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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Thank you for responding.

Is the quality of instruction, overall environment and teachers who teach in the "regular" school as good as the HGC?

Does Cold Spring get good reviews based only on HGC or is the regular program good as well?

Anyone with experience of Travilah/StoneMill/Wayside v/s Coldsping who had to make a choice?
[/quote]
Teachers are always a gamble, HGC or not, but so far I've only see one so-so teacher out of all my kids meet in last 5 years

You're focusing on elementary school, which is understandable, but you also should think about HS
Travilah, StoneMill, and Coldspring are in Wotton cluster (at least for now), but Wayside is Chircilll HS
Oh, and MS for Stonemill and ColdSpring is Cabin John MS, which is feeder for both Wootton and Churchill.
Travilah goes to Frost middle school.

We were moving from Travilah area, and was hoping to stay within Wootton cluster (oldest kid was Sophomore in Wootton).

Excluded StoneMill right away due to location (too far for me to commute to Arlington) + possible rezoning if Crown Farm HS will be build someday, and all talks about development at Belward Farm (Google it: Great Seneca Science Corridor Master plan).
But development itself is great - sidewalks to bike almost everywhere in the development, great pool with swim team, close to both Kentland's and Washingtonian shopping centers. Newer houses compared to Stonemill and Wayside.

ColdSpring area - love the neighborhood - walkable, bike pass to Rockville trail, playgrounds for kids. Smaller school, great pyramids, almost no chance of being rezoned anytime soon

Travilah - loved that school as I already mentioned, and our little neighborhood full of kids. However, it's too remote for my taste. Public transit is limited to rush hours, not walkable at all for the most part.

Wayside - was outside of our search, I know nothing about it, other than it's Churchill - older houses, biger lots, no sidewalks in the neighborhoods we visited while searching, no public transit in walkable distance.

So, it is really about neighborhood and your priorities when you're looking for place to live with 2.5 yo. 
All 4 schools are good, a bit different, so one might be better for your child than another, but at 2.5 it's too early to tell what will work for your kid.

My kids had exceptionally good time at Travilah, we didn't have chance to compare it to Cold Spring ES (no luck in house hunting in that area). 
StoneMill as one of the PP mentioned has majority of Asian students, which is good as it means very involved parents, and bad - very competitive even at ES level. Not for everyone. 
But I would not compare it to Travilah, our school was much smaller (~400 students vs ~650 in StoneMill), and had that family feel. [/quote]

Thank you - this is an incredibly informative and hence, helpful post. Given characteristics of neighborhood and ES (with additional considerations for MS and to a lesser extent about HS), I am trending towards a decision where it is toss-up between Travilah and Cold Spring. I am deleting Wayside from the search and Stone Mill comes a distant third.

We are a 2 car family anyways- it is sad but true, that we have completely given up taking public transportation. So being removed from such public transportation options is not an issue.

We just want a good school district and cozy, relatively tight knit neighborhood with other highly educated families who are not full of themselves i.e. are not snobby, We don't care if they have white, black, yellow, green or purple skin color or they are immigrants or native-borns, as long as they are educated and erudite professionals.

From the responses (and what I have read on DCUM in general), it seems that my kid has a 4 in 50ish chance of going to Cold Spring HGC and even if he does not, will get a decent shot at a good challenging education.

In all of this, the compromise we will make is a 15 minute incremental per trip increase to commute to work for my husband!

Thank you all moms (and dads) who responded to my questions. [/quote]

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