Photo by MWander.

A Glover Park father and likely future Stoddert parent wrote in with his thoughts on how education affects his family’s thinking about where to live — especially with his child’s special circumstances.

Thank you for launching the new education site. This topic has been especially an important topic for us. When we were looking for houses last year, we wanted to be in bounds for the good Capitol Hill school or the good ones in NW (not all of which are good unfortunately). My wife wanted to move to Virginia for schools, but we were able to get a house in a well-regarded K-5 school area.

However, the topic has become more of a concern for the future as one of our babies has special needs. He currently gets services from DC for early assistance.

I am hopeful he will be able to do well in our local Stoddert Elementary with just some additional help, but it is too early to tell both how he is doing and whether DC can sufficiently support him. Alternatively, would DC provide for his education in a private school if DC is not up to task?

My wife may want us to move to VA or MD if she feels the DC elementary system can’t support the needs of our one son. I am hopeful that it can, but we’ll see in several years when the kids are school aged. Middle school and above is a whole separate issue regardless of the special needs given that the reputations are not good for post K-5.

I’ve subscribed to the RSS and look forward to future discussions.

How has education affected your decisions about where to live?