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[quote=Anonymous]OP re moving for BASIS -

DC is my home state, well not a state, but you get my point.  I have lived here off and on for over 40 years.  DC is more my "home" than most others can claim.  My father grew up here and came back when he had me.  I grew up here and I have been back now for ten years.

That was a time when the only kids who made the transition from public school to private school were kids from Horace Mann, and we did not know any kids from public school.  My brother and four cousins all grew up here and all went to different private schools.  We considered ourselves middle class.  And my parents and my uncle (and my grandfather, who put 4 kids through private school) put 6 kids through private school while their wives did not work.

I should ask my mother how much our tuition was. We considered ourselves middle class, because we knew who the rich kids were but they weren't us. We all graduated I think between 80 and 89.  I have no idea who is going to these schools now because most of my cohorts have moved away and the rest are in public school unless their parents are footing the bill.  But I'm not sure I would want my kids around those kids...

For a charter school like Basis to excel you want the best and the brightest.  You want people to move into the city to go to Basis, because the rise in private school tuition and the disastrous DC school system has caused a brain drain in terms of our students who would go to a good public high school.  We all probably know plenty of people who have made or changed their decision about where to live based on schools.  They have all moved out of DC (the brain drain) to go to the suburbs or begged or borrowed the money to pay the absolutely ridiculous tuition at a private school.

Of the people you all know who could not afford private  school for their children and work in the DC area, how many do you know who either bought their first house together in Maryland or Virginia based in part on the public school system, or who left the city once their child was old enough for school because the neighborhood they lived in did not have a good public school? How many do you know who decided after elementary school if they were not zoned for Deal (or even if they were) to move to Maryland or Virginia for middle and high school if they did not send their kids to private school?  We know people in all these categories.

We know plenty of people who bought right over the border of DC who plan to send their kids all the way through the school system they have chosen.  They have made their decisions about Whitman, BCC, Churchill, and don't have to worry any more.  Many of these schools rank fairly highly in the various "best public high schools in America" lists every year. No public DC high school can claim that thus far.  But Basis Phoenix and Basis Tucson regularly get in this group..

We are not talking about foreign countries here or areas that are an additional hour away. Precisely because parts of Maryland and Virginia that are so close to DC have good public schools, we know a lot of people who have moved so that their kids can go to those schools.

Quite a few kids who went to my private DC school lived in Maryland 30 years ago, and I'm sure that is still the case. Growing up here I did not really think about when I crossed a state line, or if someone lived in Maryland or Virginia instead of DC. In fact, the only people with children who can live anywhere are those who take the private school route from beginning to end.

We bought our house based on the elementary school when we moved to DC but since we only had one kid who was 2 at the time (we now have a few more and one is in 6th grade), we did not think beyond that.

We live in the city and were starting to believe that we were going to have to move out to give our kids the best public education available after 5th grade.  But that kind of public education - a large school system with tracking, a fair number of AP classes,  but also an emphasis on sports and probably social status, would not have been an ideal environment for us (we both went to small private schools where we knew almost every single kid in our high school and our entire graduating class), and we were not looking forward to having our kids in these large schools either.

My husband grew up in NYC where there were lots of public magnet schools based on different skill sets and selective admissions for each one (no lottery), where the kids ended up going to MIT etc.  I know the names of some  high schools in DC that are focused on particular skills (like Duke Ellington), but we have nothing like the schools in New York.

Then Basis came along and changed our minds.   Our kids have a real aptitude for math and science.  Given the low acceptance rate at the one great math and science school in Fairfax (which is based on merit but admits fewer applicants than some Ivy League colleges and universities), we had decided that we could not count on all 3 kids getting in to TJ.  But we now have a kid in Basis, and are very optimistic.  Had we moved out earlier, we would have moved back - provided we knew our first child was in.  DC is a very transient city.  People move from here and to here very quickly from places very far away, like Australia.  So I barely blink when someone moves across the river.

So if the only reason a family would move here or move back is a specific charter school acceptance, the same way a family might move to fairfax if accepted to TJ, I don't see how that is wrong. People become Virginia residents to go to UVA, (you have to do it the year you apply) but that usually just means moving across the river, not moving an entire family.

We would not have stayed if it were not for Basis,  How bout the idea you build it and they will come... You offer this type of education and people will no longer move across the river.  We can increase our tax revenues while shining as a Public academic star the way the District of Columbia should.... [/quote]

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