Hellobee Boards

@Mrs. Carrot: we asked our realtor

Our city has open houses for all the elementary schools. However, we have a lottery system, and you have to rank schools, so that is why they do that. In other towns/cities, you don't really get a choice since it's just by neighborhood. Or are you asking about where you should move in order to get a good school system? In that case, I have a general idea of the schools in the towns around me based on a combo of school rankings in the local magazine, word of mouth, and general reputation (in almost all cases, the most expensive towns have the best school reputations).

There are three private schools in our city that we would consider, and only two were serious contenders for what we wanted. We decided based on language of instruction and proximity. We also toured the chosen school and met with the director during the open house.

Combo of inside schools, blogs about schools in our district and surrounding districts, very active neighborhood listservs, and tours of the schools.

We have a private Christian school and a public elementary school equidistant from our house (5 minute drive). The public school is geared more towards the needs of ESL students and we are Christian, so we're likely sending our son to the private. There is a top public school district in the bourgie next town over that actually doesn't have enough school age children that you can get a permit to attend, but it would be a 20-minute drive each way at minimum and I believe they place your kid in whatever school needs the bodies, so it could be an even further drive.

Buuuut DS is 17 months so we have time. We've heard fabulous things about the private school near our house and its really quite reasonably priced and goes from preschool to 12th grade. Its one of the reasons we bought our house here. A house in that other town with the good public schools (where we lived previously as renters) would have easily cost us double and the public schools weren't good enough to justify that expense.

@Mrs. Carrot: We are going through this now since we have to move in a few months and I'm really torn. There is one elementary school in our new town that has a GreatSchools rating of 9 and then rest are 5 or 6. But a lot of nice neighborhoods are zoned for the 5 and 6 rated schools so I'm really torn about how much weight to give that rating when it's about all I have to go on! Which school district are you looking to move to? Our daughter would have gone to ACPS. I'm sure there are lots of Bees who could help you get inside info about the area schools.

@Mrs. Carrot: @abmamma: FWIW, there are parents at my daughter's preschool whose older children go to a particular elementary school that's a 1. It's a school with a terrible reputation, but honestly their kids are fine there. One of the moms is the president of the preschool, so I know she really cares about education. I think it's sooo hard in northern VA where there are so many "elite" options out there, it can feel hard to take a choice that's "less than." T.C. Williams has a GreatSchools rating of 2, but our preschool director sent her bright, achieving children there and they had a good experience. But as a parent, that makes me nervous because I just have this feeling of, 'am I making a bad decision for my child that's going to affect the rest of her life??' And logically I know that since she has 2 parents who are vested in her education, she'll probably be fine no matter what...Sorry, kind of rambling now!