Relocating to Charlottesville Need Advice on Best Schools

[Kcgator99]

Hi Mandy I know your post is several years old but I’m in the same situation now that you are. I will be moving to Charlottesville and I have a daughter going into third grade who has dycalculia and other learning disabilities. I was wondering what schools you ended up taking your sons to and how you feel about them? I appreciate any advice you have thanks so much.

[An Old Tavernkeeper]

Originally Posted by Kingslea

Charlottesville has great elementary schools.

The best elementary school in the area is Meriweather Lewis, but most every elementary school is solid

Charlottesville has some of the worst schools, elementary and otherwise, in the state. Meriwether Lewis IS a good school but it is NOT a Charlottesville School, it is an Albemarle County Public School.

Avoid Charlottesville City Schools at all costs, especially with your son needing personal attention. Any COUNTY elementary school will be fine but count on moving him to a private school for middle and high school. The area middle schools are among the worst in the state in both the city and county. The public high schools are riddled with both drugs and gang activity and the middle and high schools both do a terrible job with kids that have special needs.

Spoken as a former literacy specialist, now a director for a gifted program for the county schools with a wife and other family working in the city and county school systems.

[BrassTacksGal]

Virginia’s Best School Districts – The Bull Elephant Albemarle school district is ranked number 3.

[An Old Tavernkeeper]

OMG BrassTacksGal, stop drinking the koolaid. The Bull Elephant simply pulls from Niche.com. Niche includes things like teacher pay in their rankings and focuses on limited high school stats with a heavy weighting given to the percentage of seniors that are college bound. When I was on the Albemarle School Board we managed to send almost 96% of our students from one high school to college, but never reported that over forty percent never made it to their sophomore year and over 50% had not graduated from college after 5 years. We don't track after that but I believe only a tiny fraction of students who have not completed college in 5 years will ever get their degree. Compare that to St Anne's, a local private school that has over 90% of it's students complete college after five years to our 38%. So being college bound is a worthless indicator.

If you want comprehensive, universally accepted and endorsed by the Obama Administration as the gold standard for accurate data, go to schooldigger.

https://www.schooldigger.com/go/VA/search.aspx

You will see that Albemarle is 74th in the state as a COMPLETE district, including all middle and elementary school data. Not too bad overall but hardly stellar. And Albemarle's predominantly minority schools are some of the worst in the entire state.

Then look at Charlottesville ranked at 240th in the state out of 362. A complete failure considering we have the Curry School of Education right here at UVA and an unlimited supply of student teachers and interns.

More importantly both the Charlottesville and Albemarle Districts rate a pathetic 2 of 5 stars.

But this discussion is about where to live in Charlottesville to get the best schools. Almost every subdivision discussed feeds into one of the following schools:

Cale Elementary Zero Stars in 1046th place out of 1099 elementary schools in the state
Crozet Elementary 1 Star in 845th place out of 1099
Walton Middle School 2 stars in 262nd out of 415 middle schools in the state
Monticello High School 1 star in 260th place out of 324 high schools in the state

There is no feeder pattern in the area that will give your children a clear path through three good schools and even if there was the School Board redistricts and manipulates boundaries on a regular basis,

As a former Board member with a wife still in the public schools here in Albemarle please believe me you need to send your kids to private school or at a minimum have one stay at home parent that can supplement your child's education. If you believe sites like the Bull Elephant that's what you get BULL.

[RVAbornandbred]

All I can say is that a family friend's child graduated from CHS in the past 5 years. She went, and graduated, from Cornell. There were 4 other kids headed to the Ivies in her class as well as one headed to Stanford and another to Duke. 7 kids going to the Ivies/Stanford/Duke out of a class of about 300 is pretty impressive for ANY public high school in Virginia.

[An Old Tavernkeeper]

I have one at Yale and one at Washington & Lee and they both got full ride academic scholarships.

They never had bomb threats in their school like Monticello. They never had gang members or a drug overdose in the bathroom like Charlottesville. They never had a teacher rape a student, never had a lesbian coach take compromising photos of girls, never had an athletic director plead guilty to federal title 9 violations, never had staff plead guilty to embezzlement, never had a loaded gun in their school (that one was at Walton MIDDLE school no less) never had their cars vandalized, never had kids vaping in the classrooms.

And there were many other things that I can't disclose from my days on the school board or from my wife's current experiences in an ACPS elementary classroom but if sending 2% of a graduating class to top schools is impressive to you, go for it.

In the mean time about 50% of last years St Anne's students went to those level school. https://www.stab.org/academics/colle...iculation-list

[danielle_pal]

If not st Anne’s what’s the next best private school? Especially for academics

[An Old Tavernkeeper]

Originally Posted by danielle_pal

If not st Anne’s what’s the next best private school? Especially for academics

There are many. I have worked with Miller, Tandem and Covenant they are all solid schools. If you have a younger child and the fit is right there is a fantastic Montessori school and again, if the right fit, Fork Union has sent 100% of it's students on to college for decades regardless of how far behind they are when they enter.

Go visit, it's like love, you'll know when it's right!