Barrie School vs. GDS?
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Anonymous
No, most city schools can't boast a 45-acre wooded campus. But for teens, I'd trade for proximity to bus and metro line. |
Anonymous
Huh? There are absolutely Barrie School grads at Top 25 schools. My DC is at a Top 25 with a Barrie grad right now. I think your numbers are off too. I can't believe GDS crams 500 students into that tiny upper school building. |
Anonymous
| Surprised no one mentioned the transfer of GDS washouts to Barrie. Ex: mean girl counseled out, went to Barrie. |
Anonymous
Barrie parent, can you please educate us about all the lawsuits Barrie files against families? I see tons of them on the Montgomery County court docket, far more than any other school. Why is Barrie suing so many people? It seems to suggest families are unhappy and leaving, but perhaps there is another explanation. Can you shed any light on this? |
Anonymous
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What sort of weirdo checks the Montgomery County Courts docket for suits against all the area private schools? Do you check the DC, Fairfax and PG courts too?
To really make a valid comparison would require exhaustive research - or you could just shoot from the hip and hope you don't get called on your sloppy research. |
Anonymous
Feel free to try to prove me wrong. Barrie has probably 10x more filings than other schools. Can you answer the question of why? |
Anonymous
When my DCs attended Barrie it was at the time when they mailed your bill. One year we received four extra bills stuck to ours. Of course I opened them (why, I don’t know) and none of the four had ever made a payment. The bill was for the last payment of the 10 payment plan and not one of those parents had made a payment! So, I called the Barrie’s accounting department and said “hey I want to be on the no payment plan. I didn’t realize there was one”. (Barrie states that if you are not up to date with you payments the student cannot return the next semester.) The accounting department didn’t say anything, but I later received an email from the head of the BOT and he said “no what I stated wasn’t true”. He said “Barrie has been going after people who don’t pay their debts so there isn’t anyone who is behind”. So, here I am, holding four bills for people who have never paid a dime and the BOT head says my claim is not true. And that incident describes Barrie perfectly. So, I think they’ve stepped up the suing because they had such a lax policy of paying and everyone knew it, so they didn’t pay. Also, so many of the Barrie families are for Pre-K and I think they’re not necessarily familiar with the process. I think if they get off the wait list to another school and think they can walk away from Barrie. |
Anonymous
GDS has 3.5x more filings than any other school in DC. Can you prove me wrong? |
Anonymous
Yes, I can easily prove you wrong. Below are links to the MD, DC, and VA state court dockets. You can simply plug in the names "Barrie" and "Georgetown Day" to see how many cases each school has been filed. You'll want to be sure to search for only those cases where the school was a plaintiff, so you can eliminate situations where the school was simply identified as an "other party" when, for example, an employee of the school has been sued and the school is listed as a "wage garnishee." You also will want to look at the names of the defendants to eliminate those situations where, for example, the school sued a construction company that performed shoddy work. It may sound hard, but it's actually pretty easy to focus on just those cases where the school was suing an individual. When I do that, I see well over 100 cases where Barrie School sued individuals. If you look at a few of them, you can see they're all actions based on a contractual dispute (i.e., the tuition agreement), and the amount Barrie seeks from each person is about what one would expect for tuition. When I do a similar search for Georgetown Day, I find not even one single case. The disparity is even more amazing when you think of how many fewer families Barrie serves than GDS. Since GDS is much bigger, you'd expect them to bring more lawsuits like that, but it's Barrie in the lead. It sure looks like Barrie has a pattern of suing parents. Why? I'm not sure. My total speculation is that families become frustrated with Barrie and leave mid-year. Maybe you've got a better explanation? http://casesearch.courts.state.md.us/inquiry/inquirySearchParam.jis https://www.dccourts.gov/cco/maincase.jsf http://www.courts.state.va.us/caseinfo/ It's disappointing you'd choose to lie about Barrie's record, and make such a false accusation about GDS. Perhaps that is further demonstration of what parents should expect from Barrie. |
Anonymous
| Who cares about tuition disputes. What about mean girls? |
Anonymous
| BTW, here's a reported opinion on one lawsuit where Barrie sued a family, so you can read about how it went. Here, Barrie admitted it filled the spot with another student, but sued anyway. http://www.courts.state.md.us/opinions/coa/2007/12a06.pdf |
Anonymous
| Go I guess GDS is a better choice for those who plan on skipping out on tuition. Good to know. |
Anonymous
Barrie School won that case and established precedent that they've relied on since. |
Anonymous
And consider what would make over 100 families want to leave Barrie so badly they'd do it despite getting sued. |
Anonymous
Yes? What made them want to leave? |