Reply to Top private (Sidwell, GDS) versus top public (JKLM) for early years: what are the differences?

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Reply to "Top private (Sidwell, GDS) versus top public (JKLM) for early years: what are the differences? "

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]the UVA trick wouldn't be worth it. competition is incredibly stiff. though UVA has several very good state schools, still seems like a strange tactic.[/quote]

I disagree.  If you are at a charter that does not accept seniors, all one parent has to do is move across the river for a year, change driver's licenses, voter registration, etc, and then pay tuition for the kid to go to the DCPCS and you have the in state tuition taken care of, the preferential admissions for in state applicants - if your kid seems likely to get in and be willing to go to UVA, Virginia Tech, or William & Mary, we would do it in a heartbeat.  But then we have been bending over backwards and turning our lives upside down for years for the sake of our kids' educations - try having 3 kids in 3 different schools for two years and then come back and talk to me about "strange tactics."

I did it for law school, and UVA's tuition was at the time an incredible bargain for in state residents.  So I graduated from college and came home but stayed across the river, and suddenly only had to pay $6k for law school every year and got an edge in the admissions process, and no one considered it cheating.

I know people who have worked for two years to establish residency in California for Berkeley law school, UT Austin, etc.  I guess it just sounds strange because it sounds like we are uprooting a child, but we wouldn't have to.  You just have to technically uproot a parent.  And I really don't consider it cheating.  I think the DC Tag program should qualify us for the in state rate everywhere instead of just providing a measly $10k every year, because the lack of a decent college option here is another problem with staying in the district if you are a public school family.[/quote]

UVA cannot accept a student attending a DCPS/Charter as in-state. Similarly, you cannot qualify for instate Virginia tuition AND DC TAG. Well, I suppose you can try, but you will be caught lying on one form or the other.[/quote]

For the final time, [b]no one is talking about trying to get DC Tag and in state preference[/b]  We are talking about separating for the senior year, having joint custody, and paying [b]out of state tuition for the final year of DCPCS[/b] from Virginia.  We know parents who have paid out of state tuition to send/keep their kids in Md schools while they lived in DC.  All of this has been done, can be done, and is completely legal.  That is why they set an out of state tuition rate for most public schools in most states and DC.

This is not cheating, the same way parceling a child out to live (in Md) with a grandparent while going to a HRCS in DC is not cheating - we were DC residents when said child applied, we continued to be DC residents and had our other children in IB DCPS, the Charter School knew about it and understood, we were the ones who went to the parent teacher conferences, we just could not handle the one child's commute with so many kids.  We retained custody of the child, and the child came home Friday through Sunday.

As I said, we have jumped through enormous hoops to get our kids a good education, and I don't think we have cheated along the way, and we have no intention of cheating.  As I also said, there is a fair chance that at that point any separation may be real even if not legally formalized, and I have spent many years living in Virginia and am completely comfortable with living there again, and we think it would be worth paying DC tuition for one year if we have a kid who is willing and likely to get into a good state school in Virginia.

THAT may be the biggest stumbling block, because right now none of our kids want to go to UVA and I am nervous about the frat/sorority culture and would rather send the boys.  But there is also Virginia Tech.  This is a long way in the future and I am surprised by the vehemence of the reaction here.

We do everything by the book, always have, always will.  We do not lie our way into schools or lie to stay in schools and we are not proposing to do that here.  Right now the out of state tuition for senior year would be $14k.  So we are not talking about paying peanuts for our honesty either.  [i]IF[/i] we ever get to the point where this is a real possibility, we will probably try to find out whether having joint custody is enough to make the child a resident of both DC and VA.  I would imagine it would have to be, because while the parents can live in different adjoining states or cities, the child in question can only go to one school.

But these are legal questions, and we have not fully investigated the issue, but it does seem like it would be unfair if a couple had joint custody and one parent lived in Virginia not to treat the child as a Virginia resident, even if the child went to a school in DC - public or private.  And as I said, if we thought we had good odds, we would fork over the money for out of state tuition to DC for senior year.  Again, by the book.

I think DC screws its residents and want nothing to do with DC Tag because while originally it was intended to compensate for the difference between in state and out of state tuition, the amount - 10k - has remained the same while tuitions have skyrocketed.  Maybe because we have split up children before we don't see this as such a drastic move.  But as I said, this is much more honest than people who live in VA and have DC rental properties here using those addresses to go to Deal....[/quote]

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