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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It's not unusual for Capitol Hill families who stay after elementary to go with affordable parochial middle schools in DC and Arlington. That's been true for decades.

We're not Catholic but we're fine with a good parochial middle school in Arlington enrolling many non Catholics that runs us 11K/year.  We carpool with 2 other Hill families. Everybody in the car pool is hoping that our children will test into Walls or Banneker eventually.[/quote]

Why not just move to Arlington in the good school pyramid, save 11k a year for college, have a bigger space, and your kid doesn’t have to deal with commuting, and can easily take the school bus.  Not to mention dealing with after school activities and what leave at rush hour which is even worst.

Then what are you going to do if kid doesn’t get into high school?  Continue paying for private and dealing with the commute.  You just easily paid for 4 years of college in addition to putting unnecessary stress on you and your kid.  Plus parochial schools are not even that good.
L[/quote]. We’ve both been on the Hill for more than 25 years. [b]We pay less than $1,000/month on a mortgage to live in a 5 bedroom house we renovated from a brick shell,[/b] putting in huge sweat equity in as we went. We live a short walk from Metro stations serving 4 lines. Our closest friends are here. We love our church of 15 years. Schools aren’t the be and end all for us. Our children don’t want to move any more than their parents do. Our commute to school is en route to my office in VA and takes just 15-20 mins. We’re prepared to sacrifice to stay home, where we belong.  For those who aren’t dug in on the Hill socially and spiritually, moving makes much better sense.[/quote]

Okay, so you bought on the Hill 20 or more years ago then? How old are your kids!

Most people with elementary aged kids on the Hill bought 10 years ago or less, because most of us didn't buy a house at the age of 22. No one is getting even an 800 sq ft 2/1 on the Hill these days for less than 600k, so unless you have some kind of windfall that enables you to put down more than 50%, you'll be paying a lot more on your mortgage than $1k.

It's easy to say "schools aren't the be all and end all for us" when your kids are mostly grown and your house costs less than a lot of people spend on groceries.

And I say this as someone who lives on the Hill. Please shut up.[/quote]

I'll shut up if you stop whining.  Sorry that you only bought 10 years ago. [/quote]

Getting back to the point here … someone with a toddler deciding where to live in DC is not in the position to have bought a house 20 years ago on the Hill … [/quote]

This. People are getting defensive about where they live and therefore ignoring obvious downsides. Sure, Capitol Hill is great if you managed to buy before the prices skyrocketed. But in that case, you've already decided that's where your' going to live. Most people don't have that chance.

We are a Capitol Hill family in a condo and like the elementary schools and the neighborhood, but are not fully committed to staying longterm because no way is our kid going to Eastern (sorry, it's just not going to happen), plus I increasingly think the odds that we can eventually move into a row home get slimmer every year because of prices. Together, those things make it likely that we will move by the time DC hits middle school. It's not about disliking the neighborhood, which we really love, but given the cost of living here, we need a viable high school option. Maybe we'll get lucky in the lottery and find the commute to a school like Latin okay. But if not, we'll move. I'm not sacrificing my kid's high school education for a cool neighborhood. There are other cool neighborhoods.[/quote]

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