Preston Hollow v. HPISD for Young Family (Dallas, Paris: house, neighborhood)

[HockDad]

Originally Posted by SVTRay

Good info

I'm new to the area and can only commit on my experiences. FYI: I'm not trying to imply these things happen in Dallas, my home town can be very Pretentious.

Private schools do in fact build their social community groups around the school and in my experience, the parents can be very cliquish. Our son has spent most of his time enrolled in private schools and everyone had their own group or click. This put a limit on friends, play dates, and parties. I haven't experienced anything close with our child attending HPISD. Everyone welcomes everyone with arms open. Our son is constantly asking or being asked for a play dates. I go to pick up our son at school and leave with three boys instead...all wired and ready to play. Another thing I love about the PC community is when you run across other groups, their not standoffish. Just last night we ran across a group and the kids came running up asking if our son could play before I could even put my truck in park. I wasn't able to join the parents inside due to a food allergy but we talked afterwards. The groups back home where completely standoffish and wouldn't even acknowledge you at times.

I think you highlighted one of the best parts of living the park cities, and it is a wonderful .

As for my kids, there are certainly cliques. But, I would expect that at most places. But even if your daughter is not is not in the same social group, you still find the parents extremely nice to all of the kids and rarely intentionally excluding them.

One other major difference. My daughters (and my son) will go to school with the same 50 girls for almost 15 years (class size will double to 100 over the years). The friendships with those kids are great, but there is not the mixing of schools. Thus, junior high might not be quite as bad from a social perspective, but sometimes change is good.

Two other differences. 1) gender- most of the top private schools do not mix genders (Greenhill is the exception). I think this is wonderful for girls and one reason why my daughters go to Hockaday. 2) race. You just will not have much diversity in the PC. That was a sticking point in my family, but certainly is not a big issue with everyone. (By the way, I was at Mustang Donuts using my informal survey of how "white" HPHS is and noticed that the orchestra was very diverse. Maybe 20 clubs up, but at least one of them (and arguably AcDec) had students of color.

[Snowyy]

"Students of color"? Rest of them are colorless or B&W?

[GreyDay]

Originally Posted by HockDad

[/b]

I think you highlighted one of the best parts of living the park cities, and it is a wonderful .

As for my kids, there are certainly cliques. But, I would expect that at most places. But even if your daughter is not is not in the same social group, you still find the parents extremely nice to all of the kids and rarely intentionally excluding them.

One other major difference. My daughters (and my son) will go to school with the same 50 girls for almost 15 years (class size will double to 100 over the years). The friendships with those kids are great, but there is not the mixing of schools. Thus, junior high might not be quite as bad from a social perspective, but sometimes change is good.

Two other differences. 1) gender- most of the top private schools do not mix genders (Greenhill is the exception). I think this is wonderful for girls and one reason why my daughters go to Hockaday. 2) race. You just will not have much diversity in the PC. That was a sticking point in my family, but certainly is not a big issue with everyone. (By the way, I was at Mustang Donuts using my informal survey of how "white" HPHS is and noticed that the orchestra was very diverse. Maybe 20 clubs up, but at least one of them (and arguably AcDec) had students of color.

Yes, the sports team posters paint a very scots-irish affect on all the Park Cities. Medium length pageboys all across. But there is a sprinkling (used intentionally) or color in HPISD. And that's about it. It's not as though when these kids grow up they're going to be working in an all black/latino/asian...workforce.

One thing about HPISD- all the kids are in the same school starting at 5th grade, so don't stress too much about which elementary is best.

As for SAT scores. The boys at St. Marks do significantly better than their peers at HPHS, the girls do about 100 or so points higher fwiw.

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by GreyDay

Yes, the sports team posters paint a very scots-irish affect on all the Park Cities. Medium length pageboys all across. But there is a sprinkling (used intentionally) or color in HPISD. And that's about it. It's not as though when these kids grow up they're going to be working in an all black/latino/asian...workforce.

One thing about HPISD- all the kids are in the same school starting at 5th grade, so don't stress too much about which elementary is best.

As for SAT scores. The boys at St. Marks do significantly better than their peers at HPHS, the girls do about 100 or so points higher fwiw.

That's almost certainly not correct.

[GreyDay]

http://resourceguide.republictitle.c...s/section4.pdf

http://inthenews.unt.edu/sites/defau...DMag_Top20.pdf

I'm fairly sure it's correct. The boys do about 200 points higher and the girls about 100 points higher from what I recall when we did our research.

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by GreyDay

http://resourceguide.republictitle.c...s/section4.pdf

http://inthenews.unt.edu/sites/defau...DMag_Top20.pdf

I'm fairly sure it's correct. The boys do about 200 points higher and the girls about 100 points higher from what I recall when we did our research.

Girls at St. Marks?

The boys at St. Marks might be thrilled but everyone else would be surprised.

[GreyDay]

Originally Posted by EDS_

Girls at St. Marks?

The boys at St. Marks might be thrilled but everyone else would be surprised.

I meant the girls at Hockaday. My earlier response was referencing HockDad's post. Hopefully no innocent bystanders were harmed.

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by GreyDay

I meant the girls at Hockaday. My earlier response was referencing HockDad's post. Hopefully no innocent bystanders were harmed.

You're right my guess is no-one was harmed.

It's my fault anyway I should have known what you were implying.

[SVTRay]

Originally Posted by HockDad

[/b]

I think you highlighted one of the best parts of living the park cities, and it is a wonderful .

As for my kids, there are certainly cliques. But, I would expect that at most places. But even if your daughter is not is not in the same social group, you still find the parents extremely nice to all of the kids and rarely intentionally excluding them.

One other major difference. My daughters (and my son) will go to school with the same 50 girls for almost 15 years (class size will double to 100 over the years). The friendships with those kids are great, but there is not the mixing of schools. Thus, junior high might not be quite as bad from a social perspective, but sometimes change is good.

Two other differences. 1) gender- most of the top private schools do not mix genders (Greenhill is the exception). I think this is wonderful for girls and one reason why my daughters go to Hockaday. 2) race. You just will not have much diversity in the PC. That was a sticking point in my family, but certainly is not a big issue with everyone. (By the way, I was at Mustang Donuts using my informal survey of how "white" HPHS is and noticed that the orchestra was very diverse. Maybe 20 clubs up, but at least one of them (and arguably AcDec) had students of color.

Again, I wasn't trying to poke at private schools. Our original goal was to enroll our son at St Marks but things got too chaotic to deal with the enrolling process last year. So we went with HP until we could gain our bearings. I think now that we're here, we're probably going to stick with HP. Our son has made a lot of friends which was important to us since he's an only child. That and we really enjoy the community.

[GreyDay]

Originally Posted by SVTRay

Again, I wasn't trying to poke at private schools. Our original goal was to enroll our son at St Marks but things got too chaotic to deal with the enrolling process last year. So we went with HP until we could gain our bearings. I think now that we're here, we're probably going to stick with HP. Our son has made a lot of friends which was important to us since he's an only child. That and we really enjoy the community.

It's all about choices, Do what makes the most sense for you and yours. My realtor had 6 boys however, so they went public.