Capitol Hill families - If you moved to NW or burbs for school, do you have any regrets?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, 2 kids to Brent, 8 years each. They walked to school together without parents from when eldest was in 3rd grade, from East Cap. We took the self-release-walk-home-independently option for them at school for 4th and 5th, like many other families in their peer groups. We gave them whistles, reflective vests and LED lights for helmets and on bikes and scooters and watch phones to call or 911 us if need be. We taught them to cross streets safely and to be aware of their surroundings. The youngest just graduated in May. Never had any kind of problem in all weather.

Well, this is great for you, but very few parents would be comfortable doing this. I say that as a Hill resident.

Walking to and from school alone is pretty common starting in 4th actually.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, 2 kids to Brent, 8 years each. They walked to school together without parents from when eldest was in 3rd grade, from East Cap. We took the self-release-walk-home-independently option for them at school for 4th and 5th, like many other families in their peer groups. We gave them whistles, reflective vests and LED lights for helmets and on bikes and scooters and watch phones to call or 911 us if need be. We taught them to cross streets safely and to be aware of their surroundings. The youngest just graduated in May. Never had any kind of problem in all weather.

Well, this is great for you, but very few parents would be comfortable doing this. I say that as a Hill resident.

+1, I live on the Hill with no intention of leaving and no one I know does this. I do think there is an older cohort of parents whose kids were/are more free range, but the culture has changed. Newer families moving to the Hill are higher income, more likely to have nannies even once their kids are school age (also lots of people with family living with them or nearby), and their kids don't do this. The old guard on the Hill was more likely to be dual feds or even one fed, one SAHP, Gen X hippies/hipsters where having more free range kids in the city made sense to them. Newer folks are more risk averse.

It's a cultural shift that I think the PP, whose kids are clearly now older, may not realize it's happened because they don't socialize with the people who now have kids in elementary. This Hill is less free range now.

Interesting, because this thread seems to suggest that CH is full of “poor” people who can’t afford to move or send their kids to private schools, and so are at the mercy of poor MS and HS options.

PP likely has a very young child. And Brent is not the entirety of the Hill …

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, 2 kids to Brent, 8 years each. They walked to school together without parents from when eldest was in 3rd grade, from East Cap. We took the self-release-walk-home-independently option for them at school for 4th and 5th, like many other families in their peer groups. We gave them whistles, reflective vests and LED lights for helmets and on bikes and scooters and watch phones to call or 911 us if need be. We taught them to cross streets safely and to be aware of their surroundings. The youngest just graduated in May. Never had any kind of problem in all weather.

Well, this is great for you, but very few parents would be comfortable doing this. I say that as a Hill resident.

+1, I live on the Hill with no intention of leaving and no one I know does this. I do think there is an older cohort of parents whose kids were/are more free range, but the culture has changed. Newer families moving to the Hill are higher income, more likely to have nannies even once their kids are school age (also lots of people with family living with them or nearby), and their kids don't do this. The old guard on the Hill was more likely to be dual feds or even one fed, one SAHP, Gen X hippies/hipsters where having more free range kids in the city made sense to them. Newer folks are more risk averse.

It's a cultural shift that I think the PP, whose kids are clearly now older, may not realize it's happened because they don't socialize with the people who now have kids in elementary. This Hill is less free range now.

Interesting, because this thread seems to suggest that CH is full of “poor” people who can’t afford to move or send their kids to private schools, and so are at the mercy of poor MS and HS options.

This is why despite people jumping on me as elitist, it actually *does* matter if you’re talking about something along the lines of the Capitol Hill historic district (or slightly enlarged for neighborhood feel) or the “Hill” to include the whole Maury, Miner, etc boundaries. Most IB kids self-dismiss from L-T in 4th & 5th grade too. It’s a small boundary in a pretty safe part of the Hill (full disclosure: there are two corners I tell my kids to avoid; just like I have my kids avoid 2 specific blocks around Eastern Market).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, 2 kids to Brent, 8 years each. They walked to school together without parents from when eldest was in 3rd grade, from East Cap. We took the self-release-walk-home-independently option for them at school for 4th and 5th, like many other families in their peer groups. We gave them whistles, reflective vests and LED lights for helmets and on bikes and scooters and watch phones to call or 911 us if need be. We taught them to cross streets safely and to be aware of their surroundings. The youngest just graduated in May. Never had any kind of problem in all weather.

