Raw, no-frills tuition ranges for elementary and middle grades from 16.5 to roughly 23.5 for non-Catholic privates. You will be expected to "donate" roughly 1 K - 2.5 K. There are additional fees of roughly 4 K for pre- and after-care. By 2d grade, the current rates are about $30,000 per year. A few schools offer very small sibling discounts. By any measure, two years of private elementary school basically equals what you would need in a 529 plan to pay the full four-year freight at a Virginia state university.

JH really isn't a very good school. The kids who are there are only there because their parents don't know or care enough to exercise free-transfer rights (JH is a "failing" school under NCLB). And JH is really the only thoroughly bad school in the City system -- all of the other ACPS schools have at least some fans that post on this board, and at least four or five of the ACPS schools seem to attract the same level of fervent loyalty as even the ritziest private schools. But consider some of the up-side issues:

- No question but that, within three years, when the rebuild is done, the school will be at least somewhat better;
- A school board member and the City superintendent have made JH a minor cause and have been paying much more attention to staffing and extras then used to be the case;
- If you're a JH parent and there's still anything materially wrong with JH, you will be able to opt out;
- If you opt out, there are multiple, really good public schools in the east half of town. If you look carefully at this board, you'll see Charles Barrett, George Mason, and MacArthur all mentioned, with favorable notes for Lyles-Crouch (so small that it's tough to get in from outside of east/south Old Town), Maury (doing very well now but not before the Superintendent imposed forcible improvements), and Cora Kelly (for some reason, the #1 public elementary in northern Virginia on math scores).

Just keep your eyes open. 99% of parents in Alexandria really don't need to think about private schools.

It sounds like the OP does not even have kids right now, so if they are thinking about having kids in a couple of years, they may have around 8 years before any kid starts K. That's a long time. JH will likely be better by then. Or the OP may not have kids according to that schedule, or they may want to move by then for other reasons. I think there is a good chance JH will be fine in 8 years. If VA gets its NCLB waiver, more families will be sending their kids there and the new school will be built by that time. Old Town is a great place to live, and this is just one of those trade-offs.

Burgundy is $24K for grades 1 and up. It's slightly lower for the JK and K and slightly higher for middle school. I expect that Browne is now about the same.

To the OP - I would not buy a house right now that feeds into J-H boundary. The school might get better but it will take a really long time.

Anonymous wrote:We are a recently-married couple and first time prospective homebuyers. We are looking at Old Town Alexandria and love some of the townhomes in the JH district. We would prefer to go public and would work hard to be involved with the school, and frankly don't want to make a decision at this stage based on schools when kids are still a few years away. But need to get a sense of how much private schools cost so that we keep our options open by considering it in our financial planning. In particular, how much is elementary, and what are the different options available in Old Town?

Depends on what you want.

If you're Catholic and want Catholic school, it's only $6k or $7k a year at Blessed Sac or St. Mary's.

Browne Academy and Burgundy Farms are in the $17k-18k range I belive.

St. Stephens/St. Agnes tops $25k.

Alexandria Country Day is in the SSSA range.

Immanuel Lutheran -- not sure about this one, and there are a couple of Quaker schools too, I think. But I don't know much about them.

We are a recently-married couple and first time prospective homebuyers. We are looking at Old Town Alexandria and love some of the townhomes in the JH district. We would prefer to go public and would work hard to be involved with the school, and frankly don't want to make a decision at this stage based on schools when kids are still a few years away. But need to get a sense of how much private schools cost so that we keep our options open by considering it in our financial planning. In particular, how much is elementary, and what are the different options available in Old Town?