Housing dilemma in Capitol Hill - which schools are worth it?

[Anonymous]

Coming back after 7 years overseas (Foreign Service) and are wondering what are the big differences amongst these schools besides their feeder patterns, - which we do not care about as we will go out again in 3-5 years. We will be buying a house in the next month and have an incoming 1st grader and a girl in PK4 (too late for the lottery, will most likely keep her at home due to COVID anyway). Seems the houses we like are mostly zoned for Watkins or LT, and the ones zoned for Maury or Brent (which from the stats seems to be better) don't have parking.

Is the difference in quality enough to suffer looking for parking every evening? Does Maury and Brent merit an extra 200K ?

[Anonymous]

Depending on what time you get home, it’s not as difficult to find parking on the Hill as you think.

[Anonymous]

Do you care about middle school at all?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do you care about middle school at all?

Sorry, I see you said you don't. They are both fine. L-T is fine too, as a Stuart-Hobson feeder might see less of the attrition in upper grades. Prioritize commute and the house itself. I would not do Watkins unless for a house you truly love and can afford.

[Anonymous]

I’d pick the house you love in the place you love for any of Brent, Maury or L-T.

[Anonymous]

^^ I would definitely not pay $200K more to live in the Maury zone without parking since most of that zone is further from the metro/amenities than either Brent or L-T.

[Anonymous]

Also, for Watkins, which would be my #4 school choice in any case, you’d have different drop offs for the K/2nd year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Also, for Watkins, which would be my #4 school choice in any case, you’d have different drop offs for the K/2nd year.

But there’s a a shuttle bus between the two campuses... oh wait.

Any of these schools would be fine choices. There’s a new principal coming to Watkins this year who is supposed to be great.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Coming back after 7 years overseas (Foreign Service) and are wondering what are the big differences amongst these schools besides their feeder patterns, - which we do not care about as we will go out again in 3-5 years. We will be buying a house in the next month and have an incoming 1st grader and a girl in PK4 (too late for the lottery, will most likely keep her at home due to COVID anyway). Seems the houses we like are mostly zoned for Watkins or LT, and the ones zoned for Maury or Brent (which from the stats seems to be better) don't have parking.

Is the difference in quality enough to suffer looking for parking every evening? Does Maury and Brent merit an extra 200K ?

OP, we were in a similar situation five years ago, zoned for Ludlow Taylor with PreK4 kid and 2 year old. We bought in-boundary for Brent and have never looked back, although we could have afforded a larger house elsewhere on the Hill. I wouldn't prioritize off-street parking over a good school. I'd learn to live with street parking and without driving everywhere like the rest of us.

Brent and Maury are, frankly, a much better bet than Ludlow. Ludlow has had four principals in the last 7 years. Brent has had a very good principal for the past several years who seems serious about staying on indefinitely. She used to be the head of a very popular, heavily upper middle-class school in Upper NW, Janney.

Maury had a kick-ass Canadian principal for a decade, followed by a strong successor in the last couple years. Leadership makes more of a difference in this largely dysfunctional urban school system than it probably would in a well-run school system. Also, only Brent and Maury support PTAs raising megabucks, 300-400K a year (seriously). PTA money mainly pays for extra instructors in classrooms, which is huge. My children's classes are often taught my two experienced teachers at a time, both running small pull-out groups. Brent and Maury have the funds and demographics to support serious arts programs (they stage kiddie Broadway shows), strong music instruction and serious science instruction (they hire designated science teachers, unlike DCPS programs without PTAs w/robust fund-raising capacity).

Both Brent and Maury practically run homegrown in-house gifted programs, e.g. teaching math one, even two years, ahead of grade level to upper grades students who are ready for the challenge. Ludlow doesn't, not yet.

Ludlow is probably 5 years behind Brent and Maury in all this, which won't help you. Ludlow is a decent school, but don't believe the hype. Buy or rent in-boundary for Maury or Brent, period.

[Anonymous]

Brent or Maury if you can swing it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Coming back after 7 years overseas (Foreign Service) and are wondering what are the big differences amongst these schools besides their feeder patterns, - which we do not care about as we will go out again in 3-5 years. We will be buying a house in the next month and have an incoming 1st grader and a girl in PK4 (too late for the lottery, will most likely keep her at home due to COVID anyway). Seems the houses we like are mostly zoned for Watkins or LT, and the ones zoned for Maury or Brent (which from the stats seems to be better) don't have parking.

Is the difference in quality enough to suffer looking for parking every evening? Does Maury and Brent merit an extra 200K ?

OP, we were in a similar situation five years ago, zoned for Ludlow Taylor with PreK4 kid and 2 year old. We bought in-boundary for Brent and have never looked back, although we could have afforded a larger house elsewhere on the Hill. I wouldn't prioritize off-street parking over a good school. I'd learn to live with street parking and without driving everywhere like the rest of us.

Brent and Maury are, frankly, a much better bet than Ludlow. Ludlow has had four principals in the last 7 years. Brent has had a very good principal for the past several years who seems serious about staying on indefinitely. She used to be the head of a very popular, heavily upper middle-class school in Upper NW, Janney.

Maury had a kick-ass Canadian principal for a decade, followed by a strong successor in the last couple years. Leadership makes more of a difference in this largely dysfunctional urban school system than it probably would in a well-run school system. Also, only Brent and Maury support PTAs raising megabucks, 300-400K a year (seriously). PTA money mainly pays for extra instructors in classrooms, which is huge. My children's classes are often taught my two experienced teachers at a time, both running small pull-out groups. Brent and Maury have the funds and demographics to support serious arts programs (they stage kiddie Broadway shows), strong music instruction and serious science instruction (they hire designated science teachers, unlike DCPS programs without PTAs w/robust fund-raising capacity).

