Janney kids and parents were lovely when I was an aide there few years ago. Enough outdoor space was a problem, but I don't think kids noticed it as much as aides and teachers did.

They are all fantastic schools and there are a lot of similarities on paper, so I would go to the open house for all three and see how you feel in each.

As others have said, find your house first. The schools are very similar. My kids went to Janney. They liked it - I feel like the leadership isn't as good as it used to be, but the pandemic made quite a few people leave.

Anonymous wrote:We were zoned for Janney but opted for private. Kids went to Deal. All their friends attended Murch. Murch has the nicest, most down to earth families. Janney and Lafayette parents are strivers, extremely unfriendly, and their kids are largely clique-ish.

What a bullshit generalization. There are plenty of friendly families at both schools. OP - why are you crowdsourcing this? You’re just going to get bad advice from a bunch of cranks.

Anonymous wrote:We were zoned for Janney but opted for private. Kids went to Deal. All their friends attended Murch. Murch has the nicest, most down to earth families. Janney and Lafayette parents are strivers, extremely unfriendly, and their kids are largely clique-ish.

These schools have like 700 kids each, so I don't know if I buy that every parent at each one is "extremely unfriendly," but sure. And I like someone who paid to send their kids to private elementary school looking down on "strivers."

Consider shepherd too - assuming it’s not rezoned! Small school with wonderful kids and families.

We were zoned for Janney but opted for private. Kids went to Deal. All their friends attended Murch. Murch has the nicest, most down to earth families. Janney and Lafayette parents are strivers, extremely unfriendly, and their kids are largely clique-ish.

Anonymous wrote:If I was doing it again, I would focus my search on Hearst because it's a smaller community that appears (from conversations with friends) to be friendlier.

-parent of Lafayette grads.

I would argue that Lafayette parents have earned a reputation for being very demanding, both of DCPS as a whole and of the Lafayette administration, to the point where they become quite unpleasant (obvs not talking about PP here). You can easily find examples of this if you go back and look at threads dealing with boundary revisions and PK4 space. Its supporters will argue that this is just a small (but very, very vocal) subset of parents at an extremely large school, but there seem to be more such people at Lafayette than the other schools on your list.

Agree to finding your housing first. Any of those schools will do.

If I was doing it again, I would focus my search on Hearst because it's a smaller community that appears (from conversations with friends) to be friendlier.

-parent of Lafayette grads.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We've struck out on the lottery the past couple of years and plan to move to a Deal feeder neighborhood for our lower elementary school kiddos from NE if we don't get a better school option for next year--is there a tangible difference between Lafayette, Murch, and Janney? I know Lafayette is a huge school- but other than the number of classes per grade, are they all pretty similar? Is there a difference in how much computer/devise usage there is in each school for learning instruction? Thanks in advance.

Just find the housing within any of those school boundaries that works best for you, because the differences between those three schools are probably pretty negligible. I can't speak to Janney or Lafayette, but the device learning at Murch wasn't overwhelming. In fact, I appreciated that my kid learned to type at such an early age (I didn't really do so until taking a typing class in like 10th grade).

I guess I would be concerned about overcrowding at Lafayette, however. It's at the point where they're going to start reducing the number of PK4 classes offered because they're running out of room for the compulsory grades (this may be neither here nor there in your instance, however).

This is the answer. Focus on your housing needs and lifestyle preferences (walkable to metro, condo/apt/SFH, yard, etc).

Many threads on this. Our kids went/go to Janney. One thing that’s great is the location, really convenient to metro if you work downtown.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We've struck out on the lottery the past couple of years and plan to move to a Deal feeder neighborhood for our lower elementary school kiddos from NE if we don't get a better school option for next year--is there a tangible difference between Lafayette, Murch, and Janney? I know Lafayette is a huge school- but other than the number of classes per grade, are they all pretty similar? Is there a difference in how much computer/devise usage there is in each school for learning instruction? Thanks in advance.

Just find the housing within any of those school boundaries that works best for you, because the differences between those three schools are probably pretty negligible. I can't speak to Janney or Lafayette, but the device learning at Murch wasn't overwhelming. In fact, I appreciated that my kid learned to type at such an early age (I didn't really do so until taking a typing class in like 10th grade).

I guess I would be concerned about overcrowding at Lafayette, however. It's at the point where they're going to start reducing the number of PK4 classes offered because they're running out of room for the compulsory grades (this may be neither here nor there in your instance, however).

Lafayette actually increased the number of PK4 classes this year (to 4, from 3 the last few years).

Anonymous wrote:We've struck out on the lottery the past couple of years and plan to move to a Deal feeder neighborhood for our lower elementary school kiddos from NE if we don't get a better school option for next year--is there a tangible difference between Lafayette, Murch, and Janney? I know Lafayette is a huge school- but other than the number of classes per grade, are they all pretty similar? Is there a difference in how much computer/devise usage there is in each school for learning instruction? Thanks in advance.

Just find the housing within any of those school boundaries that works best for you, because the differences between those three schools are probably pretty negligible. I can't speak to Janney or Lafayette, but the device learning at Murch wasn't overwhelming. In fact, I appreciated that my kid learned to type at such an early age (I didn't really do so until taking a typing class in like 10th grade).

I guess I would be concerned about overcrowding at Lafayette, however. It's at the point where they're going to start reducing the number of PK4 classes offered because they're running out of room for the compulsory grades (this may be neither here nor there in your instance, however).

We've struck out on the lottery the past couple of years and plan to move to a Deal feeder neighborhood for our lower elementary school kiddos from NE if we don't get a better school option for next year--is there a tangible difference between Lafayette, Murch, and Janney? I know Lafayette is a huge school- but other than the number of classes per grade, are they all pretty similar? Is there a difference in how much computer/devise usage there is in each school for learning instruction? Thanks in advance.