Well, this is great for you, but very few parents would be comfortable doing this. I say that as a Hill resident.

+1, I live on the Hill with no intention of leaving and no one I know does this. I do think there is an older cohort of parents whose kids were/are more free range, but the culture has changed. Newer families moving to the Hill are higher income, more likely to have nannies even once their kids are school age (also lots of people with family living with them or nearby), and their kids don't do this. The old guard on the Hill was more likely to be dual feds or even one fed, one SAHP, Gen X hippies/hipsters where having more free range kids in the city made sense to them. Newer folks are more risk averse.

It's a cultural shift that I think the PP, whose kids are clearly now older, may not realize it's happened because they don't socialize with the people who now have kids in elementary. This Hill is less free range now.

There's truth is in this analysis, but you're overstating your case. Many of the Brent 4th and 5th graders still have parents who sign them up with admins for self-release from the campus. We know dozens of these families after a decade at the school as an IB family. I don't know if self-release is an option at the other Hill public elementary schools. But I know that lots of the older Brent kids still get themselves to after-school extra-curriculars within around a mile of the school. Caregivers aren't rushing to Brent to squire all of the older students places in the afternoons. We see kids on their bikes and scooters getting themselves to karate on 8th St., soccer in M Park and at the Marine Barracks, tennis in Garfield Park, friends' houses etc. Some of them wind up at our place.

This is why most CH discussions are nonsensical. 8 year olds wandering around the Brent boundary is far different from kids walking around other boundaries.

I can't speak for everybody, but I know a lot of families, ours included, whose kids walk or ride bikes to Maury, Payne, RFK Fields etc. alone on the eastern side of the neighborhood.

[Anonymous]

I guessed that self-dismiss would be popular at Ludlow. Some of us don’t want to raise our 10 year olds to quake in fear at the prospect of going a few blocks alone in the neighborhood. That’s a big reason we scrimp and save to buy places in the most gentrified areas of CH.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, 2 kids to Brent, 8 years each. They walked to school together without parents from when eldest was in 3rd grade, from East Cap. We took the self-release-walk-home-independently option for them at school for 4th and 5th, like many other families in their peer groups. We gave them whistles, reflective vests and LED lights for helmets and on bikes and scooters and watch phones to call or 911 us if need be. We taught them to cross streets safely and to be aware of their surroundings. The youngest just graduated in May. Never had any kind of problem in all weather.

Well, this is great for you, but very few parents would be comfortable doing this. I say that as a Hill resident.

+1, I live on the Hill with no intention of leaving and no one I know does this. I do think there is an older cohort of parents whose kids were/are more free range, but the culture has changed. Newer families moving to the Hill are higher income, more likely to have nannies even once their kids are school age (also lots of people with family living with them or nearby), and their kids don't do this. The old guard on the Hill was more likely to be dual feds or even one fed, one SAHP, Gen X hippies/hipsters where having more free range kids in the city made sense to them. Newer folks are more risk averse.

It's a cultural shift that I think the PP, whose kids are clearly now older, may not realize it's happened because they don't socialize with the people who now have kids in elementary. This Hill is less free range now.

I'm one of the older parents. If what you're saying is true, that makes me really sad. What is the point of living in CH if your kids can't walk to school/the park/to their friends' house?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, you have to love all these people claiming that the suburb to which they moved is just as walkable as their old DC neighborhood. And of course virtually everyone in the burbs not working from home is driving to his or her job(s).

As a general matter, DC is far more walkable than the burbs.

For example, here are ratings from Walk Score:

DC 98

Alexandria 62
Arlington 71
Bethesda 45
Fairfax 54
McLean 23
Potomac 16
Reston 40
Tysons 60

Is this score an average rather than by neighborhood? Because my Arlington neighborhood’s walk score and walkability is much better than our friends who are zoned to Maury. We don’t use our car; they can’t do very many errands without their car. I think your list is meaningless if it’s not broken down by neighborhood.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, you have to love all these people claiming that the suburb to which they moved is just as walkable as their old DC neighborhood. And of course virtually everyone in the burbs not working from home is driving to his or her job(s).

As a general matter, DC is far more walkable than the burbs.

