Reply to Is the School Lottery System Transparent??

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The big city's not for everyone, OP.  [/quote]

Meant to add that I agree we’re probably past the point where as a typical buyer (i.e. not all cash) can buy a sizable place for $500K in a place that guarantees good schools from PK through HS.

But that doesn’t mean you have to move to Burke.  In the early 2000s, we moved into a small rowhouse in eastern Columbia Heights in a neighborhood with an active drug trade.  By 2007, the neighborhood had improved enough that we decided to go ahead and have kids.  The lottery got us into a DCPS that was tolerable for PK3, and then a year later into a charter school that we were happy sticking with through fourth or fifth grade.   That let us trade up to a bigger place that was still east of the park, but in bounds for Deal and with feeder rights to Wilson.  Then we temporarily lost access to both schools under Mayor Gray, before getting grandfathered by Mayor Bowser a few months ago.

The past 15 years haven’t always been easy, but we took the long view and feel very lucky that we kept the faith.  Even today, I think you could do a version of this, but you have to be comfortable with the tradeoffs involved.  Either you pay a lot for a small place in a school district that’s already established, or you approach it with a longer gameplan where you pick an underappreciated area to get more house for your money, find a way to tolerate your in-bound school or see if you can lottery in to places you can be happier with for a few years, and trade up over time.

It’s not easy, but like I said, the big city’s not for everybody.[/quote]

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