Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Four corners is good for ES. Pinecrest ES is excellent. Eastern MS' great strength is its magnet. Takoma Park has city and county taxes - be prepared to pay on that score if that is a concern. TPES and Piney Branch ES are good, but overcrowded. Takoma Park MS is excellent.

I don't know much about the other areas.

Am I correct in my understanding that kids who are zoned for the school but not in the magnet do not have access to the magnet classes? So it’s almost like two “schools” in one building?

I think that's correct in ES. Don't know about MS. At Blair, if students demonstrated they could do the math and science, they were welcomed into individual magnet classes.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is your budget and do you want a SFH? Urbana to Woodley F*** Park. Crazy. Nobody here knows anything about Urbana, Clarksburg, or even Damascus. You might as well be asking about the moon.

Actually some of us do know stuff about Clarksburg and even Damascus. Not Urbana, though, because that's not MCPS.

If someone in your family will be traveling regularly between home and D.C., I do not recommend Clarksburg or Damascus.

OP: thanks, that’s fair. There are people in the office who commute in daily from Columbia and Harper’s Ferry, so it seemed doable. I’ve seen other people complaining about traffic, but they (people in office) don’t seem to mind the commute.

People commute daily from Harper's Ferry to D.C. on the MARC train, which means at least they can sleep/eat/read/work/watch during their commute, but it's still over 3 hours a day just on the train. Do you really want to spend that much time every day just going to the office and back?

If people from your office commute from Columbia, have you looked at Howard County? You may want to connect with one of the educational advocates in the area to advise you regarding MCPS. You also may want to ask in the special needs forum as that group is generally pretty nice. We left the area several years ago so I cannot comment on the current state of affairs with MCPS and special Ed.

Anonymous wrote:Takoma Park is excellent in and out of the magnet program. You can buy a home in the zone for East Silver Spring ES and you will also be zoned for TPMS without having to pay TP taxes.

Takoma is a really nice place to live. There's the charming town with many restaurants and shops and it's also very convenient to downtown. The ES has accelerated math. PBES has a local CES and TPMS has the set aside for the magnet. The bus right to Blair magnet is short. My kids were in magnets all the way through from ES to HS.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is your budget and do you want a SFH? Urbana to Woodley F*** Park. Crazy. Nobody here knows anything about Urbana, Clarksburg, or even Damascus. You might as well be asking about the moon.

Actually some of us do know stuff about Clarksburg and even Damascus. Not Urbana, though, because that's not MCPS.

If someone in your family will be traveling regularly between home and D.C., I do not recommend Clarksburg or Damascus.

OP: thanks, that’s fair. There are people in the office who commute in daily from Columbia and Harper’s Ferry, so it seemed doable. I’ve seen other people complaining about traffic, but they (people in office) don’t seem to mind the commute.

Anonymous wrote:Are you coming from a small school district? Are you happy with current class sizes? If you are happy with it, I'd think twice about moving here.

OP here: we are, class size is okay, up to 30 in elem, nothing amazing. But there are other reasons we are leaving the area.

Anonymous wrote:What is your budget and do you want a SFH? Urbana to Woodley F*** Park. Crazy. Nobody here knows anything about Urbana, Clarksburg, or even Damascus. You might as well be asking about the moon.

Actually some of us do know stuff about Clarksburg and even Damascus. Not Urbana, though, because that's not MCPS.

If someone in your family will be traveling regularly between home and D.C., I do not recommend Clarksburg or Damascus.

Anonymous wrote:Are you coming from a small school district? Are you happy with current class sizes? If you are happy with it, I'd think twice about moving here.

Elementary class sizes are pretty small in the DCC.

With all the boundary changes, renting might be a good idea. We bought in North Bethesda as I needed to be on Red Line. With Woodward High School reopening, there will be some potentially lower cost real estate feeding into a brand new school that should be a really good school.

OP, I would rent for at least a year to see how you like a neighborhood, schools, and the commute. And agree that areas far out like Olney and beyond would make for a terrible commute to the zoo.

Are you planning to metro or drive? If metro you may want to check out neighborhoods that are farther west along the red line — medical
Center and North (or if you can afford it, Friendship Heights and Bethesda). If you are driving and would like the BCC cluster, you might consider areas inbounds for Rock Creek Forest and Rosemary Hills—including the Rosemary Hills neighborhood itself.

Good luck!

What is your budget and do you want a SFH? Urbana to Woodley F*** Park. Crazy. Nobody here knows anything about Urbana, Clarksburg, or even Damascus. You might as well be asking about the moon.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Check out special programs. You don't need to live in-bounds of that cluster, but if you live too far, the school bus will take a long time to get there. Would your kids qualify for the GT/LD program of MCPS? Gifted, talented and learning disabled. They require an IEP and a certain IQ score.

These programs are notoriously hard to get into. Don't give OP false hope.

PP you replied to. My kid got in, which is why I was posting. OP's oldest apparently didn't qualify for an IEP at the previous school, so it might take some time to try.

Are you coming from a small school district? Are you happy with current class sizes? If you are happy with it, I'd think twice about moving here.

Anonymous wrote:Check out special programs. You don't need to live in-bounds of that cluster, but if you live too far, the school bus will take a long time to get there. Would your kids qualify for the GT/LD program of MCPS? Gifted, talented and learning disabled. They require an IEP and a certain IQ score.

These programs are notoriously hard to get into. Don't give OP false hope.

^ noting that my kid was diagnosed with low processing speed, ASD and had his ADHD diagnosis confirmed many years later with a full neuropsychological evaluation. But at the time Bethesda Elementary gave him his IEP, none of that was officially diagnosed.