For example, here are ratings from Walk Score:

DC 98

Alexandria 62
Arlington 71
Bethesda 45
Fairfax 54
McLean 23
Potomac 16
Reston 40
Tysons 60

Is this score an average rather than by neighborhood? Because my Arlington neighborhood’s walk score and walkability is much better than our friends who are zoned to Maury. We don’t use our car; they can’t do very many errands without their car. I think your list is meaningless if it’s not broken down by neighborhood.

I was just waiting for someone to respond that they live in the burbs and walk a lot.... "But but but I live next to the Rosslyn Metro and walk all the time, so this means that the suburbs are more walkable than DC."

Did you miss the part where PP wrote, "As a general matter, DC is far more walkable than the burbs."

Obviously, walkability depends on your specific location. These are just general numbers for DMV cities/communities as a whole.

Feel free to run your own numbers: https://www.walkscore.com/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, you have to love all these people claiming that the suburb to which they moved is just as walkable as their old DC neighborhood. And of course virtually everyone in the burbs not working from home is driving to his or her job(s).

As a general matter, DC is far more walkable than the burbs.

For example, here are ratings from Walk Score:

DC 98

Alexandria 62
Arlington 71
Bethesda 45
Fairfax 54
McLean 23
Potomac 16
Reston 40
Tysons 60

Is this score an average rather than by neighborhood? Because my Arlington neighborhood’s walk score and walkability is much better than our friends who are zoned to Maury. We don’t use our car; they can’t do very many errands without their car. I think your list is meaningless if it’s not broken down by neighborhood.

I was just waiting for someone to respond that they live in the burbs and walk a lot.... "But but but I live next to the Rosslyn Metro and walk all the time, so this means that the suburbs are more walkable than DC."

Did you miss the part where PP wrote, "As a general matter, DC is far more walkable than the burbs."

Obviously, walkability depends on your specific location. These are just general numbers for DMV cities/communities as a whole.

Feel free to run your own numbers: https://www.walkscore.com/

My NE CH house got 92 (walk) / 83 (transit) / 96 (bike).

My Rosslyn-based office got 91 (walk) / 75 (transit) / 84 (bike).

So clearly some suburbs are relatively walkable...

However, there does seem to be a bit of a kink in the algorithm comparing different types of places, because Washington, DC as a whole got 98/100/92, which is obviously being judged on a different scale than my house address. There is no chance the average place in DC gets 100 for transit or that NE Capitol Hill is less walkable/bike friendly than DC as a whole. It's obviously selecting some random downtown address to represent "DC," which is going to be a big issue in comparing cities/neighborhoods, since it will be entirely dependent on what location they pick.

[Anonymous]

They talk about the methodology here:

https://www.walkscore.com/methodology.shtml
https://www.walkscore.com/transit-score-methodology.shtml
https://www.walkscore.com/bike-score-methodology.shtml

Here is the reason for the 100 DC transit score (it is just normalization):

"Since any measure of transit infrastructure (number of stops, number of weekly trips, etc.) will have its own unique range, it is necessary to normalize the raw Transit Score to generate a Transit Score from 0 to 100.

The amount of transit infrastructure can vary by several orders of magnitude. Scales for measuring things that have an extremely large range of normal values (sound volume, earthquake intensity, etc) are typically logarithmic - a bus stop in a small town might see three trips a day, whereas downtown Manhattan might see tens of thousands. If Manhattan had a Transit Score of 100, then on a linear scale a small town's downtown might have a Transit Score of 0.01, whereas a logarithmic score might rate Manhattan as 100 and a small town as 10. The logarithmic score matches a rider's experience better: the added utility of one additional bus in a small town may exceed the addition of 10 new routes in downtown Manhattan.

In order to normalize from 0 to 100, we need to pick a "perfect score" location. To do this, we averaged the Transit Score of the center of a five U.S. cities where we had full transit data (San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Portland, and Washington, D.C.) to create a canonical 100 Transit Score."

[Anonymous]

I know bikes are ridiculously controversial, but the Hill truly is a biker’s paradise now. Protected lanes on PA Ave mean you can do all your errands on bike really easily.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, you have to love all these people claiming that the suburb to which they moved is just as walkable as their old DC neighborhood. And of course virtually everyone in the burbs not working from home is driving to his or her job(s).

As a general matter, DC is far more walkable than the burbs.

