A lament about the city and the schools

I asked a friend-colleague about his plans to stay in the neighborhood, pending the addition of twins to their now three-person family. Here is his reply:

Only if somebody can miraculously fix the DC school system. It's sad. I've become convinced of two things recently:

#1 - The suburbs are probably crawling with parents who would much rather live in the city, if only they didn't feel like they'd be sacrificing their kid's education for the benefits of the urban environment. Many of those soccer moms and little league dads were probably happy urbanites before they had kids and were forced to make the Great Compromise.

#2 - If the DC schools were even moderately acceptable, virtually every metro-accessible neighborhood and probably many others on good bus corridors would be absolutely thriving. Imagine seeing the mad scramble for upper NW real estate everywhere in DC. Brookland would be just like Woodley Park or Cleveland Park. Or at least Takoma Park.

In fact, if the schools were any good, we probably wouldn't have quite the metropolitan sprawl problem we have now, since there wouldn't be such pressure on many of those suburban communities. Also, there wouldn't be such lopsided real estate values, since upper NW DC wouldn't have quite the pressure it has either.

You'd have huge amounts of reinvestment in the City. We wouldn't have to give away the farm to coax developers to build themselves a ballpark. They'd be competing for it. Talk about a good investment. All the city has to do is build itself a good school system and all the other investment we covet will come in time. Anything else we do here is just like pushing a rope.

Unless DC is convinced it can build itself a solid economic base on the backs of childless Creative Class 20-30-somethings, the city's economic development efforts are really short sighted. Problem is, eventually many of those Creative Class folks will pair up and want to make babies. And when they do, they'll be right where I am right now. Saying goodbye to an otherwise fine urban environment.

Folks in the hood keep trying to convince us (and themselves) that there are educational options. But from what I've seen they're either:

a) Charter Schools, with dubious credentials and weak long term prospects;

b) private "accademies" where we have to shell out $10,000-$15,000 per kid per year for the honor of shlepping our kid around to the far corners of the city and back again every day, or;

c) hard to get into [particularly excellent] public schools, where you either have to live in the area or have a kid in the system already or be incredibly lucky to win the enrollment lottery.

We're looking in Arlington, of course. I know the neighborhoods there fairly well. My commute would be short. And the overachieving Arlingtonian parents accept nothing less than the absolutely best public schools they can afford.

Sure the homes are expensive relative to Brookland, and my taxes will go up. But at least under the current rules, mortgage interest and property taxes are deductible. Private school and commuting costs are not.

It's gonna be a busy year. I'll let you know how it pans out.