For my high schooler, the commute with traffic is 35-45 minutes. We live in Alexandria and school is in NW DC. The commute/traffic is pretty awful on the Virginia side of the river and my DC’s social life is in DC and Bethesda. Hindsight is 20/20. My DC hates living so far away and begs for us to move. We won’t be moving because DC will graduate soon.

In the absence of school transportation, I personally would not choose a school that was not walkable in emergency (eg., car out of commission, one parent out of town and the other needing to transport kid, etc.).

Our preschool was .25 miles from home and our K-8 is .75 miles. We usually walked to preschool unless one of us was dropping off on the way somewhere else in the car. We usually drive to K-8, since it's across a busy street, but it's walkable if necessary, and we've done it a few times.

It's not uncommon for kids on our county's public school buses to push an hour or more each way. I went to school in a rural area where an hour each way was common (though we could make it to the school 30 miles away in that time). Homework, sleep, or socialize. The difference in the PP scenarios is whether the parents are willing to drive instead of a bus driver. So that depends on the parents' needs and affinity/dislike of driving.

Anonymous wrote:Man, in the 90s my brother went to middle school 35+ miles away, which took 45 minutes or more. Plus it was in the opposite direction of my parents' jobs. They managed it by carpooling with several other families.

Know someone who commuted 20 miles one way every day to HS and hated it to her core.

Anonymous wrote:I was willing to drive in direction of my commute 15-20 minutes, but not in a different direction. We looked at variety of schools for pre-k kid but ultimately chose to apply to a couple of schools that were close by, and chose the one that is under 5 minutes drive.

This is us. I drive 15 minutes to school on the way to work for drop off and then another 15 minutes to the office. DC carpools home with another family in PM.

All of the schools we looked at were under 10-15 minutes away. The school we ultimately chose is actually about 5 minutes away...our kids are still little and it's soooo nice to be so close to the school.

10-12 min with normal traffic. So 35 minutes round-trip.

We only seriously considered schools less than 15 minutes away and that had a bus. I want to be happy my kids are at the school, not grumpy I have to drive them.

Also, it helps for play dates that they are mostly close by.

20 minutes

Man, in the 90s my brother went to middle school 35+ miles away, which took 45 minutes or more. Plus it was in the opposite direction of my parents' jobs. They managed it by carpooling with several other families.

25 minutes

Our kids go/went to the parish K-8, about 3 miles and 8-28 minutes depending on traffic each way. I find that with kids at a small, heavy parent-volunteer environment, I'm going back and forth much more than 2x a day. Aside from the occasional forgotten lunch or science project homework, I took volunteer rotations in the lunchroom, the reading corner, the uniform store, the home room parents meetings, the field trip volunteer, the charity projects, the science fair judging, the bake sales, the fundraisers, etc etc. (mostly pre-covid, of course). Oldest DS is now at Gonzaga, a full 20 miles, 30+ minutes, no traffic, and I'm glad he can grab a ride with a neighbor, catch the metro and will be driving soon. That sort of commute would not be practical with younger kids, IME.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How far would you be willing to drive for a school that's a great fit for young kids (pre-K/lower elementary)? I'm measuring the commute in time. 20 minutes? 30 minutes? Longer? How does that compare to average length of time on the bus for a public school?

Do you release that every family’s situation is different? Your process here seems to be misguided.

23:58's response offering insight on how a short drive for the kids may end up as a long drive for the parents is a good example of how OP's approach is not necessarily misguided.

HS Student.
15 minutes in the AM to the bus stop.
DC comes home by himself on Metro and City Bus. (About once a week I pick him up at the Metro for various reasons).
I could do more, but am relieved I don't have to.
That is the one thing I really liked about public school. DC would leave (on his own!) in the am and come back (on his own!) in the pm. School bus stop was 2 blocks away.

10 minutes for one kid, 15-20 minutes for the other. The max I would have considered is 30 minutes, but my kids are MS/HS now, and I'm really glad it's under that.

Think if traffic patterns not just distance.
You can drive 3 miles in city traffic every morning and it takes longer than driving 6 miles elsewhere.