What happens when you and your husband disagree about your lottery order?
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Anonymous
| Ross and Garrison feed into Francis. Why not out Francis as a back up? |
Anonymous
I would just say no to this. The whole conversation is nuts to me -- neither of you have ebiked with a kid but buying a massive ebike to tote THREE kids around mornging and afternoon is somehow a more reasonable solution than buying a car, moving closer to the school, or going to a school that's his #2? I feel like people who stay in the city because they want to live somewhere walkable have a hard time admitting that everything isn't walkable. Like sure, you can walk to the grocery store and pharmacy and farmer's market but accessing every amenity in every corner of the city isn't on the table 10x/week for a family with no car. Riddle me this: you have no car, three kids at ITDS, an e-Bike, and get a call that one kid threw up and needs to be picked up early. Are you e-biking across the city 4 times that day to do two pickups and two dropoffs? Logistically none of this makes sense! |
Anonymous
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I think the cost of a pickup babysitter and metro would be less than the cost of an e-bike and aftercare. ITDS aftercare is not cheap (though it is pretty mediocre!)
So your kids would get home at what time each evenin |
Anonymous
| I think for emergencies they could Uber. But still, this is dumb. |
Anonymous
I think your list is great and your husband's idea is completely insane (because you will probably get into ITDS and then be facing down a very very unpleasant commute plan). And I'm someone in this general area who sometimes puts one kid into an ebike and is a confident biker. Riding with more than 100 pounds on an Ebike is DEEPLY UNPLEASANT. Kids plus backpacks. Tipping over is terrifying. Absolutely don't do this. My guess is you will end up buying a car if you do your husband's list. Your list, you likely end up at Garrison, walk to school and end up loving your school and community and playground after school. |
Anonymous
Garrison is a great school! I would personally pick it over ITDS, though for younger kids the middle is less of a sure thing. |
Anonymous
+1. At this point, I would not negotiate this. You will be responsible for some of these pick up and drop offs, and you know that it will be extremely difficult to do and not worth it. |
Anonymous
| +2. I would break the marriage over this. If he can’t appreciate what you are saying, he just has poor judgment. |
Anonymous
Should do test ride in rush hour traffic to really understand what it will feel like stress-wise. You can even rent a Bunch Bike for free to test out with kids: https://bunchbike.com/pages/rent-a-bunch-bike-in-washington-d-c What's his plan for bad weather days? Our family commuted by bike with our kids for years. It was by far the best option for us at the time, but I'm frankly pretty grateful we can walk to school now. It can be a lot. |
Anonymous
| If he insists on this, I think the concession should be that you move (rent or buy) near itds if you get in and don't want to commute. Ideally, he would have rented an e bike and done the commute for a week when school opened after the snowstorm. But you can still make him bike with the kids now until it's too late to reorder your lottery picks. |
Anonymous
| How does this work if all your kids have bad lottery numbers and one of them doesn't get in? iTDS is pretty rigid about not taking kids after count day. Would your youngest have to go elsewhere, and what does that mean for your commute? |
Anonymous
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E-bike is your only realistic option for ITDS. 15 minutes door to door is not bad. The bus commute sounds hellish (3 young kids, long uphill walk to even get to the bus stop when they are all tired from school/aftercare, lack of schedule reliability) and would be a hard, hard no for me.
E-bike, you would get a cargo-style one with three wheels to alleviate the tipping over concern some have pointed out. But these are a major investment (also in terms of where to store it) and you would have to figure out how to make it work in all but the worst weather conditions. Oldest would have to eventually switch to their own bike. If you had no other decent options, I think you could make it work. But the point is that you have a lot of enviable options (I’m an EOTR parent, so maybe it’s a different lens), so why make your life difficult? Pick a school you can walk to and don’t look back. |
Anonymous
This! ITDS is fine but it isn't worth this much hassle. Not now anyway. Maybe for middle school. How about the D32 bus to Shaw and then metro to Columbia Heights? It's pretty frequent. |
Anonymous
| Do you know how to drive? Because buying a cheap car seems like a less ridiculous plan than buying an e-bike to schlep 3 kids and (assuming you get a cargo e-bike, which is the only possibly option) the parking space needed isn't *that* different. Re: e-bike I don't think you'll be able to do it now comfortably, but 2 years from now when your kids are that much bigger? And what about backpacks and when they have to bring in snacks or a poster project or the weather is bad? |
Anonymous
Is he open to buying a car to make this work? Or is that another area where he's unreasonably stubborn? If so, seems like a trend. |