Opinions on Pennsbury High School in Bucks County (Doylestown, Yardley: school district, college)

[itkt]

My husband recently took a job in the Princeton area, so we are relocating to either the NJ or Pa area. We currently live on Long Island. We are looking into Yardley/Lower Makefield, and were wondering if anyone could offer their opinion about Pennsbury High School. I hear that it is a good school but we are concerned about the size of it. There is something like 3000 or more students that attend the school. We are worried about the competitiveness of trying to make sports teams and being picked for a college. My son plays baseball and I can't even imagine how hard it would be to make the team. They pick what 25 kids for the team out of a class of 1000. Do a lot of people in Yardley send their children to private schools, for elementary as well as HS, and if so what private school do the HS students go to?

Thank you for any advice you can offer on this. Also, if there are any other towns that are reasonably priced that have an excellent school district, with a reasonable commute to Princeton, could you please offer your advice on that as well.

[mrnickk]

Hi, we lived in Yardley for 7 years before doing a stint in Ohio for 3 (remarkably, Columbus OH and it's suburbs are nicer than anything the east coast has to offer, and that includes schools). We now live in newtown which is next to Yardley, but offers much more of a town feeling than a bedroom community. Pennsbury school district, in my opinion, has gone down hill a bit and has always been a divided HS between the yardley/lower makefield crowd and the rest of the district. I would consider Newtown and Council Rock district, or Doylestown and Central Bucks before Pennsbury. Many families in the area do send their children to private and catholic schools. My kids go to St Andrew in newtown which pulls from Newtown, Yardley, Langhorne, and even Doylestown and New Hope. Many of these kids go on to the host of catholic prep schools around the Philly metro area.