There are more schools that are not affiliated with churches than are listed above...the ones listed focus on North PG County which it seems most of this thread does

For those interested in South County options:

Maryland International Day School (Spanish immersion)
and
Beddow

My family moved to Bowie in 1962 and are still here. So many whites left during the court-ordered busing years (early seventies IIRC), but we stayed, and I'm so glad. I've utilized a mix of public and private schools for my kids. One daughter did well at Tulip Grove & Tasker, and I had a daughter attend Elizabeth Seton (we're not Catholic, but it was a great education).

I'd like to point out the incredible gem we have in the science/tech magnet program at the public Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt. My kids have been in that program and absolutely thrived. Even better, there's still free transportation to/from Roosevelt if you are selected for science/tech. I can't speak highly enough of that environment.

For what it's worth, all of my kids have been hugely grateful for growing up in a majority non-white environment (we're white). I worried at one point when one of my kids was one of only two white children in the entire grade of her private school, but any social concerns I had were unfounded, and she made lifelong friends. My kids have regularly told me that they love feeling comfortable wherever they go.

Tulip Grove and Whitehall in Bowie are good elementary schools (both in scores and in feedback from parents).

They both feed into Samual Ogle Middle, which gets a 7, I believe on Great Schools.

Everything I've read about Bowie High suggests that it makes a huge difference what classes you are placed in, as it makes a difference in who your peers are.

For elementary schools, arguably the best grade school in the district is Bond Mill Elementary in West Laurel. It does funnel into Martin Luther King, Jr Middle School which has an above average GreatSchools ranking. But it is zoned for the abysmal Laurel High School. You might be lucky to get into the Magnet program at Eleanor Roosevelt, which is a good program, but if not, your options are not great for public high school.

OP, how old is your child? If you're looking for elementary then University Park ES has a very good reputation. People also seem generally happy with Berwyn Heights Elementary, Hollywood Elementary (in College Park) and Greenbelt Elementary. Hyattsville Elementary has a VERY active PTA and they are doing a lot to improve the school. I think most families are pretty happy there too. Lots of Bowie area elementary schools have good reputations as well.

The bigger problem is middle school. I don't know about the Bowie area schools, but the middle school options in the Rte. 1 and 295 corridor areas are not great unless you're TAG identified (I've heard - I don't have a MS aged child yet). Greenbelt MS just got a beautiful new facility though and people are saying it is on the upswing, but the families we know there are in via the TAG center so I'm not sure their experience generalizes to the experience of the IB kids who are not in the TAG center.

I think it would be easy for you to find plenty of like-minded families at any of the schools I mentioned though if you get involved with PTA and extracurriculars. I don't think you'll find a public school that won't have kids who are allowed to do things you won't approve of. Even in private school there will be eyebrow raising parenting choices that you hear about. At least that's been my experience. What you seem to be looking for and what has been critical for my kids (and my sanity) is to find a place where you can easily find folks with shared values and really foster those relationships. I think there are lots of PG schools that make that possible.

OP here So what ARE the 'good' public schools to try for? I would love some positive suggestions of success. I understand what PP was saying about 'environment' - I really try to shelter my child, so when he comes home telling me about violent video games, tv shows, movies, foul language etc. it bothers me! I can't shelter him forever, but I certainly seek out a healthy environment where I can find like-minded families.

Where are these places in PG?

Anonymous wrote:

No. You do not need to "follow the gentrification." There are plenty of majority AA areas in PG that are very affluent and nice. I'm not even black and I found this post a little bit offensive, like you need to follow the white people to find a livable place. No wonder PG has such a stigma, if this is the way people think.

Um, why did you assume that "gentrification" necessarily means white people displacing minorities? Particularly when the PP noted that AA and Asian families were among the gentrifiers. Your response reveals some unattractive racial assumptions of your own ...

Anonymous wrote:Re: peer environment . . . spoke with a former parent at Chavez and a coach of an opposing team and they both expressed the same sentiments about it being a "rough." Of course, I took both comments with a grain of salt, which is way I am doing my own research.

I guess the more reliable reference that I had was from a neighborhood boy that cut my grass for several years. He eventually transferred to MoCo and told me that in the new school the "kids were really focused on learning." While he cut my grass, I would sit and talk with him about things and try to give him a little advice. That one conversation really stuck in my mind, of course, it was the same day that Michael Jackson died too.

Did the coach and the neighbor say the school was rough the whole way through? Sometimes the early years are ok but the upper grades at a school (k-6 at Chavez, right?) can be problematic. Our school is kind of like that, though I wouldn't call it "rough" really. You lose kids to the TAG programs at 2nd, then again for 6th because a lot switch to Catholic just for middle school *and* you lose a new batch to the 6-8 TAG center at the middle school that year too. So you have a kind of steady outflux of TAG kids and some of the more involved parents as you go up the grades. But you don't have that in kinder or first. If you think your child might get TAG identified, you'd have that "out" coming up too, so maybe staying put would make sense. I know you don't always know with kids when they are little about TAG or not, but if you just did private apps for this year you might have an idea from their testing.

**side note - does anyone know why PG County has the weird mismatch of K-6 schools that feed into 6-8 middle schools?

This was from her post which clearly YOU didn't read:

The Post had a front page article last summer about the influx of white families to PG (according to recent Census data), and the authors pinpointed the Hyattsville area. The white households are primarily upper-middle class and there are also highly educated AA and Asian families moving to places like Arts District Hyattsville. This is having a very positive effect on Hyattsville Elementary.



So before you try to be snarky, know wtf you are talking about.