Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At my home in PG looking over a lake and some neighbors playing golf now. Looking forward to our gorgeous community pool opening in a couple months. Love that my family has plenty of room to live and entertain and that we are not paying a huge mortgage so we can afford to send DD to an excellent private school. So, no, not sick of anything.

Yeah I remember feeling that way too, until my $1M house (Oak Creek) sunk in value to $400K. And there are still short sales on my block for $500K. We are next in line to dump our place. We are burning money my staying and its not worth it to painfully commute to the good private schools in DC. Our PG dream has died. Over it. For sale. Goodbye.

I wonder if this person gave up and sold. The houses in PG have soared in value and my house could sell for $820k- I bought it for 320.

Very happy in CP. My kids know all their neighbors and my block is full of kids running round, riding bikes every day after school. Feels very 90s - I open the door and yell outside for them to come home for dinner.

The nearby trails are incredible. I can easily hit 20 miles on a bike and hit one or two traffic lights. I love that we can walk/bike to farmers markets and how small town it feels while still being part of the larger dc area.

We chose private school for my elementary aged kid. Our zoned school is overcrowded and I hate the county run school system (I’m not from MD and it makes no sense to me.) Our private school is closer to home than our zoned public so that works for us.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For a family with small kids, it's idea. We live in University Park and we're ten-minute walks from the library, the movie theater, Whole Foods, several restaurants, and four different playgrounds. Our mortgage, for a three-bedroom historic house, is $2,100 a month. Our kids are too young for us to have had to navigate the tricky public schools, but our older one currently attends the Center for Young Children, run by UMD's early childhood education department, and in terms of quality I'd put it up against any $40k-a-year preschool that the "ritzier" suburbs could offer. When school comes, we'll figure it out, just like the neighbors on our block whose older kids have recently been accepted to name brand colleges.

Where do your neighbors send kids to K-12? I loooove University Park and would like to convince my DH to move there. We are in NE DC. Our kid is in a great elementary now but we we don't love our middle or high school options. Curious what the landscape is in PG.

A lot of families in UP choose University park elementary or the K-8 magnet options ( French immersion, Montessori, Arts magnet etc) and/or test into Glenarden Woods (the number 1 elementary school in Maryland in case you didn't know- but of course it's a TAG only school so it would be worrying if it weren't) . For middle , College Park academy is very popular but there are other options, including FCS as previously mentioned or the local parochial schools like Holy Redeemer, which gets a lot of kids joining in middle school. There are also some specialty programs like visual arts at Hyattsville middle I believe or TAG at Greenbelt middle but I don't know much about those. For high school, again CPA is popular, or testing into the Science and Math program at Roosevelt, or the wide array of catholic schools (De Matha, Seton, etc) . If you position yourself well, most places will be within cycling, public transit or walking distance. Pretty awesome to be honest. University Park is beautiful. Calvert Hills also, Greenbelt, Hyattsville, College Park , Berwyn Heights. Definitely the best place we've lived.

Anonymous wrote:How is PG county doing these days? Writing from MoCo 👋

I would say that overall PGCPS has made a lot of positive improvements in the 12 years we have been in the system. Our kids went to neighborhood elementary, TAG middle and got into their first choice high school program.
It's far from perfect but we have figured out our path in order to have affordable housing and a short commute.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For a family with small kids, it's idea. We live in University Park and we're ten-minute walks from the library, the movie theater, Whole Foods, several restaurants, and four different playgrounds. Our mortgage, for a three-bedroom historic house, is $2,100 a month. Our kids are too young for us to have had to navigate the tricky public schools, but our older one currently attends the Center for Young Children, run by UMD's early childhood education department, and in terms of quality I'd put it up against any $40k-a-year preschool that the "ritzier" suburbs could offer. When school comes, we'll figure it out, just like the neighbors on our block whose older kids have recently been accepted to name brand colleges.

Where do your neighbors send kids to K-12? I loooove University Park and would like to convince my DH to move there. We are in NE DC. Our kid is in a great elementary now but we we don't love our middle or high school options. Curious what the landscape is in PG.

UP Elementary is considered a solid option that a lot of families are happy with. Other families have tested into the TAG program at Glenarden Woods, or they have lotteried into the language immersion programs, or they pay for Friends Community, a sweet little Quaker school in Greenbelt. For high school, we know families in Eleanor Roosevelt's tag program, College Park Academy (we're keeping an eye on it because they preference applicants from UP) and some assorted private schools, including Holton Arms and Cathedral.

Anonymous wrote:For a family with small kids, it's idea. We live in University Park and we're ten-minute walks from the library, the movie theater, Whole Foods, several restaurants, and four different playgrounds. Our mortgage, for a three-bedroom historic house, is $2,100 a month. Our kids are too young for us to have had to navigate the tricky public schools, but our older one currently attends the Center for Young Children, run by UMD's early childhood education department, and in terms of quality I'd put it up against any $40k-a-year preschool that the "ritzier" suburbs could offer. When school comes, we'll figure it out, just like the neighbors on our block whose older kids have recently been accepted to name brand colleges.

Where do your neighbors send kids to K-12? I loooove University Park and would like to convince my DH to move there. We are in NE DC. Our kid is in a great elementary now but we we don't love our middle or high school options. Curious what the landscape is in PG.

For a family with small kids, it's idea. We live in University Park and we're ten-minute walks from the library, the movie theater, Whole Foods, several restaurants, and four different playgrounds. Our mortgage, for a three-bedroom historic house, is $2,100 a month. Our kids are too young for us to have had to navigate the tricky public schools, but our older one currently attends the Center for Young Children, run by UMD's early childhood education department, and in terms of quality I'd put it up against any $40k-a-year preschool that the "ritzier" suburbs could offer. When school comes, we'll figure it out, just like the neighbors on our block whose older kids have recently been accepted to name brand colleges.

Anonymous wrote:How is PG county doing these days? Writing from MoCo 👋

Love it. College Park is amazing. Hyattsville also. Many other areas too. Trails and bike paths have really improved the whole area over the last 10 years and are used by all sorts of people, day and night. We love biking and walking to most places we need to get to. Greenbelt labor day festival happened this weekend and it is always such a fun small town-y experience. We don't want to be anywhere else for the foreseeable future.