Anonymous wrote:We did, as soon as our first was school aged. We lived in the Taylor school district and thought the classes were much too large. We were not at all enamored of the middle or high school either. We like H-B Woodlawn but we not about to risk that working out. We knew we wanted our kids in private school and so we moved back to DC, NWDC and our kids are now in middle school and upper elementary. We are VERY VERY happy with our decision. Our life is much better than it would have been had we stayed in North Arlington. Our kids are doing exceptionally well and love their schools.

Oh, and we have friends who did the same thing last year (also from N Arlington, also with all their kids in DC privates) and they are kicking themselves that they waited so long.

How large our Taylor's classes?

My 2nd grader at ASF only has 20 kids in his class and the Kindergartner 21 (though other K classes have 18-20).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A lot of stuff is actually much saner in DC than in VA these days. Free preschool, in-state tuition at any public college in the country, regulated daycare, and no "religious or philosophical" objections to vaccines are allowed in any school or daycare. After Snowmageddon, even the side streets in NW DC were plowed within a few days, while my colleagues in VA were still stuck.

We also don't have Confederate History day, mandatory ultrasounds, or legislators who think women should have to report miscarriages to the police. As for corruption, most municipalities have it. and the press will find it if they look for it. In addition to Mrs. McDonnell's veneers, take the Silver Spring Transit Center. It will probably have to be rebuilt, as the contractor used substandard materials. Wonder how he got that contract?

DcTag is not in state tution at any public college. The program provides for the difference between in state and out of state up till $10,000.

DCTAG provides up to $10,000 toward the difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition at public four-year colleges and universities throughout the US, Guam and Puerto Rico.

http://osse.dc.gov/service/dctag-get-funding-college


As an example, in state at UVA, $10,016, out of state, $36,720. difference is $26,604. You would pay for tuition \$16,604. Room and board is additional and not differentiated bet in state and out of state. Still a good deal.

Question - in your example above, would DC residents will be liable for the actual in-state tuition? So, they'd pay in-state tuition ($10,016), plus balance of difference between out-of-state and in-state less $10,000 ($16,604)?

Anonymous wrote:19:42, wish we could have swapped homes. Isn't W-L HS diverse? We live in NW DC and are looking to buy in N Arlington and are leaning more towards neighborhoods that feed into W-L HS because of the diversity. Yorktown HS district sounds lovely, except its not diverse. Our current NW DC public elem is great in terms of academics and when you include international students, its pretty diverse all things considered. We just can't stomach private school tuition payments for middle and HS so this is our current compromise. My only hesitation is I don't want us to be the *only* ones for obvious social emotions reasons.

I think for OP,it depends on where in DC you would move from Alexandria. Your shorter commute to a DC private school would improve quality of your life. Some people romanticize what it's like to live in DC and honestly unless you live in certain neighborhoods, it may in be what you imagined.

Also, consider this. The DC TAG covers the difference in cost between in-state and out-of-state tuition at eligible public institutions for up to $10,000 per year or a total of $50,000 over the course of five years.
UVA for example: VA residents pay $26k/year for tuition vs $54k/year if out of state. DC residents would pay $44k/year (so you may want to stay in VA if VA colleagues are in the plan). However, it does pay a large $40k chunk over the 4 years if your kids attend a public school. Just something to think about.
http://www.norton.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3161&Itemid=100077

http://admission.virginia.edu/admission/tuition

Tuition for out of state students is $36,720. Your $54k per year is including room and board which has no differential between in state and out of state.

Anonymous wrote:A lot of stuff is actually much saner in DC than in VA these days. Free preschool, in-state tuition at any public college in the country, regulated daycare, and no "religious or philosophical" objections to vaccines are allowed in any school or daycare. After Snowmageddon, even the side streets in NW DC were plowed within a few days, while my colleagues in VA were still stuck.

We also don't have Confederate History day, mandatory ultrasounds, or legislators who think women should have to report miscarriages to the police. As for corruption, most municipalities have it. and the press will find it if they look for it. In addition to Mrs. McDonnell's veneers, take the Silver Spring Transit Center. It will probably have to be rebuilt, as the contractor used substandard materials. Wonder how he got that contract?

DcTag is not in state tution at any public college. The program provides for the difference between in state and out of state up till $10,000.

