School Selection-Neighborhood schools? (Manassas, Woodbridge, Lake Ridge: daycare, house, transfer) - Northern Virginia - Virginia (VA) - City-Data Forum

lovetoboat · 04-03-2009, 08:24 PM

I'm wondering if you have to go to the school that I see listed on the realtors sites or can you choose what school in the county your child goes to? Public schools obviously. we are looking at Woodbridge and see a few HS's but am unsure how it works there...

bospat · 04-03-2009, 10:45 PM

PWC site is pretty good...here is a link where you put in the house address and it will show the correct schools the house is zoned for..

Find Your School!

Also if you navigate to "schools" scroll down to school profiles, pick the one you are interested in and from that site on the left "school data" will bring up a PDF with all the school demographics, scores etc...

Good Luck, I'm in the same boat..so I've been all over these sites....

bospat · 04-03-2009, 10:48 PM

Also, most of the HS in PWC have specialty programs -- Forest Park is tech, Woodbridge Drama, Garfield IB program..your child can apply to any HS program and if accepted there are buses that go to them from no zoned HS....

ChristineVA · 04-04-2009, 05:08 AM

For elementary, you must go to the schools you are zoned for unless you can get a waiver to transfer (usually daycare related).

For middle schools, there are some options for transfer such as the language programs offered at Lake Ridge middle or Fred Lynn. Again, you don't get a LOT of choice on these. For instance, based on where I live, I could take my child out of his zoned middle school and do the language, but I would have to choose Fred Lynn and could not choose Lake Ridge, based on my address.

The High Schools all have "specialty" programs that accept about 200 students into them. You apply to these programs, just as you would in college, and then you can go to a different high school. Usually though, you can't go to a Western PWC school if you live in Eastern Prince William County. Osbourn Park was as far west as we could use living in Woodbridge.

lovetoboat · 04-04-2009, 05:45 AM

Thanks for the suggestions so far. I will look into the sites and do more research.

So far we'd like CD Hylton and Woodbridge based on the Crew Teams. We have a rower in the house and will need to keep that up for consistency. Does anyone have anything to offer on these schools?

lovetoboat · 04-04-2009, 05:51 AM

bospat: THANK YOU!! What a great site.. I will continue to use this. thanks for being so helpful!

ChristineVA · 04-04-2009, 06:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lovetoboat

Thanks for the suggestions so far. I will look into the sites and do more research.

So far we'd like CD Hylton and Woodbridge based on the Crew Teams. We have a rower in the house and will need to keep that up for consistency. Does anyone have anything to offer on these schools?

My daughter attended the Fine Arts program at Woodbridge for her Freshman year. She did not care for the school. I didn't *hate* the school but was not crazy about it. As with most PWC high schools it is large and overcrowded. There was a lot of racial issues at the time that weren't a huge deal, just a daily annoyance.

On the other hand, many kids go to Woodbridge and do absolutely fine. There is a good education there depending on the type of student you are. My daughter is just a very average and it was hard for her not to fall through the cracks.

I would put Hylton High School at the same level as Woodbridge.

Schools change from year to year. Five years ago, the better high schools are no longer the better high schools this year. Not sure what makes a difference. The latest scuttlebut that I get from parents is that Osbourn Park is the better school available to eastern Prince William County. The way to go there is to either live in the Westridge neighborhood and on up the parkway into Manassas. Or to apply to the Biotech program.