Rosemary Hills Consortium

[Anonymous]

Does anyone live in one of the areas where there kids are bussed to Rosemary Hills and then Chevy Chase Elem.? How does it work if you are a working parent without a nanny? How do you pick up the kids if you have two- one in each school? Can they be bussed to Leland Center? What are the after school options??

[Anonymous]

Bump! Please someone answer this, we are looking at a house and need some help!

[Anonymous]

My child isn't in elementary school yet but we're in the Rosemary Hills consortium (but North Chevy Chase for 3-6). I went on the RH tour to check it out and they distributed brochures for Wonders, which runs the before and after-care programs at multiple area schools including RH. I'd suggest contacting Wonders or RH directly as I'd imagine that you're not the first parent with this question. If you go to the RH website http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/schools/rosemaryhillses/, they provide contact information. Also there is a RH PTA list serv that you could join and query as well. I believe I got the info for that from the RH website as well.

By the way, I've only heard good things about Rosemary Hills, and the parents who conducted the info session and tour seemed very enthusiastic. I'm still a little hesitant about the size - 180 kids in kindergarten is a lot on the playground at any given time - but I've been very impressed with everything I've seen and read about it. Test scores are a tiny bit lower than some of the Bethesda schools, but that seems like a ridiculous concern when you're dealing with grades K-2.

[Anonymous]

FWIW, I live in Rosemary Hills, and all of the parents I know who have kids in the school there are VERY happy with the school.

[Anonymous]

Can anyone provide information about how RHPS kids who enter a grade already having mastered all or a significant portion of the on grade skills/standards are handled? Does the school differentiate well for above-grade level kids? Do they accelerate or enrich for kids w/o grade-skipping? This is our major concern, and RHPS says they do differentiate, but I'm wondering if they really do and how well.

Also, for the OP & others -- I visited both RHPS and CCES. We would have one child at each. The Wonders Daycare person at CCES told me that kids from RHPS can take the bus to CCES and do their aftercare at CCES if they have an older sibling there. I don't know what we'd do, because in some ways, having aftercare with your peers is probably more fun that with your older sibling.

But, you should definitely check w/ both the school and the Wonders daycare at RHPS/CCES for more answers. I think aftercare goes until 6pm. Also compare prices for 2 kids in aftercare -- it was more expensive than our current aftercare, and I remember my impression being that maybe we should look at an afterschool babysitter/nanny who can wait for the kids at the bus stop and then take them home, that the cost would be about the same.

[Anonymous]

bump

[Anonymous]

Have you tried asking the question about differentiation on http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GTAletters/?

Here's the group information:

"Description
Gifted and Talented Association of Montgomery County, MD, Inc. (GTA). Discussion is serious-minded, frank, and occasionally intense.Topics include advocacy for appropriate instruction in the home school, honors courses and magnet programs, accelerated math, college search, curriculum and assessment, understanding the opposition, charter schools, minority student achievement, and more. See http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GTAletters/files/Curriculum/aim-low.htm"

[Anonymous]

How do parents like or manage the schlep to Rosemary Hills ES? Does junior take the bus, or does the family sit in traffic? If bus, does it mean getting the kid up at some early hour? And lastly, is it even possible to just to private school until the kid goes to grade 3, and thus avoids Rosemary Hills? No offense to RH ES - I just need to avoid time spent in traffic and expect to live in Bethesda / North Chevy Chase. Thanks

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How do parents like or manage the schlep to Rosemary Hills ES? Does junior take the bus, or does the family sit in traffic? If bus, does it mean getting the kid up at some early hour? And lastly, is it even possible to just to private school until the kid goes to grade 3, and thus avoids Rosemary Hills? No offense to RH ES - I just need to avoid time spent in traffic and expect to live in Bethesda / North Chevy Chase. Thanks

I live in Chevy Chase, near Rock Creek, and don't see traffic as a problem. If you live in the neighborhood, you can learn to get to school mostly by side streets instead of the traffic heavy Connecticut, East West and Beach/Jones Mill.

It's 5-8 minutes to drive my kids to CC or RHPS. The bus for CCES comes to our neighborhood around 8-8:15 and some parents drop their kids at different bus stops not near their house, depending on whether they need to leave for work earlier or their kid overslept. I see the RHPS bus in the Chevy Chase neighborhood around 8:30 to 8:45am. I think almost all kids except those who live right around RHPS take the bus. I think you can actually look up individual bus routes for all the neighborhoods on the MCPS website. Although it's not guaranteed to be exactly the same every year, it doesn't vary by much.

Also, Wonders offers before care at both schools if that eases your morning, and I think they have a bus that goes back and forth between RHPS/CC, but you'd have to call and ask about that.

Some do do private until 3rd, but I don't think traffic is a great reason for private school. If that's your reason, save your money and hire a nanny or housekeeper who drives. That way you'll avoid traffic and have a clean house or dinner on the table when you get home!

[Anonymous]

Ditto PP - I'm in North Chevy Chase and my kid gets on the bus at 8:30 and off at 4:00. I work part-time so it's more doable for us, but they have before- and after-care on-site which is fantastic - my sister's kids went there all throughout RHPS and NCCES and their family was very pleased. The getting there issue is worse than going to your neighborhood school but not all that bad for us - less than ten minutes. Sometimes Jones Mill can get pretty clogged up, though.

Also, the RHPS PTA runs a number of after-school programs - Spanish, science, all sorts of sports that are on-site that could buy you some extra time as well - classes run until about 4:45.

The K-2 then 3-5 or 3-6 setup is kind of complicated on its face but there are a lot of good things about the schools.