Anonymous wrote:This is easy yet harsh: Don't do your kids the disservice of sending them to DCPS. If that means moving to the suburbs then do it. You don't want to spend the rest of your life wondering what could have been if you were more flexible on where you lived.

What if you move to the suburbs and you spend the rest of your life wondering what if because your family is miserable and overburdened and you moved just to avoid sending your kid to a socioeconomically and racially diverse school? Either you're the most miserable parent in DCPS or you moved to the suburbs and are coming to a different board to tell everyone about your superiority which doesn't sound like someone who is happy.

OP there are plenty of fine middle schools but unfortunately without knowing where you are it's hard to figure out what's best.

List Hardy feeders and also the Latins for the 5th grader. Then it probably depends a lot on where you live and how you feel about Basis for 5th (not as widely popular or as hard to get into as this board often suggests). Look at Inspired Teaching, the shaw schools that now feed to John Francis, and the Capitol Hill dcps schools.

Anonymous wrote:This is easy yet harsh: Don't do your kids the disservice of sending them to DCPS. If that means moving to the suburbs then do it. You don't want to spend the rest of your life wondering what could have been if you were more flexible on where you lived.

Dcps is not a monolith and neither are suburban schools. Leckie and Lafayette are probably more different from each other than they are from their nearest suburban neighbor (in PG and Montgomery county, respectively). It's not as simple as DC = bad and burbs =good.

Anonymous wrote:This is easy yet harsh: Don't do your kids the disservice of sending them to DCPS. If that means moving to the suburbs then do it. You don't want to spend the rest of your life wondering what could have been if you were more flexible on where you lived.

Got it - lots of folks decide to go elsewhere, and lots don't. Not sure why you feel the need to come onto the "public school" board to sell the pitch?

This is easy yet harsh: Don't do your kids the disservice of sending them to DCPS. If that means moving to the suburbs then do it. You don't want to spend the rest of your life wondering what could have been if you were more flexible on where you lived.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Inspired Teaching will give you a pretty good chance in 5th since a group of kids leave for the 5th-12th schools like Latin and Basis then. And if your 5th grader is offered a spot or enrolls, then your 3rd grader will rise to the top of that grade's list and is likely to get pulled in. Inspired only goes to 8th and the MS is small, but they have a good track record of HS application support and acceptances to competitive HSs.

Also, my daughter is in this grade at ITDS (rising 5th grader) and it's a really kind cohort of kids.

And if your 5th grader gets in she will pull your 3rd grader in due to sibling preference.

To echo some prior posters, you can look in this forum for the many discussions about middle and high school - and depending on what you are looking for, you may find that there are zero good options, or you may find that there are more than a dozen. High school is more complicated, and even if you get into a 'good (per DCUM)' middle school, many kids from those schools also leave again by middle school to try for application or private schools.

Not sure about Maury, but you would probably be able to get into Payne in 3rd & 5th, and it would feed into Eliot Hine - which again I know is not good enough for many people on this thread, but there are lots of folks who are there and are happy.

Again, depends on where you live. Sending your kids across town every day is a lot, so factor that in too - whether it is by bus, carpool, or you driving them. Lots of hours of sleep, homework, social time, and family life lost to commuting.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Inspired Teaching will give you a pretty good chance in 5th since a group of kids leave for the 5th-12th schools like Latin and Basis then. And if your 5th grader is offered a spot or enrolls, then your 3rd grader will rise to the top of that grade's list and is likely to get pulled in. Inspired only goes to 8th and the MS is small, but they have a good track record of HS application support and acceptances to competitive HSs.

Also, my daughter is in this grade at ITDS (rising 5th grader) and it's a really kind cohort of kids.

And if your 5th grader gets in she will pull your 3rd grader in due to sibling preference.

Anonymous wrote:Inspired Teaching will give you a pretty good chance in 5th since a group of kids leave for the 5th-12th schools like Latin and Basis then. And if your 5th grader is offered a spot or enrolls, then your 3rd grader will rise to the top of that grade's list and is likely to get pulled in. Inspired only goes to 8th and the MS is small, but they have a good track record of HS application support and acceptances to competitive HSs.

Also, my daughter is in this grade at ITDS (rising 5th grader) and it's a really kind cohort of kids.

Summary OP is there is not a school that you can get your 3rd and 5th grader into with a path to a good middle/high school except a Deal feeder which would require a terrible commute.

Your only shot is if your 5th grader gets into Latin or Basis which is a very low probability. BTW both school loses a good number of kids after middle school for a number of reasons.

You can put your kids in your IB and try for DCI for 6th but again even lower probability then Latin and Basis for getting in due to feeder preference.

Inspired Teaching will give you a pretty good chance in 5th since a group of kids leave for the 5th-12th schools like Latin and Basis then. And if your 5th grader is offered a spot or enrolls, then your 3rd grader will rise to the top of that grade's list and is likely to get pulled in. Inspired only goes to 8th and the MS is small, but they have a good track record of HS application support and acceptances to competitive HSs.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hot tip -- you can get both your kids into Ross, one of the best schools in the city. They have a lot of openings in 5th grade.

A lot of kids leave Ross but they don't fill the seats with out of bounds kids. Since the 2019-20 school year, they have made 0 offers for 3rd or 5th. You can see all the data at enrolldcps.dc.gov/node/61

Completely untrue. They go through most of their 5th grade wait-list. Lived this, and know others who got in in 5th.

Look at the dcps data. Are you telling me you got a 5th grade offer as an out of bounds student, not through an IEP, since 2019?

I am. And we weren't even very high on the waitlist. They went through more than half of it, I know for sure.

There is data that shows this, by the way. The chart that reveals when they made offers (offers by June, by August, etc).

Anonymous wrote:Sent too soon. Other schools in this category, where a whole bunch of kids leave for Latin and BASIS in 5th --Ross plus many of the Capitol Hill schools. If you are open to Stuart Hobson or Francis as a middle school, this is a path that exists.

JO Wilson may be a good option in this category since it's undergoing renovation and is in trailers the first half of next year. Few people want that. But then you get a nice new school to finish out the year in, and a path to Stuart Hobson. Which is not amazing, but is better than most dcps middle schools. You still have to figure out high school because eastern probably isn't going to satisfy you.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hot tip -- you can get both your kids into Ross, one of the best schools in the city. They have a lot of openings in 5th grade.

A lot of kids leave Ross but they don't fill the seats with out of bounds kids. Since the 2019-20 school year, they have made 0 offers for 3rd or 5th. You can see all the data at enrolldcps.dc.gov/node/61

Completely untrue. They go through most of their 5th grade wait-list. Lived this, and know others who got in in 5th.

Look at the dcps data. Are you telling me you got a 5th grade offer as an out of bounds student, not through an IEP, since 2019?

I am. And we weren't even very high on the waitlist. They went through more than half of it, I know for sure.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hot tip -- you can get both your kids into Ross, one of the best schools in the city. They have a lot of openings in 5th grade.

A lot of kids leave Ross but they don't fill the seats with out of bounds kids. Since the 2019-20 school year, they have made 0 offers for 3rd or 5th. You can see all the data at enrolldcps.dc.gov/node/61

Completely untrue. They go through most of their 5th grade wait-list. Lived this, and know others who got in in 5th.

Look at the dcps data. Are you telling me you got a 5th grade offer as an out of bounds student, not through an IEP, since 2019?

Sent too soon. Other schools in this category, where a whole bunch of kids leave for Latin and BASIS in 5th --Ross plus many of the Capitol Hill schools. If you are open to Stuart Hobson or Francis as a middle school, this is a path that exists.