Both Brent and Maury practically run homegrown in-house gifted programs, e.g. teaching math one, even two years, ahead of grade level to upper grades students who are ready for the challenge. Ludlow doesn't, not yet.

Ludlow is probably 5 years behind Brent and Maury in all this, which won't help you. Ludlow is a decent school, but don't believe the hype. Buy or rent in-boundary for Maury or Brent, period.

This is a weird screed, which is wrong on a number of counts. On a very basic point, Ludlow has a science teacher paid for by the PTA.

[Anonymous]

It's only a weird screed if you're a L-T booster. There's no denying that Brent and Maury are ahead of Ludlow in almost every way, other than facilities in Brent's case (Ludlow's are better).

OP's question was is it worth paying 20-25% for housing, and probably giving up off-street parking, for a better school product.

Only s/he can answer the question.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's only a weird screed if you're a L-T booster. There's no denying that Brent and Maury are ahead of Ludlow in almost every way, other than facilities in Brent's case (Ludlow's are better).

OP's question was is it worth paying 20-25% for housing, and probably giving up off-street parking, for a better school product.

Only s/he can answer the question.

I think anyone who posts about schools primarily focused on how much PTOs raise has very different priorities from me. They’re also overstating how much Maury, at least, raises by a fair margin. In 2018-2019, only 5 schools — all WTOP — raised over $300K and only one raised $400K+ (WAY more at $1.4 million); maybe Brent had a big jump last year to get to $300K+, but it would have been the first year they did so; Maury does not raise that much. So it’s weird to focus on that and then inflate the figures. To make it seem like they’re saying anything more than Brent and Maury are richer (which they are) they point to aides in classrooms and a science teacher and arts programming. L-T has just as many aides as the other two because it was a Title I until this year, so all of those aides were paid for... so if the question is teacher numbers rather than just fundraising, this is a dumb comparison. Then there’s the science teacher, which L-T has. L-T also has very good arts programming (music & studio art especially), but I can’t directly compare to Brent, which I do hear has great arts programming. You yourself then admit that Ludlow has better facilities than Brent. At that point, ask yourself whether there’s something weird about someone telling you to go to a school because it’s parents raise more money? Anyway, FWIW, L-T’s departing principal — who was there for 4 years (longer than Brent’s or Maury’s current principals, which you wouldn’t guess from the post) — put lots of limits on how the PTO could fundraise because the PTO ran a big surplus because of the Title I funds. Now that those are gone, I bet the L-T PTO will be forced to raise more; it won’t make it a better school though.

Anyway, yes, Brent and Maury are richer. No, I don’t think they’re better schools for PK4 and 1st graders. Also, the test scores between them all have bounced around (when comparing similarly situated groups to each other), but there is certainly nothing to suggest Brent and Maury practically have gifted programming going in a way that L-T doesn’t. L-T supports pull outs for high achievers too, if that’s all the OP means. I would agree that the cohorts for that are bigger at Brent and Maury at present (though I’m not sure that’s true of 1st graders and it’s definitely not true of PK4ers), but since DCPs doesn’t allow real tracking, the actual size of the cohort doesn’t matter much if it’s all facilitated via pullouts... which, again, LT has.

[Anonymous]

OP, as posters rightly point out, Ludlow-Taylor is a decent ES these days. But would I, Hill denizen since the 90s, pick it over Maury or Brent if I could land anywhere on the Hill? No.

Ludlow has retained a bunch of old school teachers in the upper grades, who are still adapting to gentrification. We have close friends who quietly bailed from Ludlow to Bethesda last year, in the middle of 4th grade, after having started at the school in 3rd grade. They'd hit the wall with their child's classroom teacher and cohort. Privately, they were tired of a PC vibe (emphasis on celebrating black history and culture), along with a focus on test prep.

Please, PTA resources matter, and many Hill parents care little about PARCC scores. They know that the 10-hour-long test isn't well crafted, explaining why only DC still uses the "pure PARCC." That's right, all the states that once used used the straight-up PARCC have dropped it in the last decade. Only DC sticks with the deeply flawed PARCC.

OP may be fine with Ludlow, but the school isn't as safe a bet as Maury or Brent. For one thing, Ludlow parents have no clue who the new principal will be, since the current principle just quit at very short notice. It's tough to get a strong DCPS principal into a school under the best or circumstances. These circumstances aren't the best.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, as posters rightly point out, Ludlow-Taylor is a decent ES these days. But would I, Hill denizen since the 90s, pick it over Maury or Brent if I could land anywhere on the Hill? No.

Ludlow has retained a bunch of old school teachers in the upper grades, who are still adapting to gentrification. We have close friends who quietly bailed from Ludlow to Bethesda last year, in the middle of 4th grade, after having started at the school in 3rd grade. They'd hit the wall with their child's classroom teacher and cohort. Privately, they were tired of a PC vibe (emphasis on celebrating black history and culture), along with a focus on test prep.

Please, PTA resources matter, and many Hill parents care little about PARCC scores. They know that the 10-hour-long test isn't well crafted, explaining why only DC still uses the "pure PARCC." That's right, all the states that once used used the straight-up PARCC have dropped it in the last decade. Only DC sticks with the deeply flawed PARCC.

OP may be fine with Ludlow, but the school isn't as safe a bet as Maury or Brent. For one thing, Ludlow parents have no clue who the new principal will be, since the current principle just quit at very short notice. It's tough to get a strong DCPS principal into a school under the best or circumstances. These circumstances aren't the best.

Wow.