Where to live & school? (Manassas, Oakton: to buy, metro, work)

[Melbourne Family]

Hi Doppelganger69,

When we looked into the public schools in Fairfax County for our 10 year old I was informed by several of the school admin. offices that the class size was capped by the county at 35 for ES but most schools seemed to have class sizes on average around 30 students (that was for the 2007/2008 school year). I was also told that due to funding cuts for the 2008/2009 school year the numbers could rise up towards the 35 students number.

In comparison FH, Westminster, Green Hedges & Langley are capped at somewhere between 18 - 20 students per Lower School/ Middle School class depending on which school you look at. FH is definately capped at 18 and have average upper school class sizes of 13 I think (sorry I've packed the school info book ready for our move but the average is around that number).

Hope that helps!

[handy man88]

Originally Posted by saganista

If you try to do it in five minutes, you will often encounter delays from being pulled over by local law enforcement officials. 80 mph anywhere will earn you a reckless driving citation in Virginia. You won't want to accumulate too many of those.

Not. Along 66, the distance is about 4 miles Leesburg Pike to Nutley. Don't need to be pulling 80. Going 60mph, you can cover 4 miles in 4 min. Going 30mph, you can cover 4 miles in 8 min.

Originally Posted by saganista

Well, let's see. Broad Street and Washington Street in Falls Church are four lanes. You can access 66-W from either one. In Vienna, Main Street and Nutley Street are four lanes. You can access 66-W from either one. Otherwise, all two-lane roads in both places. Seems like a pretty comparable situation to me.

Try driving Maple Ave/Chain Bridge in Vienna during Rush hour and tell me how you like it.

Originally Posted by saganista

There is one station in Arlington County that is close to Falls Church, and there is one station in Fairfax County that is close to Falls Church. There are two stations in Fairfax County that are close to Vienna. Metro access from either side of either town is relatively easy, with the one notable difference of there being practically no available parking at East Falls Church.

[/quote]

Dunn Loring is not Vienna and Dunn Loring is not close to North Vienna. In fact, both Falls Church stations are better spaced out than Vienna & Dunn Loring.

Vienna metro parking is nonexistent after 7-7:30am, but this is moot because both Vienna and East Falls Church are served by great bus systems.

[claremarie]

With regard to Fairfax class sizes, the averages are just that. In some schools and in some grades, an unusually large age cohort may result in the creation of an extra class, and there may be well under 20 students per class for that group. (Another "solution" to an overly large group is to create blended classes of more than one grade. We had this experience with our second grader, and it was not a positive one.) If class size is an issue, and you're not sure private schools are an option, contact the public schools that interest you and ask how many students are in each class in your child's grade. That will give you much better information than relying on the school or county-wide class averages.

[saganista]

Originally Posted by handy man88

Not. Along 66, the distance is about 4 miles Leesburg Pike to Nutley. Don't need to be pulling 80. Going 60mph, you can cover 4 miles in 4 min. Going 30mph, you can cover 4 miles in 8 min.

Hmmm. Not having a specific location in Falls Church to work from, I estimated based on the actual center of town -- Broad & Washington Streets -- not someplace halfway to Tysons Corner. That sort of thing would have been potentially misleading. Actual distance from Lee Highway to Nutley Street...6.6 miles. Average speed necessary to traverse that in 5 minutes...79.2 mph. Better have a very steady foot on the acccelerator. And of course not get boxed in by any of those 55-miles-an-hour types at any point along the way.

Originally Posted by handy man88

Try driving Maple Ave/Chain Bridge in Vienna during Rush hour and tell me how you like it.

Um, I live there. That's how I know that a.m. travel from virtually any point in Vienna toward either 66-W or the Vienna Metro would be on 123 (Maple Avenue) headed south. While all of the traffic would be over on 123-North headed toward Tysons Corner. Of course, the reverse would be true at night.

Originally Posted by handy man88

Dunn Loring is not Vienna...

But Madrillon Farms is??? From much of Vienna, the time and distance for a trip to the Dunn Loring station is less than or about the same as the trip to the Vienna station.

Originally Posted by handy man88

...and Dunn Loring is not close to North Vienna.

It's closer than East Falls Church is to Fairfax Hospital. You know, the one that's in Falls Church, VA, 22042?

Originally Posted by handy man88

In fact, both Falls Church stations are better spaced out than Vienna & Dunn Loring.

Interesting "fact". How did you arrive at it? Do you have a theory to offer related to the optimal spacing of public transit stations?

Originally Posted by handy man88

Vienna metro parking is nonexistent after 7-7:30am...

Not actually. Well, perhaps during Cherry Blossom Festival or some such you might see all of the nearly six thousand Vienna spaces filled up by that time. At what time are the four hundred spaces at East Falls Church all gone? And of course, all those in Vienna who might worry that they wouldn't find a spot at the end of the line could always just scoot over to Dunn Loring. And if they were by some chance full there as well, they could always just park in the 8-story commercial lot right across the street.

[Doppelganger69]

I will call the school system to ask about class size. 30-35 is well past what our kids would handle well. Are the GT centers any different?

On Mapquest, Clifton looks great for the Manassas job but not so great for a future DC job. Would you agree?

On the downtowns: I read that Vienna, Oakton, and Falls Church all have "downtowns." But when I try to find them on Google maps (satellite view), all I can see is a higher-than average density of strip malls. Is that what counts as "downtown" in NoVA, or am I looking in the wrong places?

And this last one may be worthy of its own thread: are there any areas that are politically more blue or red than others?