For example, here are ratings from Walk Score:

DC 98

Alexandria 62
Arlington 71
Bethesda 45
Fairfax 54
McLean 23
Potomac 16
Reston 40
Tysons 60

Is this score an average rather than by neighborhood? Because my Arlington neighborhood’s walk score and walkability is much better than our friends who are zoned to Maury. We don’t use our car; they can’t do very many errands without their car. I think your list is meaningless if it’s not broken down by neighborhood.

I was just waiting for someone to respond that they live in the burbs and walk a lot.... "But but but I live next to the Rosslyn Metro and walk all the time, so this means that the suburbs are more walkable than DC."

Did you miss the part where PP wrote, "As a general matter, DC is far more walkable than the burbs."

Obviously, walkability depends on your specific location. These are just general numbers for DMV cities/communities as a whole.

Feel free to run your own numbers: https://www.walkscore.com/

No I didn’t miss that part. What I’m saying is that comparing all of DC to say all of Alexandria is meaningless.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, you have to love all these people claiming that the suburb to which they moved is just as walkable as their old DC neighborhood. And of course virtually everyone in the burbs not working from home is driving to his or her job(s).

As a general matter, DC is far more walkable than the burbs.

For example, here are ratings from Walk Score:

DC 98

Alexandria 62
Arlington 71
Bethesda 45
Fairfax 54
McLean 23
Potomac 16
Reston 40
Tysons 60

Is this score an average rather than by neighborhood? Because my Arlington neighborhood’s walk score and walkability is much better than our friends who are zoned to Maury. We don’t use our car; they can’t do very many errands without their car. I think your list is meaningless if it’s not broken down by neighborhood.

I was just waiting for someone to respond that they live in the burbs and walk a lot.... "But but but I live next to the Rosslyn Metro and walk all the time, so this means that the suburbs are more walkable than DC."

Did you miss the part where PP wrote, "As a general matter, DC is far more walkable than the burbs."

Obviously, walkability depends on your specific location. These are just general numbers for DMV cities/communities as a whole.

Feel free to run your own numbers: https://www.walkscore.com/

No I didn’t miss that part. What I’m saying is that comparing all of DC to say all of Alexandria is meaningless.

So, you also think it is meaningless to say that DC generally is more walkable than, say, Potomac? Or meaningless to say that Manhattan is more generally walkable than, say, Fayetteville, NC?

Got it. Everything is relative and meaningless, and we can't generalize about anything. Let's all embrace nihilism and move to the burbs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, you have to love all these people claiming that the suburb to which they moved is just as walkable as their old DC neighborhood. And of course virtually everyone in the burbs not working from home is driving to his or her job(s).

As a general matter, DC is far more walkable than the burbs.

For example, here are ratings from Walk Score:

DC 98

Alexandria 62
Arlington 71
Bethesda 45
Fairfax 54
McLean 23
Potomac 16
Reston 40
Tysons 60

Is this score an average rather than by neighborhood? Because my Arlington neighborhood’s walk score and walkability is much better than our friends who are zoned to Maury. We don’t use our car; they can’t do very many errands without their car. I think your list is meaningless if it’s not broken down by neighborhood.

I was just waiting for someone to respond that they live in the burbs and walk a lot.... "But but but I live next to the Rosslyn Metro and walk all the time, so this means that the suburbs are more walkable than DC."

Did you miss the part where PP wrote, "As a general matter, DC is far more walkable than the burbs."

Obviously, walkability depends on your specific location. These are just general numbers for DMV cities/communities as a whole.

Feel free to run your own numbers: https://www.walkscore.com/

No I didn’t miss that part. What I’m saying is that comparing all of DC to say all of Alexandria is meaningless.

So, you also think it is meaningless to say that DC generally is more walkable than, say, Potomac? Or meaningless to say that Manhattan is more generally walkable than, say, Fayetteville, NC?

Got it. Everything is relative and meaningless, and we can't generalize about anything. Let's all embrace nihilism and move to the burbs.

Some of the Arlington locales mentioned on this thread are denser than any part of Washington DC. It’s hardly the burbs. Grow up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know bikes are ridiculously controversial, but the Hill truly is a biker’s paradise now. Protected lanes on PA Ave mean you can do all your errands on bike really easily.

It’s great until your bike is stolen or vandalized. My kid biked to school and when he got out, his front tire was missing.