t chimed in again and is stretched out now with a bowl of popcorn.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can just rent in Bethesda for 4 years. Think of it as living abroad and then move back when your kid is done with high school

That only works if you have one child or twins. Once you get to 2 kids, its at 6 years, and what if they decide to go instate, then you are a 10-12 years renting.

Now maybe you can rent out your capitol hill house for enough to completely cover whatever you rent in Bethesda, that is possible if their rental income exceeds their CH mortgage by some huge amount.

Renting maybe cheaper than private school, I suppose?

I would believe rent is cheaper a year versus private school for two kids are you kidding?. It's totally worth it for high school and to risk your child not going an in-state for college. DC only gives 10k for pubic and 2, 500 for private per year which hasn't increased since the year it was initiated in 1999 when I entered.

[Anonymous]

And the 2500 for private is only for schools in DC or HBCUs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is there a girls' school that is a close-in equivalent of Gonzaga or St. Anselms Abbey or Dematha?

Elizabeth Seton. Not sure if you count Bladensburg as close in, but it's definitely doable and one of the most affordable private HS options around.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This Hill dweller doesn’t even know that Eastern is in NE? I’m thinking troll.

You aren’t up on your Hill marketing; its like Dupont Circle or Bethesda, its large enough to have its own military.

https://www.compass.com/neighborhood-guides/dc/capitol-hill/

Unclear how this responds to my comment. The OP said Eastern was in SE. It is not. It's in NE. Obviously the Hill spans both and has many sub-neighborhoods, but that doesn't chance the location of Eastern HS, which is firmly in NE.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, there are several application high schools in the District that you can easily access from the Hill. Your bigger worry should be MS which is much harder to manage. For HS you have Walls (academic magnet), Banneker (academic magnet), McKinley Tech (STEM magnet), Bard Early College (academic magnet), Duke Ellington (arts magnet), Phelps (vo-tech magnet), and Columbia Heights Education Campus (language magnet). There are also some Catholic HS options easily accessible from the Hill that are under $20K/year -- Gonzaga, Seton, DeMatha, for example. And I'm not sure what the PP is saying about there not being any teens -- my 2 teens and many others are roving all over the place, pre-Covid. They are tending to be pretty responsible during Covid, though I still see pairs walking around.

. NP, your magnet HS list sounds great on paper, PP. Unfortunately, the sad reality is that only Walls has a good cohort of high SES students. And only Walls has a good cohort of white students (the Hill is mostly white now). Gonzaga is more than 20k now, around 25K and only for boys of course.

Well, there it is. Does OP know that the whitest middle school (Stuart-Hobson) on the Hill is only 13% white? might as well worry about that too if whiteness is her metric.
Other than maybe Watkins, are any of Stuart-Hobson's feeders even going to be white enough for her?

OP, you don't really love the city if all you love is the museums and your short commute but you're worried about your teenagers being in school with other teenagers whose parents also want to live in DC. You love museums, and your own convenience.

Not sure why it matters, but L-T is whiter than Watkins is.

[Anonymous]

Don’t give us this sanctimonious BS in a school system where white happens to be a proxy for UMC. When a school is attractive to parents in a gentrified or gentrifying area, white families flood in, e.g. Ross or Maury or Deal. Hardly any whites and the school is just OK all around (as in not appealing to UMC minority families any more than whites, possibly less appealing). Things might be different if we had any test in of GT programs in DC below HS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This Hill dweller doesn’t even know that Eastern is in NE? I’m thinking troll.

You aren’t up on your Hill marketing; its like Dupont Circle or Bethesda, its large enough to have its own military.

https://www.compass.com/neighborhood-guides/dc/capitol-hill/

Unclear how this responds to my comment. The OP said Eastern was in SE. It is not. It's in NE. Obviously the Hill spans both and has many sub-neighborhoods, but that doesn't chance the location of Eastern HS, which is firmly in NE.

Eh, I mean Eastern is in NE by like 20 feet. I wouldn't hold it against the OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is this a troll post?

Does a real city person not know about ANY other options than Wilson HS vs moving to *McLean*?!?!?

Read up on charters or just move to your people in Virginia.

Yep, Bethesda and Rosslyn/Clarendon are probably almost as city as Capital Hill, maybe more so unless you consider ‘city’ == ‘crime’

Rosslyn/Clarendon and Bethesda are definitely more city than freaking Tenleytown!

Are you 25 OP? Most people outgrow their “city-mouse, country-mouse” obsession.

And OMG, Sidwell?? ROFL. literally.

So it sounds like $80k for private school is a stretch you need to avoid, don’t want to gamble on charters, and want... whatever ‘city’ means. Walkable to metro? Walkable to grocery store and library? Walkable to parks? Property crime? What are you looking for?

It’s not a city mouse country mouse issue, it’s that we like Capitol Hill and moving to a cookie-cutter neighborhood just sounds very unappealing. Our kids can go to the museums, or they could before Covid. I won’t get into the details but it comes down to Capitol Hill is a wonderful neighborhood. However if we had to say stay in DC, which we’d like to, Moving up to North West sounds pretty good. Yes metro accessibility and walk ability are huge primary considerations we don’t wanna have to commute 15 miles each way or staying an hour of traffic or anything like that. I think you’re right with the charter school ideas.

I can't even with you. You understand the commute from, like Rosslyn, crazy fast to Capitol Hill, whether by metro or car.

Why are you schlepping for lesser quality schools (and APS does have issues, but Yorktown/WL still seems to perform better than Wilson) just to claim you live in the "city" @ Tenleytown?

You aren't finding "cooking-cutter" houses until you get to the greenfield development in the exurbs.

Oh, and guess what, rowhouses are the DEFINITION of cookie cutters, they are literally all the same except for color. So old cookies, makes them stale? (And I love DC rowhouses, BTW, just OP is ridiculous on multiple levels).

DP. Those are lovely row houses. Glad you like NOVA, but I’d take Capitol Hill or Tenley over Rosslyn.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Folks, the OP is literally free to love whatever they do without having their post hijacked by a wounded crew who wants them to know that something else is just as good.

I see many differences between CH and Bethesda. I live in one of them, and I could live happily in the other. But I could totally see someone prefer CH and ask a reasonable, if uninformed, question about high school prospects. (Though yes OP, if you're not trolling, just search the forum.)

I hate Bethesda but I’d live on the Hill. There’s a difference. Sorry people on here are so in love with “urban” Bethesda and the like you can’t tell.

The OP clearly has a 2 year old, ok? Let them do a search.

And McLean? They’re also clueless, or probably a Republican?

[Anonymous]

You have to decide. It sounds like you have written off close-in DC or MD, and if so you can stick with DCPS or pay for the private schools you listed or choose parochial school. It sounds like you know what the choices are.

I'd add too that I think it much less worth it to move the older your kids are, from a practical standpoint. Our kid has made friends in our neighborhood and will have friends from elementary and middle school when they all go to HS together. I would also not think it worth it to buy the family-sized home for just the HS years either. People moving to my neighborhood have little kids like toddlers.

It's something only you can decide as for what is best for your family.