Reply to Why stay in DC when none (yes, including upper NW schools) seem to compare to Arlington?????????????

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Reply to "Why stay in DC when none (yes, including upper NW schools) seem to compare to Arlington?????????????"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]I'm the poster who originally posted about more quality time, and this was exactly my point - door to desk, for me, including dropping DD off at daycare, is 20 minutes, if we take the bus, and 45 if we walk, which we do, when the weather is nice. It's not a particularly short walk, but it's a nice way to start the morning and is something that would not be possible before we moved to the District. I work in Dupont and I live in Columbia Heights. We used to live in a good school district in MD and moved when DD was 18 months because it was important to us to have our life less spread out than it had previously been. [b]I'm well aware that there are a lot of vocal people on this board who are absolutely convinced that if you do not live in bounds for the JKLMM schools and do not strike it rich in the charter lottery, you'd better start paying for private school immediately or your kids are destined for a life of mediocrity, but I think that does a disservice to everyone for whom that's not an option. [/b]Are you suggesting that people who cannot afford to pick up and move to a better school district do not love their children? [/quote]

This discussion presupposes that people have the option of moving, of course - if you can't, you can't, and you make the best of it.  No one is suggesting those who can't move don't love their kids - well, other than a few idiot reactionaries, and I'd venture to say that concern for the working poor isn't high on their list of daily concerns.

I agree with your general points about living in the city - those are many of the reasons I live there as well, and in Columbia Heights, too.  But with respect to school options, specifically in Columbia Heights - I think it IS a matter of striking gold in the charter or OOB lotteries, because the IB schools are completely unacceptable, at least to me.  If we didn't hit one of the charter lotteries, we'd definitely have moved, and possibly to Arlington.  So, PP, let me ask you - where does your daughter go to school?    [/quote]

She's 2. She goes to daycare in Dupont by my office. Our plan is to play the charter lotteries until she gets in somewhere. If she doesn't get into any of the places we like (the usual immersion things), I'm perfectly okay with her going to Tubman for kindergarten until she gets in somewhere better. If it turns out to not to be a good fit for her personally for whatever reason, we will reevaluate, but one of the reasons we picked where we picked was that the local option was acceptable for the younger years. My personal feeling is that middle school is terrible for everyone, no matter where you live (I went to two different highly ranked middle schools in the Midwest and they were both miserable experiences and I was so relieved when they were over), and that when we get to that point, we will figure things out.

I guess my point is that I think it's possible for kids to get good educations in less than the best schools - I did (did not go to the best high school in town because my parents could not afford to move to that district) and so did my husband, and we both did pretty well academically. It has also been my experience that schools that have low test scores tend to excel at other things. You just have to figure out what those things are.

Maybe that is overly optimistic, but I would rather be confident that we are all making the best decisions for our specific situations than castigate myself for failing before I've even begun.[/quote]

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