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If you decide on Durham Academy, you should consider living in Durham, not Chapel Hill, as the cost of living is generally less there--part of Chapel Hill's higher COL is related to the excellent school system. In other words, if you live in Chapel Hill, you might go on and consider public schools?
How do not so rich people afford Cary Academy? Do they offer scholarships?
They do offer financial assistance. From the CA website: "We award financial aid on the basis of demonstrated financial need, which is the difference between what a family can be expected to pay and the cost of tuition. We annually award over 1 million dollars with awards ranging from $1,000 to full tuition and fees. "
-- Their two big fundraisers for the scholarship fund are the golf classic and the Holiday Shoppe -- The Holiday Shoppe is actually coming up and open to anyone wanting to shop! It is the Th/Fri/Sat after Thanksgiving -- and if I recall correctly, no tax is charged on purchases -- The dates this year are Nov 29th, 30th and Dec 1st.
I will echo what a couple of previous posters have said, if you decide on DA, then settle in Durham to save on the housing costs and be much closer to DA. The trip from downtown Chapel Hill proper would take upwards of 30 min. each way, less if you lived on the North side of town near I40 and longer if you lived south of town towards Carrboro.
My wife went to DA for a couple of years in high school (~20 yrs ago), hated it and switched to public high school in 11th grade. Her brother stayed at DA, I think he had a good time - maybe too good a time, but graduated near the bottom of his class and has really been lost every since from an achievement standpoint - I think he would have done better in a public school where he would have been more middle to upper middle of the pack as opposed to near the bottom on the achievement scale.
A neighbor just started Cary Academy this year as a 6th grader and is having some adjustment issues the first couple of weeks due to what he thinks is an excessive amount of homework each night (2 hrs routinely). I don't know him that well to know if it is performance related or if all 6th graders have that volume of homework. I do know that so far my son attending the local middle school in 6th grade has only hit the 2 hr mark a couple of times and those were all because he was lollygagging, either doing homework in a group or had other distractions.
Dear PDX mom,
Thanks for your help, I will look into the Camelot Academy. It never surfaced during any of my research and it sound very interesting..and advanced in its approach. Do the kids get into good universities from Camelot? I do see that the Chapel Hill taxes can be eyewateringly high! I hope I can get back to you on any questions I may have on Camelot Academy.
Poppy dog, the charter schools look amazing and we absolutely considered them. Unfortipunately we are not there and don't have the luxury of waiting for a lottery. We would really like to avoid moving our daughters school after we move. You know I have never really lived in the states with a child, it's been a while but it sounds like your saying that kids in a neighborhood all generally go to the same school? I keep reading that a lot of the CA kids live in Preston, Wessex and a couple of other subdivisions..so I figured we would buy a house in one of those places if we chose CA. I'm so used to driving our daughter around London for playdates...I just figured I'd be doing a bit of that in NC.! Anyway why are you a big fan of Carolina Freinds?
Thanks again everyone, this is an unbelievable forum and you are all incredibly generous and helpful..I have no clue how we would have made these choices before the net and this type of forum!
I don't have any direct experience with Carolina Friends, but I do have friends who have their kids there and they are very happy with it. I know some of the teachers there and respect and like them a lot and I like the philosophy they espouse. However, even if we had the money for Friends, I'm not sure we would send the kids there. I really like Chapel Hill schools. Kids do excel in CHC schools and get into excellent universities and there's no tuition cost so the taxes are a wash or you can consider a portion of your taxes as tuition and it comes out a whole lot cheaper than private school.
In Chapel Hill and Carrboro and Durham, yes, kids in a neighborhood do generally all go to the same school. Wake county is a different issue. We see friends from school all around town, too. When the kids were at private school it sort of felt like we had opted out of the neighborhood community, but that's what my daughter needed so it was worth it. It's a very close knit community here in Chapel Hill/Carrboro and my kids have made a lot of great friends at public school. Here's a short overview of the CHC schools from Wikipedia.
