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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It seems like Potomac is trying to position itself as an elite school. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great school but it’s not a top three (NCS/STA, GDS or Sidwell) and it has a chip on his shoulder because of that.[/quote]

Soon to be new family at Potomac. I think of Potomac as a neighborhood private school. Lots of people in McLean send their kids there. I would not expect anyone not in McLean to know or care about this school.

I certainly wouldn’t expect or think anyone from dc or md would care.[/quote]

Potomac is dealing with a lot of moving targets at once. 
They are definitely a big fish in a small pond but by many metrics competitive with big 3.
And I think this is a fairly recent development.  They're still getting used to it

Potomac decided maybe a couple of decades ago to almost abandon some of it's legacy preferences because it had started drawing an applicant pool that was far more competitive than it had seen in the past.
This is just conjecture but I think the legacy parents got very loud and proud about Potomac and the newcomers thought that was what they were supposed to do.  The Potomac pride was not understated.  Some people liked that.

The 9th grade admits are so much more competitive than the kids that got in 10 years ago that they almost belong in different schools.  Potomac is getting more and more competitive by the year.  I think it's the location.  McLean didn't used to be like this.[/quote]

[b]A couple of decades ago Potomac didn’t even have a high school.[/b] Question- do people really not know about the teacher that r*ped a dozen girls? The school knew something was up but failed to report him. Then he went off to teach at another private before finally a victim who was also a mother at that private spoke up. [/quote]

Huh, what?  They had an upper since the 1980s.  They opened a new upper school building about 20 years ago.  maybe that is what you are thinking of.
[/quote]

Fall 1987 was the first year that students  could start 9th and go through 12th grade (class of 1991) in the new high school. The class of 1990 was technically the first class to graduate, but they would have completed 9th grade in the old facilities and only 10th-12th grades in the new facilities. Before that time, the school went through 9th grade. Some new facilities were built in time for the classes of 1990/1991 but I don’t think the build out was complete and there has been a ton newly built and improved since then. For those who think about Potomac as a neighborhood private school - Potomac actually used to be in Georgetown (1904-1951), and there are lots of Georgetown families that sent their kids to Potomac for generations, even though it moved to McLean in 1951. (It was named Potomac bc it was close to the Potomac River when it was in DC). Since the Tysons Corner build out and resulting traffic on Chain Bridge increased in the early 2000s, the Georgetown to Potomac pipeline has decreased. There used to be nothing past old downtown McLean so a DC to McLean drive across Chain Bridge was a reverse commute; now it takes just as long either way both morning and afternoon and Chain Bridge was not built to accommodate that kind of traffic. Anyone who attended Potomac would know about the pedophile as there was a lot of communication sent out to alumni. I remember him vividly from when he was head of what was known then as the intermediate school (7th/8th grades). I am thankful that I am not a victim, deeply saddened for those who are, horrified at how long the abuse went on, and in disbelief that he went from Potomac to be employed at the school my sibling attended (which is where a victim encountered him and reported him). I do still have wonderful memories of Potomac and I am grateful for my experience there; I can only hope that everything that we have learned about child predators since that time has resulted in more systemic protections across the board at Potomac and other schools. It would not dissuade me from sending my children to Potomac. [/quote]

10am coffee sipper back to say I really appreciate you bringing some real context into this thread.

I think part of what keeps happening here is that people are reacting to something they don’t fully name (especially on the play ground, where most of these IRL conversations happen), so it comes out sideways. To those who haven’t been around it, it can read as snobbish or dismissive, when it’s often more of a gut reaction shaped by what they’ve heard or experienced. Without that context, it can make it come across as more toxically competitive than intended.

That gap in understanding is what seems to keep fueling the back-and-forth.[/quote]

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