Reply to Capitol Hill families - If you moved to NW or burbs for school, do you have any regrets?

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Reply to "Capitol Hill families - If you moved to NW or burbs for school, do you have any regrets?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If Deal is indeed "vastly better" than the DCPS middle school options in Ward 6 why is that we know longtime NW families who are running to the burbs or privates after 6th or 7th grades but don't know any longtime Hill families with kids at S-H, E-H, Jefferson, BASIS, the Latins, DCI or Walls following suit?

The Hill is essentially an island surrounded by the National Mall and the Anacostia River, making for a particularly tight-knit community in the country's largest historic district.  After a point, if you're fighting to stay, you tend to ignore those on the fence, grumbling about middle schools, because you know they won't last.  From our perspective, MS and HS are just a decade in the lives of our families.  We don't want to be stuck in some blah suburb as empty nesters and in our dotage.  We want to be home on the Hill with close friends and dear neighbors who value life in the neighborhood as much as we do.

If you moved to NW or the burbs mainly for schools, you never put down roots on the Hill that were worth fighting for. Stands to reason that you won't miss the Hill much.

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It sounds like you have carved out a life on the Hill that you like.  We also had a great life on the Hill and couldn’t imagine leaving but really wanted a third kid and needed a bigger house.  We were worried that we wouldn’t like our life in the suburbs and would miss the est walkability to nice amenities.

The truth is we did miss those things, especially at first.   But, we also found new amenities that we hadn’t known we would like, such as walking distance to our community pool with a fun summer swim team, lots more older kids so there is a wider variety of kid activities, etc.

We actually kept our house on the Hill as a rental because we assumed we would rush back as soon as our last kid left for college, but I don’t think we will now.  The Hill is really great, but there are wonderful communities everywhere and I don’t miss it like I used to.  [/quote]

This is such a great post, and I say that as a longtime Hill resident who is reluctant to leave.

There is much to love about the Hill and many things I'd miss -- the density, the neighbors and community, the ease of getting to playgrounds, schools, restaurants, museums, and other things without a car. It's great.

But (1) there are drawbacks, and (2) of course there are great things about other places. You mentioning your community pool and swim team reminds me that we were unable to get into any swim classes on the Hill or nearby, so we drive to Virginia twice a week in the summer for swim classes. The idea of walking to the community pool for classes sounds amazing! As kids get older, we also find ourselves hosting less and less because our home on the Hill is so small and friends who live elsewhere have more space, including more outdoor space, for kids to run around and for adults to relax. Mix in the school challenges, and I do feel we're going to make a move in the next couple years. We'll be sad to leave the Hill, but I also feel confident there will be things we like about the next place.

The PP's contention that this means we never "put down roots" on the Hill reflects a weird cult like attitude I encounter occasionally from people here. It's not enough for the Hill to be a great neighborhood, it has to be better than anywhere else. And that's ridiculous. Everywhere has pluses and minuses. If you can make staying on the Hill work through MS and HS, more power to you. But if you can't, it doesn't mean you never actually liked the Hill. It just means that at this stage in life, another area works better for your family. There is no need for weird moralizing and superiority here.[/quote]

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