Reply to WAPO article on Prince George's County Schools

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[quote=Anonymous]At least the school you are zoned to had an open house, PP. We went to the open house for some specialty schools (lost out in the lottery again), but our neighborhood school doesn't have an open house until August. At that point you're already stuck with it by default or you're locked into a private so even if the open house was impressive you'd be forfeiting a deposit and a couple months of tuition. I think our neighborhood school has a lot going for it and I met some parents with kids there that are pretty happy with the school. But all the things I needed to do to feel comfortable with the school were self-initiated. There's no real outreach to the community like there was with the privates around here. I think a lot of middle class families do avoid the neighborhood schools out of fear and PGCPS does little or nothing to reach out to those families and show what the schools can offer.

For a family that doesn't have ties to current families at the school they are left with schooldigger and internet forums and a whole lot of chatter about how horrible the schools are. And once a family enrolls the eldest child in private they are likely to follow suit with the younger ones. I think if the public schools in PG really want to stop losing the middle class families then they need to do more outreach. They need to convince folks that the neighborhood school is a good option. Opening more specialty program seats might help too. We know tons of folks who went private after losing the lottery. We went parochial for that reason initially since we were zoned for a neighborhood school that was really struggling at the time and we got scared off by the negative talk about it. We stayed private with the eldest (now at an out of county private) after losing out on the TAG lottery when trying to make the switch to a TAG center for 2nd grade. We're going to give the neighborhood (new neighborhood now) school a try for our middle child with the idea that we can try something different next year if it doesn't go well. [/quote]

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