Toggle navigation
Toggle navigation
Home
DCUM Forums
Nanny Forums
Events
About DCUM
Advertising
Search
Recent Topics
Hottest Topics
FAQs and Guidelines
Privacy Policy
Your current identity is: Anonymous
Login
Preview
Subject:
Forum Index
»
Preschool and Daycare Discussion
Reply to "Moving to the area -- advice on pre-k search"
Subject:
Emoticons
More smilies
Text Color:
Default
Dark Red
Red
Orange
Brown
Yellow
Green
Olive
Cyan
Blue
Dark Blue
Violet
White
Black
Font:
Very Small
Small
Normal
Big
Giant
Close Marks
[quote=Anonymous]Caveats: I only know Virginia. Thus is my view. YMMV. So my response is mostly scoped to Virginia. 0. The post office names for a location do NOT follow the legal Boundaries for incorporated towns (e.g., Vienna) and cities (Falls Church) in N VA. Many localities (e.g., McLean) are actually unincorporated parts of the county. Unless your housing budget is $1M+ and you can live west of Rock Creek Park in DC, the DC public schools are a disaster (ranked st the bottom with Alabama and Mississippi as bottom 3 nationally). 1. There are multiple active threads right now on daycare and/or preschool options in Falls Church, Arlington, and McLean. I would read all (4 or 5) of those threads. 2. Traffic here is among the 3-4 worst metro areas in the country - when not in a pandemic. If working at/near the national mall, I likely would pick housing which is convenient to MetroRail, even if I drove to work initially. Bridges across the Potomac are severe choke points normally and traffic in/out/thru Tysons often is at a snail's pace. I think 101 in SFBA is worse tgsn here, but 280 in SFBA is better than here. 3. I would select a location to live first - based on a combination of budget, house/apt preference, MetroRail access, and school quality. There are exceptions, but FC city, and either Fairfax County or Arlington County mostly have good schools. For either county, schools are more uniformly good north of I-66. Avoid houses in the "South Lakes HS" zone in Reston. Orange line and Silver line are good options into downtown DC. 4. Horror stories about waiting lists at daycare are mostly true. Now is not too early to get on waiting lists, which usually requires an upfront non-refundable application fee. Covid has made this worse as some daycares and some preschools have closed. 5. Fed agency daycares vary widely in quality and availability. Many agencies fo not have a daycare arrangement at all. Wait lists are common even at agency hosted daycares. Do not count on this being workable if you are a Fed. Investigate details for your situation. Good luck ! 6. [/quote]
Options
Disable HTML in this message
Disable BB Code in this message
Disable smilies in this message
Review message
Search
Recent Topics
Hottest Topics