OP, here. Thanks so much for all of your opinions! Please keep them coming! It is so eye opening to read the varying viewpoints on Reston. And, to the poster about the fcps facilities dashboard, thank you! That is such a useful source of information.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How old are your kids? If they are still young I would buy. Who know what south lakes will look like in 10 years.

Completely agree with this. People were saying the same thing about certain Vienna schools years ago when we bought our house. You HAD to live in McLean. Now people are falling all over themselves to move here. And kids are people placing to be in our local HS. Reston is a great community and much closer in than Sterling or the Chantilly HS area. If you like the area, I wouldn't be overly concerned.

Same goes for McLean many years ago. Believe it or not, that's where the lower income people who couldn't afford Arlington would move. Times change. I see all of the change going on in Reston, and it's pretty awesome. It's a really amazing cohesive community and convenient place to live. In my opinion, Reston is the next Vienna in terms of cachet. Just like Vienna was the next McLean, and McLean was the next Arlington years ago. Of course the old communities will turn their noses up at the new while the tides of change pass them by.

Reston is such a wonderful place to live. North Reston has the best elementary schools.

I went to Forest Edge, and then Hughes, but Herndon High School instead of South Lakes, but had many friends who loved South Lakes. Forest Edge was a great school when I was there, but this was in the late '90s/early 2000s. The problems I ran into at Forest Edge were mostly class differences---a lot of the kids coming into what's now called the AAP center came from the Great Falls area and were very wealthy. I was one of the few kids in my class who lived in a townhouse for example, many kids had nannies/au pairs, went on expensive overseas vacations, had their entire wardrobe bought at Limited Too instead of thrift stores like I did. I remember my band teacher asking us about our practice routines--did we have a place in our houses we could practice, and one kid replied that his parents preferred that he practiced in the library. The idea of having an entire library in your house was so foreign to me. Those were the kids who had more problems relating to the base school kids, who were generally coming from more diverse backgrounds. I felt like I could relate more to those kids, so found my peer group there (I came from a very poor school in Herndon from K-2). There were advantages that came from having a sizeable wealthy group of students though----even in 1999 we had a morning television show with multiple cameras, a teleprompter, sound mixer etc. Far more sophisticated technology than we have at the Sterling Park elementary school I teach at currently.

Reston is a great place to live as a kid---there are walking paths everywhere and lot of trees and parks.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wouldn't buy in south lakes. If you are going to live out there I would look at Chantilly High School.

Really? These are very different locations.

+100 I wouldn't want to live in the dreadful sea of houses zoned for Chantilly. Reston has so much more to offer.

What is Chantilly?

I love Reston. I don't have experience with the schools you mention, though. We have kids at Aldrin and love it.

Anonymous wrote:If it were me, I would not buy a house zoned for those schools. There are better schools in Reston.

What better schools? Forest edge is up there with the top elems in Reston (there aren't many poor ones). I thought the only other middle/high pyramid in Reston is Herndon Middle/Herndon High, unless I'm missing something. There might be a sliver of homes feeding elsewhere, but I'm not sure. It seems like Herndon middle and high are about the same rep-wise as Hughes/south lakes.

Reston's HOA can be pretty oppressive.

Anonymous wrote:How old are your kids? If they are still young I would buy. Who know what south lakes will look like in 10 years.

Completely agree with this. People were saying the same thing about certain Vienna schools years ago when we bought our house. You HAD to live in McLean. Now people are falling all over themselves to move here. And kids are people placing to be in our local HS. Reston is a great community and much closer in than Sterling or the Chantilly HS area. If you like the area, I wouldn't be overly concerned.

Anonymous wrote:Check out Sterling in the Cascades. It's just as close as Reston (depending on where you're commuting to) and the schools are better and we liked the housing stock more. We seriously have some amazing neighbors, shops and area.

its certainly closer in if you are commuting to Leesburg Thats an odd usage of "closer in" but LoCo boosters are known to use language "flexibly". Reston is of course closer to employment centers in DC, Arlington, and Tysons. Both by car and by transit.

Anonymous wrote:People typically adapt to change, but quite a few people moved out of the area redistricted to South Lakes to avoid the school, and pupil placements out of South Lakes back to Oakton, Madison, Westfield for AP remained high for many years thereafter. There's no consensus that South Lakes is a better school than the other schools and Madison and Oakton, in particular, remain higher rated than South Lakes.

There are far more pupil placements into South Lakes than out of it. In fact, it's been closed to pupil placements in the past few years. Look at the fcps facilities dashboard.