Reply to Just moved to DC post-divorce and COMPLETELY confused about public schools

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Somebody will surely shoot me down but, frankly, this is a case for a public school consultant. (And I'm not that consultant, and neither posting for any of them, just saying because I've seen another friend from overseas go through that who was very glad to have a consultant.)

Meanwhile, here my take:
- You likely will need to make your housing affordability a priority; so as much as you'd like to place your school district first, it likely won't happen and will just be frustrating.
- Use your entering 6h and 7th graders as your guide. (They will enter the first/second year of any public middle school or the second/third of some charters.) Your preschooler will be much easier to figure out (he/she will need to turn 3 by August to be eligible for the lottery; no by right school until K).
- Feeder patterns may not be as important to you if your middle schoolers do well in school and have a good shot at an application high school but that may be hard to predict given the circumstances (divorce, new country/language/culture etc.). So your case may be one where you'd place a strong premium on finding a well connected middle/high school solution. If that's so, then your options are going to be limited enough and thereby completely manageable.

Here my pick of what you should look at, in about that order (public = by right or via lottery, charter = only via lottery, not location specific):
- Public: Hardy MS or Deal MS --&gt; Wilson HS (I'm pretty certain that neither will be affordable to located into but you can probably get your kids into Hardy from outside its boundaries via the lottery)

This is a good round up, but let's be honest.  Eliot-hine and Jefferson middle schools and eastern high schools are not reasonable choices yet for kids coming from an overseas private school.  They are a mess physically and just starting to get programs together that meet kids' needs at all ends of the academic spectrum.  It's a gamble and a risk and it is unfair to characterize it as an easy choice.
- Charter: Latin MS --&gt; Latin HS (virtually impossible because you'll be applying for 6th and 7th, which is not an entry year; you )
- Charter: Basis MS --&gt; Basis HS (better chances than Latin but test heavy and therefore maybe not what your kids need right now)
- Charter: DCI (DC International) --&gt; no clear high school option at this stage but chances of getting in at this point are quite good and your kids would match its profile and feel happy there (my friend in a similar situation opted for that and is very happy)
- Public: Stuart-Hobson MS --&gt; try application HS with Eastern HS's International Baccalaureate Diploma track as a good backup option (difficult to find affordable housing that feeds into Stuart-H) 
- Public: Eliot-Hine MS (International Bac) or Jefferson MS (Adcademy) --&gt; try application HS or Eastern HS as a good back-up
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