Thank you all for your ongoing advice! There are so many details to navigate in this area.

[claremarie]

Our experience with the GT center was that it was no different than the other schools in terms of class size. In fact, because of the high demand for the slots in these centers, you won't have too much variance from one year to the next, as is the case in the base schools.
Not sure what you mean by "downtown." Both Vienna and Falls Church have shopping/dining areas adjacent to residential neighborhoods, so that residents can walk there, but most of these spots also have typical strip mall parking nearby for their other customers.
As for politics, Falls Church is on the crunchy side, though probably not quite as crunchy as the various Takoma Park neighborhoods, and the population tends to vote Democratic.

[saganista]

Originally Posted by Doppelganger69

On Mapquest, Clifton looks great for the Manassas job but not so great for a future DC job. Would you agree?

I would certainly agree. Clifton is a very nice area, but commuting daily from there to downtown DC would be something too closely related to the concept of "alternative sentencing" to be to my liking.

Originally Posted by Doppelganger69

On the downtowns: I read that Vienna, Oakton, and Falls Church all have "downtowns." But when I try to find them on Google maps (satellite view), all I can see is a higher-than average density of strip malls. Is that what counts as "downtown" in NoVA, or am I looking in the wrong places?

I suspect you're looking at the right places. Oakton does not really have a downtown. It has a centrally located shopping center, adjacent to which, a couple of strip malls have been built. It qualifies as a downtown only because if you are Oakton-oriented, it's the only place there is to go. You'll see all of your Oakton friends and neighbors there. The situation is somewhat better in Vienna and moreso in Falls Church, but neither of those comes with the sort of upgraded pre-WWII walkable downtowns that are often found in older metropolitan areas. The DC metro area is all but entirely a post-WWII creature.

Falls Church has been around as an intersection since Revolutionary days, but it was not anything remotely resembling its current self until the 1950's. It has a more or less T-shaped downtown area (with Broad Street as the base, and Washingtom Street as the crossbar) along which there is a somewhat eclectic mix of shopping, dining, and residential offerings. Some are newer and strip-mallish, some are older free-standing buildings. The area benefits greatly from being an independently incorporated city that emphasizes its downtown areas and the need to keep them attractive and viable.

Though it did not incorporate as an independent town until 1890, Vienna has a history from before the Civil War. Until the late 1950's, however, its downtown area was comprised of about three blocks along Church Street, much of which was taken up by...churches. With rapid post-WWII influxes of population, the Town Council voted to relocate downtown onto Maple Avenue, a through-street that lay just to the south of the actual town as it then existed. This required a widening of Maple Avenue which was, to the consternation of many, accomplished by cutting down most of the maple trees that had given the street its name and demolishing quite a significant number of long-standing and stately victorian homes that stood at the side of the original road. The result has evolved into a long ribbon of a downtown that these days causes urban-planner types to scratch their heads. It doesn't seem to make any sense, yet it functions. Signficant parts of it are strip-mallish, some are not. There are no car dealers in town, and just the two fast-food places (now Wendy's and KFC) that managed to sneak in before the Town Council could ban them. A third (Taco Bell) has managed to arise since, this when a local doughnut baker left the business, and no one else could be found to take over his building. The areas immediately behind downtown are residential (generally upscale residential on the north side), save for a one-plus block bit of Church Street that lives on in the same commercial role it had always played. There are thus a lot of Vienna residents who can and do walk at least to the wection of downtown that is closest to them. Vienna also benefits from its incorporation as a town, in that both Church Street and Maple Avenue are simply closed down for annual functions and celebrations that give the downtown area a life and character that it might not otherwise have.

So, while neither Falls Church nor Vienna has a classic downtown that would fit the mold that is common in much of the northeast, they do have actual and functional downtowns. There are many local areas that do not.

[saganista]

Originally Posted by Doppelganger69

And this last one may be worthy of its own thread: are there any areas that are politically more blue or red than others?

Yes, area politics is a big topic, as would be the case in most places. In a quick survey, Arlington County is reliably liberal and has been for quite some time, and I'd line up behind <claremarie>'s assessment of neighboring Falls Church. The rest of the area has been in flux, tending almost inexorably from red toward blue, much of the area coming from a rural, southern, conservative, and sometimes redneck past. Alexandria and at least most of Fairfax County would be in the moderate range with increasing liberal overtones, Loudon County might be a little further to right than that, while Fauquier (if it counts) and Prince William County would be the definers of NoVa's conservative extremes, which are at times still fairly extreme, but still a long way from where they were just a few decades ago.

[SaratL]

Originally Posted by Doppelganger69

I will call the school system to ask about class size. 30-35 is well past what our kids would handle well. Are the GT centers any different?
.

My nephew was at Hunter Woods ES /Rachel Carson MS. His class size was always beween 25 and 35 and is now 30 at TJ, but surprisinlgly the data published by FCPS web site for the ES schools he was in shows overall class size in 21-22 range for that year.

[Denton56]

GT classes are often larger than regular classes. Each school is run by the Principal and he/she can allocate teachers in any way that they see fit. That often translates to larger GT center classes.

If you move to the NW part of the town of Vienna, you will be close to Green Hedges, and close to the public school, Louise Archer, which has a GT center. Directly behind Louise Archer is the town high school, James Madison. Much of NW is also within walking distance of Church Street, which has restaurants, bakery, ice cream parlor, toy store, bike store, and the bike path. Also within walking distance of grocery stores, Starbucks, and the library. Maple Avenue is the main drag in Vienna, with lots of stores, but also lots of traffic.