DCTAG provides up to $10,000 toward the difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition at public four-year colleges and universities throughout the US, Guam and Puerto Rico.

http://osse.dc.gov/service/dctag-get-funding-college


As an example, in state at UVA, $10,016, out of state, $36,720. difference is $26,604. You would pay for tuition \$16,604. Room and board is additional and not differentiated bet in state and out of state. Still a good deal.

No- we left NW for Clarendon.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As soon as we found out I was pregnant, we started looking in DC. We had been renting in Alexandria and decided once we were pregnant we would buy.

This is not to be a VA bashing, but for us - we couldn't stand the thought of raising our child in VA. We were renting in VA, because it was cheap. We just felt like it was so boring. Everyone was exactly the same. There was no diversity (color, SES, international families, anything...) We had to drive everywhere and just didn't like it.

We looked in DC and felt it fit our lives and our lifestyle better. We've never looked back.

Where were you living in VA that had no SES diversity and no international families?????? That's just bizarre. True, there aren't a lot of AA (there are some) in VA but we have pretty much everything else-diversity wise. DC seems to have fewer of other minorities (hispanic, asian, etc.).

She clarified that she was just talking about own her family. Apparently she was living in an all-white house in Alexandria and found the lack of SES diversity in her house distressing, so they moved to DC.

Anonymous wrote:As soon as we found out I was pregnant, we started looking in DC. We had been renting in Alexandria and decided once we were pregnant we would buy.

This is not to be a VA bashing, but for us - we couldn't stand the thought of raising our child in VA. We were renting in VA, because it was cheap. We just felt like it was so boring. Everyone was exactly the same. There was no diversity (color, SES, international families, anything...) We had to drive everywhere and just didn't like it.

We looked in DC and felt it fit our lives and our lifestyle better. We've never looked back.

Where were you living in VA that had no SES diversity and no international families?????? That's just bizarre. True, there aren't a lot of AA (there are some) in VA but we have pretty much everything else-diversity wise. DC seems to have fewer of other minorities (hispanic, asian, etc.).

Gosh this thread has gone off the rails.

OP, I currently live in Old Town Alexandria with my husband and preschool-aged daughter, and we are planning to move to NWDC, hopefully in an area zoned for one of the JKLMM schools (might've gotten the acronym wrong, but you know what I mean). We don't want to live in N. Arlington for the same reasons you seem not to, and those same reasons also disqualify Bethesda. Because a decent commuting time is a must for us, we are left with the decision to move into the District. Obviously there is some concern among the denizens regarding sending a kid to Wilson High School, but it seems like we'd be set with the public elementary and middle schools, and I am not opposed to Wilson and/or checking out private school for HS if we have to. (Thinking a long time down the road here.)

I have thought about this decision a great deal, and I wonder if I am making a mistake not just picking up a place in Cherrydale or Lyon Hill and accepting that is where we have to be for the long haul. Because the schools are "better" and of course I want to give my child the best foundation I can. But life is about so much more than that, and no school is perfect.

I don't know if this helps at all. Just my two cents.

19:42, wish we could have swapped homes. Isn't W-L HS diverse? We live in NW DC and are looking to buy in N Arlington and are leaning more towards neighborhoods that feed into W-L HS because of the diversity. Yorktown HS district sounds lovely, except its not diverse. Our current NW DC public elem is great in terms of academics and when you include international students, its pretty diverse all things considered. We just can't stomach private school tuition payments for middle and HS so this is our current compromise. My only hesitation is I don't want us to be the *only* ones for obvious social emotions reasons.

I think for OP,it depends on where in DC you would move from Alexandria. Your shorter commute to a DC private school would improve quality of your life. Some people romanticize what it's like to live in DC and honestly unless you live in certain neighborhoods, it may in be what you imagined.

Also, consider this. The DC TAG covers the difference in cost between in-state and out-of-state tuition at eligible public institutions for up to $10,000 per year or a total of $50,000 over the course of five years.
UVA for example: VA residents pay $26k/year for tuition vs $54k/year if out of state. DC residents would pay $44k/year (so you may want to stay in VA if VA colleagues are in the plan). However, it does pay a large $40k chunk over the 4 years if your kids attend a public school. Just something to think about.
http://www.norton.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3161&Itemid=100077

Anonymous wrote:OP again. I was REALLY hoping this thread wouldn't turn into one about race (which is why I didn't disclose mine in my original post). But since it obviously has, here it goes:

DH and I want to send our kids to a top school that is both high performing and diverse (yes, for us personally, "diverse" means a fair % of AAs). We've taken a look at a lot of the NoVA pyramids and can't really seem to find anything that fits the bill. (Please enlighten us if you know of one.) So that led us to privates, which -- quite intentionally -- have better numbers. Then we were thinking, if we're sending them to private school in NW, and I work downtown (DH works near Tyson's), why don't we just move back to DC and call it a day.

We're good on the diverse friends front, so that's not an issue. The concern is rooted in schools.

If you have anything to contribute with that in mind, great. But please, spare me the race relations lectures. Thanks!

I know the assumption here has been that anyone making this move would go private (and it sounds like you intend to, OP), but at least consider Murch district. Check out the school demographics--60% white, 20% black, 12% Latino, 8% Asian. Students from 30+ countries. Socio-economic diversity, too, because of mixed housing stock. It's about as diverse as things get in DC. We love it.

"Has anyone w/ kids chosen to leave NoVA for DC?"

Clown question

To OP, 20:08 here again. We too have and have long had quite a diverse group of friends, acquaintances, and colleagues. Our kids have the same. We do still, or maybe because of this, make an effort to talk about racial (and economic) inequality in our house even though, as white Americans it can feel like a landmine at times.

I admit, the private schools my kids attend (different ones) are "racially" diverse, and significantly more so than the schools they would likely have attended in N Arlington. That is with the exception of a Hispanic population. I do think they would have had more school mates with families from South and Central America if they were in NArlington schools. The are few Hispanics kids in their privates.

I do think location diversity is another benefit of private schools too. They have friends who live in NoVA, MoCo, most sections of DC, and PGC. We go to these friends homes and they come to ours. The range of housing and neighborhoods is pretty great. My kids understand wealth disparity and how that effects certain neighborhoods (at least in terms youngish kids can understand) and I think they are growing in to people who will feel comfortable in all neighborhoods of their DC metro area. They also understand that money and skin color have no correlation to character and kindness and manners and hospitality to your fellow man.

Bottom line, I didn't feel comfortable sending my kids to the great public schools in N Arlington because, in addition to large student teacher rations and NCLB, I felt that they would be in a bubble, a bubble which I found constraining and was not the world I wanted them to grow in to. Yes, race is a part of that but its a much larger picture in my opinion.

A lot of stuff is actually much saner in DC than in VA these days. Free preschool, in-state tuition at any public college in the country, regulated daycare, and no "religious or philosophical" objections to vaccines are allowed in any school or daycare. After Snowmageddon, even the side streets in NW DC were plowed within a few days, while my colleagues in VA were still stuck.

We also don't have Confederate History day, mandatory ultrasounds, or legislators who think women should have to report miscarriages to the police. As for corruption, most municipalities have it. and the press will find it if they look for it. In addition to Mrs. McDonnell's veneers, take the Silver Spring Transit Center. It will probably have to be rebuilt, as the contractor used substandard materials. Wonder how he got that contract?

My wife won't even consider MD due to the presence of dirty libruls, and we've made friends here in our few years in Northern VA, so DC?

HAHAHAHA

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We did, as soon as our first was school aged. We lived in the Taylor school district and thought the classes were much too large. We were not at all enamored of the middle or high school either. We like H-B Woodlawn but we not about to risk that working out. We knew we wanted our kids in private school and so we moved back to DC, NWDC and our kids are now in middle school and upper elementary. We are VERY VERY happy with our decision. Our life is much better than it would have been had we stayed in North Arlington. Our kids are doing exceptionally well and love their schools.

Oh, and we have friends who did the same thing last year (also from N Arlington, also with all their kids in DC privates) and they are kicking themselves that they waited so long.

OP here. PP, you are EXACTLY the type of person I had in mind. I'm curious - why do you consider your life (and your friends' lives) so much better now? To play devil's advocate, you could have easily commuted w/ your kids to their DC private and still enjoyed living in N. Arlington, right? I'd love to hear what makes you so confident that it was the best move!

The fact it took nine hours for someone fitting your criteria to surface ought to tell you something. A post asking about anyone with kids choosing to leave DC for NoVa would have taken 10 minutes.

Maybe it is because people who live in DC do have a live and don't waste too much time on DCUM.

Least plausible explanation ever.

At best, they are just too busy expressing their envy and hatred of Gwyneth Paltrow on the Off -Topic forum.