Reply to DC Chosen Best Place to Raise a Family

Forum Index » Off-Topic

Reply to "DC Chosen Best Place to Raise a Family"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]First off, why the assumption exurbanites all have 60-90 minute commutes? My wife and I combined don't have that commute and we're in Leesburg. (I won't go into how we can go -- and have gone -- to shopping, dining, etc., without driving, but that might confuse some of the DC snobs.)

There's several ES's in DCPS that are great. Problem is, a TH in those areas runs you what, $750k and up?

19:26, the only DCPS MS/HS combo I've ever seen any DCUMers even consider attending is Deal/Wilson.

When I've pointed this out in past threads, I'm just told, "Oh, we can shell out $30k a year for private school, so we don't care."

Of course there's the charter and OOB lottery but is that really and honestly guaranteed (and if you lose out, can you still get into an OK private school?) [/quote]

Since we're talking about raising kids in the city, here's my thinking:

Generally you hear from parents of young children who would like to live in DC, but claim "you just cannot do it" because of schools.  When you scratch the surface, they'll concede that, sure there are a lot of elementary school options, but what about middle school and high school.  Then when you point out that there are actually quite a few high school options for a student who's even slightly motivated (Walls, Wilson, Bannaeker, Ellington), they'll concede that, okay, there are good H.S. options, but [b]what about middle schools??[/b]

So...here's the deal with middle schools:  if your child is about to enter middle school, and you can't find a decent place to send them, and can't afford a couple of years of private, then you move out of the city.  But it has always struck me as incredibly odd to hear from folks who say they'd just love to stay in town, but they simply can't do it with a 2.5 year old because the middle schools are not up-to-snuff.

Given the rapid improvement of DCPS in general over even the last 5 years, our strategy is to wait and see what happens with middle school between now and the 7 years from now when it'll be an issue.  We can always throw in the towel in 2018 and move to someplace outside of DC, rent our house, and ride out the storm.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics