<p>I don’t know where the work place will be, but can you consider Maryland in addition to Virginia?</p>
<p>Actually, Nokesville doesn’t have it, but if you know Nokesville, you know Bristow (for outsiders, Nokesville is small and touches Bristow). </p>
<p>We actually also have OMG a SUPERTARGET too!</p>
<p>Nokesville will never get commercialized because back in 02-03 PW county had seen that the boom of the housing starts could hurt them and created an area that no home could be built on unless it was 10 acres at least. Gone are the majority of cow farms, but the horse farms are still here.</p>
<p>Off topic, but here’s a funny story regarding BDHS.</p>
<p>Every parent has on their car a bumper sticker that has a picture of a COW, a Pi sign and the word HI! The school is known as COW PIE HIGH because we are the rural one in PW.</p>
<p>Funnier yet, because we are the only ICSCE School, which people fight to get approval to cross lines so their child can attend this country school.</p>
<p>Kingstowne is a great community and has equally great access to 495 and 95/395. Depending on which part of KT you live in the HS could be Edison or Hayfield. Edison is a IB school. Hayfield (AP) is a secondary school but with the opening of South County they lost a lot of enrollment to the new school. It is no where near the size of Robinson I don’t know the actual enrollment. Edison is in the middle of a major remodel, Hayfield has already completed their remodel so most everything has been modernized. I doubt too many people who follow this forum know much about either of these schools. These school are not generally sending kids to</p>
<p>whoops…sorry about the accidental send!<br>
Anyway…Neither of these schools are sending kids to top colleges in droves like some of the other schools in the county. But plenty are going to college. You can get a good snap shot of the stats on the FCPS web site. My boys went to a neighboring school with the same cross section of students. 3/4 of the classes went on to college with about half of them at local community college and the rest mostly to Va universities as well as military academies and a few Ivies.</p>
<p>You REALLY don’t want to commute to NoVa from MD if you can help it. You’d spend three hours a day in your car.</p>
<p>If your freshman is top of the class, one big reason to live in the Springfield area is a school known as TJ. It is a magnet school, and located in Springfield, fyi just because it is in your back yard does not mean your child can attend! However, if you think your child might be eligible you may want to place that into your equation. Fairfax and PW kids can attend, but depending on where you live it could be a hassle. Our DS was offered the chance to test for the school in 7th grade, but since we were in PW we decided to elect not to…go back to my commuting point.</p>
<p>TJ is a school that you must test for, and these kids are brilliant! The school is public and you do not pay a dime. It is so good that most magazines that rank public high schools have officially removed them from being eligible for this category. </p>
<p>I would also suggest as someone who has moved their kids alot due to the military, take an honest look at your kids and the school system they are currently in now. I have seen children suffer because they went from a school with an avg SAT of 1100 out of 1600 to Langley where they avg in the 1300’s. They could be the smartest in their current school and find that they are lagging behind according to VA stds. It will kill them when applying for college because their rank will go down.</p>
<p>Also as a Mom who moved her DD as a rising jr to another state, take extra precautions. Contact Fairfax and PW HS now, any of them, because the curriculum is the same across the board for each school within the particular county. Fairfax and PW will have similar, but not identical. Ask for their course catalog, then set an apptmt with your current school to work at what your child needs to take. You may think it is easy, but it isn’t. Every state has their reqs, and sometimes they may not have classes that translate. Additionally, the gpa w/uw and pt scale can drive you insane. It took almsot a yr for both of our children to get it fixed. (DS moved from VA to NC, DD moved from NC to VA).</p>
<p>No VA takes education very seriously and it is best you get a wrap around it before you show up no matter where you live, the only way to do it is to plot out the curriculum for next yr with help from the GC at your last school. The only way to do that is to ask them to send you a catalog before you move</p>
<p>PWCPS catalog for hs is over 100 pages!</p>
<p>One thing every parent in Fairfax or PW will say that we love is their IT program for keeping parents in the loop. Parents can chime in on-line and check the daily grades of their child, homework assignments, what they charged and ate for lunch, when the school says they need a new physical/shots, etc. It is a great asset because your child knows they can’t pull anything over you regarding school.</p>
<p>There is a huge difference between Central Springfield (Lee HS) North Springfield (Annandale HS) and West Springfield (WSHS). Lee and Annandale have a much higher percentage of free and reduced lunch kids as well as ESOL students. Lee is IB, WSHS is AP. There is more overall crime and gang-specific activity in Central and North Springfield as compared to West Springfield. #18 Metro Buses run through the Springfield neighborhoods and then are express routes to the Pentagon. Ft Belvoir is just 20 minutes away via multiple routes.</p>
<p>WSHS, Lake Braddock, and Robinson all have a high military population. Students entering these high schools as an upperclassman usually have no problem assimilating as their fellow students know how it is to be the newbie and welcome the new kids.</p>
<p>Correction to bullet, TJHSST is in Annandale. I agree it is a fabulous school but there are more kids (even sibs of current TJ students) opting to stay at their base high school so they can be a big fish in a small pond.</p>
<p>Loudoun County was mentioned as having difficult commutes and high real estate taxes. If the job is in the Herndon/Reston or Chantilly area the commutes are not at all difficult. As for the taxes, I believe the OP mentioned renting, not buying so that should not be an issue.</p>
<p>To be even more correct, THSST is in Alexandria 
and is a great program for the kids looking for that program. For my daughter she wanted more control over her classes and her time and was not enamored of the long bus rides to/from which would be even longer as she competes in sports so she opted to stick with her neighborhood highschool and has excelled(most all high shools in Northern Virginia can be as rigorous as you make them). But she has friends there who love it and it is a perfect fit for them. The Northern Virginia area has many great schools so it’s really finding the right neighborhood for your life overall, including commuting, schools, and other items important for your family (public transportation, etc).</p>
<p>TJ would not be an option at all for a rising Senior. As for a rising Freshman, this year there were over 3100 applicants for 480 places, so I would not base any moving decision on the possibility of a child’s attending TJ.</p>
<p>Don’t forget about the Virginia SOL’s. Unless it has very recently changed, your senior will still have to take them in order to graduate. </p>
<p>We found it much easier to move a senior from the east coast to the west coast than it would be the other way. Luckily, I was pretty sure we were moving to VA and made sure my DD took courses that would not put her “behind.”</p>
<p>I can’t get this link to open at the moment, but you can read about it here.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.doe.virginia.gov/2plus4in2004/hs-transfer2va.pdf[/url]”>http://www.doe.virginia.gov/2plus4in2004/hs-transfer2va.pdf</a></p>
<p>The one thing that also should be noted is your hs sr will have to take VA history as a requirement for graduation, so plan their schedule accordingly. I don’t know about Fairfax, but PW has block schedules. In other words, they take 4 classes every day and rotate A/B schedule. Srs if they have filled their requirements are allowed to enter school late or leave early.</p>
<p>I have mentioned Loudoun County in a few prior posts. The real estate tax rate is higher than Fairfax ,but nowhere near double. The high schools are smaller than the schools in both FFX and Prince William Co.Loudoun was mentioned as having bad commutes (as I said before, it depends where you work), but the same can be said for Prince William.</p>
<p>They are all good school districts, but depending on where the job(s) is and what size school you are looking for, I wouldn’t rule out Loudoun.</p>
<p>People in our FCPS high school communities always have opinions about what is going on at the other high schools. I’m not sure where the gang related crime stats came from regarding Lee and Annandale HS. There is a perception that the more free/reduced lunch populations attend a school the higher the crime rate. All this fear mongering raised it’s ugly head during boundary meetings several years ago. As I mentioned before Hayfield and Edison, which you asked about are not on the radar of anyone who posts here. Since my boys have both graduated from one of the dreaded socio/econcomical diverse schools and gone on to UVA I’d be happy to let you know the real story!</p>
<p>If you go into the bowels of the FCPS site, what you will find is a crime report regarding the incidents that occurred at the school. I am assuming (we know what that means) that statistically the schools with a higher amount of free lunches converts into higher crime rate at school and lower SAT scores. It is a perception, and I will grant you that, but stats also place those schools on the lower end. Granted nationally most parents would be happy with the lower end of NoVA, but most NoVa parents would prefer not to be on that end of the spectrum.</p>
<p>We are all throwing our 0.1987432 cents in without knowing a lot of things.<br>
- Where are they coming from…AR to VA will be a time warp regarding education. The parents could actually do more harm than good by placing them in the top tier FX school.
- What are they willing to spend on rent…1K for a garaged TH that accepts pets can be a hard find. 2K is a different story
- Where are they working…looking at a map, is different than traveling the route. You can live in Springfield and think what’s the big deal to travel Old Keene Mill to Vienna, it’s only a few miles, until you actually have to travel it. We all know that 7 a.m. traffic means 10 mph, and that could translate a 15 mile jaunt into an 1 1/2 hrs.</p>
<p>My suggestion is to place the job as a priority for commuting, cost (rental) next, and then let the school fall out from there. NO VA has great schools, some better than others, but overall ALL of them in FX County are better than you could imagine. PW are not too shabby either!</p>
<p>As far as Loudon, it is very suburban, aka bedroom community, but unless you are working in the Dulles Corridor or 66 Fairfax, it is not an easy commute for DC/Pentagon</p>
<p>So, I’m reading this through a lot of the thread… Are all the northern VA schools (or I guess specifically Fairfax and Loudoun counties) high schools that strong? I’ve heard of TJ, but everywhere else is up there too?</p>
<p>Yes, we are very fortunate in Northern Virginia to have strong schools, conversely why it can be harder for Northern Virginia students to get into Virginia State Schools because we have a lot of high caliber students who take advantage of everything offered. Arlington is another county with very strong schools.</p>
<p>I agree with Mom, all of the No VA schools are high caliber. Many times it is a hard adjustment for the student that moves here in their hs yrs. This occurs because some of the hs are so high that they find themselves behind the 8 ball, even if they were academically advance. For example, some of the HS’s avg 1300+ out of 1600 on the SAT. Notice the key word 1300! It is also hard for the student that is just the avg A/B student because that could translate into becoming a B/C student.</p>
<p>I have seen many kids become shocked and frustrated because they thought they were the smartest in their last school, only to find that they are the middle of the pack here, requiring them to buckle down to get up to speed.</p>
<p>I also agree about it being harder for NoVa students getting into state colleges. However, I disagree why. I believe it is because the school system is so great, and colleges want to take from across the state, not just NoVA they usually lose out to other students who have lower gpas. There was an article about this last yr and how many NoVA parents were increasingly frustrated that their children were not making it in to schools like UVA and VaTech, while OOS and IS from other areas were with lower credentials. This forced UVA and VATech to reduce OOS admits from 30% to 25%.</p>
<p>Loudon does not rank as high as Fairfax, they are still strong, but on par with PW. Fairfax is reknown for their academic strength. This is why many people also opt to go PW and Loudon, due to the fear that they will be time warping their child into a different academic stratosphere if they go to Fairfax.</p>
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<p>Allow me to object: OOS do not get in with lower credentials. Quite the opposite. At UVA they need Ivy league stats to get in. Also UVA and VAtech and all other public universities in VA have not reduced their OOS admits and certainly not under public pressure. It’s always been roughly 30%. Yes, every year some people agitate for increasing IS admits and the General Assembly looks into it but nothing ever happens.</p>
<p>The Virginia universities take so many from out of state because the taxpayers of Virginia have decade after decade not funded the state schools to the level necessary to allow them to take a smaller percentage of OOS. Out of state tuition is necessary to make up for the lack of state support. What is it for UVA, about 8%?</p>