Reply to Help navigating the Capitol Hill school situation

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "Help navigating the Capitol Hill school situation"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]The school situation is not great and you're right to be thinking about it now. We just wrapped up two years at Peabody and while my son loved it, we're moving and are not intersted in Watkins. We will miss the Hill but the K lottery didn't work out for us and I don't want to play ti every year - some people do and it ends up great for them!

We loved Peabody. It's a very sweet little school just focused on ECE. Pre3 teachers were overall wonderful, prek4 was uneven. I was not impressed with school leadership and found then uncommunicative. Going into K, a bunch of people are leaving for School Within a School, a bunch for Maury (with proxmity preference), and at least one for Ludlow (proximity preference) and there may be others I don't know about. One is leaving for Capitol Hill Day and I know of a handful of people who applied to St Peter's for K but were rejected. With the surrounding schools getting more competitive, without proxmity preference, you may be increasingly unlikely to be able to lottery in to another boundary schools. Schools like SWS and CHML don't have boundaries. I would make a list and next year begin to understand the options. There's also no guarantee you'll get in (chances are good but there are inbound kids who don't get it, you can look at the lottery data Tableau for more info). Also look at Miner, JO Wilson, Payne, Tyler etc to see what your shot is. Apple Tree. Two Rivers (just for ECE, elementary looks like it's off the rails). The other challenge is that the private school options on the Hill aren't awesome. Hill Preschool is good for preschool but Capitol Hill Day is fine, and I don't know about St Peter's but it's tiny and impossible if you're not a parishoner. I know a few people who commute to Potomac and Burgundy Farms.

I would also dig in to the details of the school budgets. People seem to love Maury, but just like Watkins, their budget was cut this year. Watkins budget cut led to the Spanish teacher being let go (world language isn't a requirement in elementary school). I'm glad we tried DCPS but while I loved Peabody, I couldn't handle the on-going stress of being concerned about Watkins and then worrying about the middle and high school paths.

We are sad to leave the Hill but are excited about having more certainty (as much as one can as a parent). There's a thread below which got very intense about people leaving the Hill and having regrets. We may have them, the Hill is a great place to live, but the school situation is hard and real and I will not regret leaving some of the worry and uncertainty behind. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics