Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Priorities:

1. Investment quality of the house. Is it in a desirable location and will it increase in value over time?

Just as a side note - when people's first consideration in buying a property for their home is its value as an investment (i.e., how much they expect to be able to get for it at some future date when they sell), the result is people responding to proposed boundary changes with "But my property values!"

A house is usually a family’s most expensive purchase by far. Intelligent people will consider its investment potential when they are looking to buy. MCPS will never break apart clusters in s significant way for the sake of diversity, despite what some posters say, because adding bussing is too expensive and s traffic nightmare, except by tweaking at boundary edges. If you’re worried about this, buy in the very middle of a group of excellent clusters - of course, it will be more expensive, because other people will have made the same calculation.

My MCPS elementary has:

Art, Music, PE weekly. Media (library) alternates with Counseling so every other week for each.

A blah PTA, but we are at a far north and east county focus school. Maybe one activity night per month.

No foreign language though we are supposed to be getting weekly French. They are advertising for volunteers from the community to deliver this.

Our after care is in the school (KAH) and covers just about everything. They also do summer camp, which obviously is extra.

Ask about reading, science, social studies, math curriculum and compare.

Ask about class size caps and compare to DCPS

Ask about ability to put an aide in lower grades or not.

Ask about teacher experience, tenure and turnover at the specific school.

Attend PTA meetings to get the vibe or any issues

MCPS ES has Pe 1x a week, art 1x a week and not sure when music class kicks in. Our ES is deemed so small we don’t even have a fulltime art or music teacher.

Library is moving to online books.

No foreign language.

Very active PTA.

Bar-T for days off, before and aftercare. Lots of stay at home fathers or mothers, nannies and Au pairs as well.

1. I think all schools offer PE, Art, Media (Library), and Music. Depending on the school, they may also offer STEM. Other than the full immersion (lottery) and the dual immersion (in-bounds only), language is not typically offered at the elementary level. However, most schools have afterschool clubs and languages are an option there.

2. The level of programming offered by a PTA will vary depending on the size of the school, and sometimes by how much free time the parent population tends to have. I think the sweet spot is a school with enough engaged parents to do programming, but not too many "former MBA now stay-at-home moms" to create a terrifying power clique.

3. Most schools have before and aftercare providers in-house, but sometimes there is a wait list to access them. If you are at a school where the program is full, the school buses often run to other nearby aftercare providers.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We love our EOTP DCPS elementary school but likely can’t afford to upgrade to the space/yard we would like. We would likely relocate to MOCO for a number of personal reasons. Trying to determine if there are any MOCO elementary schools like our current DCPS school that we should focus on for real estate. (Ideally south of Rockville for commuting purposes.) The things we like about our current school:

1.) 6 enrichment specials a week: art, music, PE, language, STEM, library. I looked online at a few elementary schools but it looks like Montgomery county offers art, music, PE?

2.) An engaged and active PTA. The elementary school probably has on average 3 special activities a month (e.g. health and fitness night, grandparents night, STEM night) to help build the sense of community at the school.

3.) Before-school care, after-school care and “camp days” for school days off all in the same elementary school building.

Does this sound like your Montgomery county school? Really appreciate the input!

I’m going to assume language means other than English. I don’t know of any MCPS schools other than the lottery immersion programs that offer foreign language as part of the curriculum. Our school offers it through a vendor after school for a fee. We get media once a week and science is a subject. What specifically are you looking for in STEM?

Oakland Terrace has dual language immersion, currently kindergarten and 1st grade, but will keep expanding a grade each year.

Please look beyond elementary to the middle and especially the high school.

The only MCPS specials in ES are art, music, PE, and media (aka library).

Most schools we looked at have very active PTA with community-building events. We are at Rosemary Hills, but there are lots of others that have this too. Our school is more diverse than many others because MCPS uses busing to achieve diversity in the catchment.

Most schools have before and after school care, and I like DCPS, they also typically cover vacation days, professional development days, and snow days. We do this at Chevy Chase elementary school, which is closer to us than Rosemary Hills.

Anonymous wrote:
Priorities:

1. Investment quality of the house. Is it in a desirable location and will it increase in value over time?

Just as a side note - when people's first consideration in buying a property for their home is its value as an investment (i.e., how much they expect to be able to get for it at some future date when they sell), the result is people responding to proposed boundary changes with "But my property values!"

Priorities:

1. Investment quality of the house. Is it in a desirable location and will it increase in value over time?

2. Commute convenience to your workplaces.

3. Quality of the school, which is actually inextricably linked to points 1 and 2 (if major workplace), since people aren't stupid.


That's all you need to worry about, the rest is unimportant.


Core subjects matter much more than specials for the development of critical thinking abilities, and there is a wide variability of teacher quality for each special at every school, so it's not wise to choose a school based on those subjects. You can also enrich outside of school quite easily for those.

The quality of core subject teachers will depend on location. Good teachers are drawn to one of two situations: wealthy neighborhoods, where they know most parents have the means and motivation to support their children's education; and the lowest-income neighborhoods, where the state gives more funds per student, teachers have smaller classes and feel like they're making a difference. MCPS schools are not created equal, even though they may appear to be on paper!

It's hard to uproot a child from friends as they get older, so unless a move is inevitable for your jobs, choose a location where the entire cluster, elementary/middle/high school, has a great reputation.

The schools I know are not in the area you're looking at, but here's some general information that might help.

Most of the aftercare providers that work in MCPS will offer before-school, after-school, and days off care in the school building. The biggest providers are KAH (kidsafterhours.com/) and Bar-T (https://www.bar-t.com/), but there are several others. The full list of which schools have which providers is here: https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/CUPF/Resources/Files/Before%20and%20After%20School%20Childcare%20By%20School%20and%20Provider.pdf

Most elementary schools have just art, music, and PE as guaranteed weekly specials, plus instrumental music starting in 4th grade. Both schools I'm familiar with had library/media center weekly in younger grades, and then less often in older grades.

PYP elementary schools will offer a minimal language special. I consider more of a taste of a foreign language rather than a foreign language class. Students start over in middle school.

Anonymous wrote:We love our EOTP DCPS elementary school but likely can’t afford to upgrade to the space/yard we would like. We would likely relocate to MOCO for a number of personal reasons. Trying to determine if there are any MOCO elementary schools like our current DCPS school that we should focus on for real estate. (Ideally south of Rockville for commuting purposes.) The things we like about our current school:

1.) 6 enrichment specials a week: art, music, PE, language, STEM, library. I looked online at a few elementary schools but it looks like Montgomery county offers art, music, PE?

2.) An engaged and active PTA. The elementary school probably has on average 3 special activities a month (e.g. health and fitness night, grandparents night, STEM night) to help build the sense of community at the school.

3.) Before-school care, after-school care and “camp days” for school days off all in the same elementary school building.

Does this sound like your Montgomery county school? Really appreciate the input!

I’m going to assume language means other than English. I don’t know of any MCPS schools other than the lottery immersion programs that offer foreign language as part of the curriculum. Our school offers it through a vendor after school for a fee. We get media once a week and science is a subject. What specifically are you looking for in STEM?

It's all about lists of what you want in an elementary school until we get to your housing budget and your escalation clause and whether your bid was accepted. Then, suddenly, not so important.

We love our EOTP DCPS elementary school but likely can’t afford to upgrade to the space/yard we would like. We would likely relocate to MOCO for a number of personal reasons. Trying to determine if there are any MOCO elementary schools like our current DCPS school that we should focus on for real estate. (Ideally south of Rockville for commuting purposes.) The things we like about our current school:

1.) 6 enrichment specials a week: art, music, PE, language, STEM, library. I looked online at a few elementary schools but it looks like Montgomery county offers art, music, PE?

2.) An engaged and active PTA. The elementary school probably has on average 3 special activities a month (e.g. health and fitness night, grandparents night, STEM night) to help build the sense of community at the school.

3.) Before-school care, after-school care and “camp days” for school days off all in the same elementary school building.

Does this sound like your Montgomery county school? Really appreciate the input!