Mt. Daniel & TJ Elementary in FCCPS

[Anonymous]

We are moving to The Little City in about 6 months when DS is a rising 1st grader.

Looking for parents to share their experiences at Mt. Daniel and TJ - what can we expect? Are you happy? What would you change? What's the culture like?

[Anonymous]

You'll be around a bunch of other moms who call FCC the "Little City" and keep very close tabs on your kids for the next 12 years. Enjoy!

[Anonymous]

Yikes - keep tabs in a gossipy way? How does this differ to other schools? Isn't Nova universally elitist and gossipy?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You'll be around a bunch of other moms who call FCC the "Little City" and keep very close tabs on your kids for the next 12 years. Enjoy!

Do you live in FCC, pp?

[Anonymous]

We live in FCC and we love it. I have a 1st grader and we have loved MD. We live not far from TJ and play at the playground a lot. I love the IB curriculum and MD has been such a great school for my kid. FCC is such an awesome community and while yes it’s small (I think around 15k residents total) it has a lot more pros than cons. People on this board love to crap on it but I would take that with a grain of salt.

[Anonymous]

We live in FCC and have a child at Mount Daniel as well. Overall I think it’s a decent school/nice community but not really worth the real estate premium and if I had it to do over I probably would have chosen elsewhere in terms of value for money.

[Anonymous]

We're in FCC with kids in MD and TJ and love it. I love the IB & Enrichment programs and think my kids are getting a great education.

If you're not familiar with the IB program, look into it and see if it makes sense to you. I graduated from an IB program and really wanted my kids to have the same experience.

That being said, we're not American and find the math program (in the US generally) to be slower than the pace we are used to. So we supplement our older kid with an outside program (AoPS/RSM).

I don't think any of the moms are keeping tabs on my kids, and I really wouldn't care if they did, we're not in middle school. BUT- by year 4 you do get to know most families because the school system is so small (if you're involved in the PTA etc).

[Anonymous]

Great teachers, very responsive schools in Falls Church City. It's a pretty close community and by "close tabs on your kids," I would take that to mean that if my middle or high schooler was walking around town smoking a cigarette, there's an 80% chance someone I know would call and tell me that they saw that happening! Which in my mind is a good thing.

[Anonymous]

We love the small size of the community. It means that class sizes are smaller than most public schools around here and we typically know the parents of our kids' friends. The teachers and administrators get to know the kids individually, too. Teachers have generally been very good.

There are downsides to the small size, though. The main one IMO is that at the HS level there are fewer course options than you'd see at a Fairfax County school, for example. And IB can be limiting in the upper grades because most of the classes are two years long.