Again you might want to consider what kind of community you want to live in. Chapel Hill/Carrboro and Cary are pretty different. I'm happy here in Chapel Hill, but I'm not sure Cary is for me.
Poppydog, you say Cary and chapel hill are really different. How different? I have visited both and I can see that Cary is alot more "burb" but offers a ton of trails, lakes , and pool communities which are all great for families with young kids. I have been to chapel hill ( short visit) and I noticed more trees ( which I love) older and more interesting homes,very high tax base as would be the norm in a college town with no sypubstantial corporate tax base. What I did not see in chapel hill was kids out playing or neighborhood areas where everyone (kids and parents) could socialise . My husband and I would be fine ( and in fact would probably prefer) in chapel hill, but we have an only child who is young and we really want her to have kids that play in the neighborhood. We are used to having her in a private school because the public schools are were not an option as they have no gifted program or streaming. I know American public schools when they are food are really good! But I wouldn't know which ones were good and would accommodate an child who is academically advanced? My daughter is 9 1/2. And I have also discovered that unlike private schools, public schools do not publish a list of universities the most recent graduating classes have been issued acceptances. The value of a school ultimately on an academic basis is the universities that accept their students.
So really hard to research the quality of the public schools. Regarding DA it is really hard to determine how to evaluate a graduating class who in large part go to Duke and UNC when a lot of other threads on this site repeatedly mention most kids at DA have parents who teach at these universities! We are not teachers ...have to wonder whether our child would have an experience there equal to many of the other students. I have looked briefly at living in Durham and my concern there is the soaring crime rate folks talk about. How bad is it really?
Location: Chapel Hill, NC, formerly NoVA and Phila
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Originally Posted by Gbmolly
Poppydog, you say Cary and chapel hill are really different. How different? I have visited both and I can see that Cary is alot more "burb" but offers a ton of trails, lakes , and pool communities which are all great for families with young kids. I have been to chapel hill ( short visit) and I noticed more trees ( which I love) older and more interesting homes,very high tax base as would be the norm in a college town with no sypubstantial corporate tax base. What I did not see in chapel hill was kids out playing or neighborhood areas where everyone (kids and parents) could socialise . My husband and I would be fine ( and in fact would probably prefer) in chapel hill, but we have an only child who is young and we really want her to have kids that play in the neighborhood. We are used to having her in a private school because the public schools are were not an option as they have no gifted program or streaming. I know American public schools when they are food are really good! But I wouldn't know which ones were good and would accommodate an child who is academically advanced? My daughter is 9 1/2. And I have also discovered that unlike private schools, public schools do not publish a list of universities the most recent graduating classes have been issued acceptances. The value of a school ultimately on an academic basis is the universities that accept their students.
So really hard to research the quality of the public schools. Regarding DA it is really hard to determine how to evaluate a graduating class who in large part go to Duke and UNC when a lot of other threads on this site repeatedly mention most kids at DA have parents who teach at these universities! We are not teachers ...have to wonder whether our child would have an experience there equal to many of the other students. I have looked briefly at living in Durham and my concern there is the soaring crime rate folks talk about. How bad is it really?
I'm new to Chapel Hill, but there are plenty of neighborhoods where there are tons of kids out playing. I know because I live in one. And sometimes, I just want to throw in the towel, because we cannot sit down and eat dinner without my kids seeing their friends outside our window playing and wanting to join them or without someone knocking on our door to get our kids to come outside and play.
It is true that you won't see as much of that in the older neighborhoods. But I challlenge you to check out neighborhoods like Lake Hogan Farms or Southern Village and not find a plethora of children playing outside.
I don't know about public schools here, but where we just moved from, our schools definitely published a list of where students had been accepted. It's a source of much discussion on the Northern Virginia board, where many people are obsessed about good education. If you are one of those people, then I suggest that Chapel Hill is where you want to be if you decide to go public.
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