Reply to Struck Out in DC school lottery....Tell/Sell me in your non-W School Cluster

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP, are you sure you want to give up on DC?  What are your kids' schools?

If you want a big house AND want your kids surrounded only by other high-SES kids, seems the prospects aren't great in MD at your budget, unless you move almost out to WV.  Not sure it would be worth it, vs. just buying a condo in DC or close-in Silver Spring.[/quote]

DH and I are definitely sure we want to leave DC. [b]We may expand our search to Howard County[/b]. We want continuity for our children and the lottery is stressful despite the hard face people put on in DC. We have figured out that we’d rather not gamble with our children’s futures. We are also tired of the cramped space in the city. [/quote]

There are a lot of good reasons to consider this.  Howard county schools give you so much more bang for your buck.  You get good schools and you can have the SFH with 4 bedrooms that is under $500K ina  lot of good pyramids.

[quote]Here are the top things we are looking for:

-Tight knit school community 
-Single Family Home with spacious backyard 
- Socioeconomic diversity but nothing above 30% FARMS/ESOL population 
- Teachers who aren’t relatively young 
- Strong PTA 
- Relatively strong MATH/ELA test scores 
- Near Metro Bus lines/ doesn’t have to Train accessible though 
- Close to shops (grocery stores, good restaurants, etc) [/quote]

From your original list, you can get a tight knit school community, SFH with spacious back yard, SE diversity with moderate-to-low FARMS/ESOL, strong PTA, strong MATH/ELA test scores and close to shops.  The traffic in Columbia and N Laurel is significantly better than in almost all of MoCo.  I leave out Ellicott City.  Although some of the best pyramids are there, you really won't find what you are looking for there at your price range (Ellicott CIty is much like the W clusters in HCPSS).

There are two MTA commuter buses that run to downtown from the Columbia area, buses 335 and 345 and you can see the schedules/routes here:
[url]https://www.mta.maryland.gov/schedule?type=commuter-bus[/url]

The buses have various stops near WMATA metro stations if you want/need to transfer to Metro as part of your commute.

Personally, I would not really want to live in most of the properties that fit your criteria in MoCo.  I'd rather take a longer commute myself, but you are the one that has to decide which elements on your list are the higher priorities.[/quote]

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