Hellobee

Just about 2 years ago, I wrote a post about the thinking Mr. Carrot and I were starting to do about our daughter’s education. At the time, Baby C was just past 2 years old, and we were eagerly waiting for the dawn of 2017, after the presidential election and my husband’s post-election transition in the government (his boss retired at the end of 2016), to figure out next steps. Our biggest items of consideration were our housing situation (upgrading our condo to something with more space), the area where we live (currently zoned for a fairly weak school district), and finding the magical sweet spot of decent school district, a property we can afford on a government and non-profit salary, and a decent commute to and from our jobs.

We started out 2017 with a plan to list our condo and house hunt in earnest sometime in April. As lore tends to have it, our timeline started getting pushed by delays – first a health issue that led to surgery for me, then a delay in a small renovation we had planned at the advice of our realtor. At the beginning of April, we had started planning for May/June, but a number of environmental factors, including some uncertainty around my employment, which relies heavily on government purchasing, gave us some pause. After some deliberating, we decided to hold for another year and use the rest of 2017 to finish the touch-ups we wanted to make on our condo, set aside a little more money, and let my employment status (which likely isn’t in danger, but the political environment is making everyone a little antsy) stabilize.

The ramifications of this move, however, are notable, and it’s both frustrating and informative, as we gear up to restart our housing search. Just today, we had to call our county to register our daughter for afterschool care, even though she doesn’t start kindergarten for another year. In our county, the demand for pre and aftercare is so high, the registration happens a full 14 months in advance of the kids actually starting school. And we will pay nearly $600/month, assuming we get a spot. Because we didn’t move to the school district she’ll ultimately be going to school in, we had to apply for a spot in our current district, and will likely be on a lengthy wait list once we do land in our new spot. This process, and talking with parents that we have the occasion to interact with, have given us a lot to think about.

As I mentioned in my post 2 years ago, the quality of the school our daughter goes to is important to us both, but how to measure that quality has been really tricky, since the simple online ratings don’t tell the full story. We care deeply about the diversity of the school our daughter goes to, recognizing that it’s also, unfortunately, a metric that drives down test scores and thus ratings. We also want her to enjoy school, something that concerns me no matter where we end up, given the heavy testing culture the education system tends to subscribe to now.

Our daughter’s pre-K is in a neighboring county to ours, so most of her peers would be going into a different school system. That system doesn’t have the strongest ratings online, but parents rave about their much simpler pre and aftercare process, lower cost, and larger availability/less competition. Many have told us they don’t mind the lower ratings much because the kids are enjoying school, particularly in the elementary years, and feel that the diversity of the schools and the engagement of the teachers and administration makes them comfortable enough. If we were to move into this area and accept that the schools aren’t as well rated but have the diversity and engagement components we want, we would also preserve our decent commute, but it would mean downsizing how much house we can buy because properties are much more expensive in this area. Similarly, we live literally across the street from another town/county, very well known for its great schools and the diversity we’re looking for. However, we are all but priced out of the housing market there, even though it’s literally across the street from where we currently live.

Another factor that’s been on our minds, especially recently, is the quality of life experience we want to have and want our daughter to have. I am on record as being horrified at the events unfolding in the United States right now, which are amplified even further by my and my husband’s professional connection to the government. In the swarm of events and factors we can’t control, we’ve been focusing our energy on ourselves and raising a daughter who will be the change we want to see in the world. As first generation immigrants, my husband and I are both acutely aware of how important a global education is to one’s perspective, and as Baby C is now getting older, we’re slowly starting to venture back into our pre-kid travel adventures. Our hope is to show her as much of the world as we can, and with our modest incomes, we have to figure out trade-offs between investing in travel and experiences vs investing in a house that could leave us with little flexibility beyond its walls.

At this time, we have no answers. Mr. Carrot and I have slightly different visions of where to live, what kind of property to buy, and what constitutes a good educational experience for our child, and our process for the rest of 2017 is to settle on a coherent plan. Perhaps that will be the larger single family in a farther suburb with a good school rating, perhaps a townhouse closer to DC with less shiny school ratings, and perhaps something we haven’t even considered. Until then, we’re spackling, painting, and starting out kiddo’s education by taking some time out for her first travel adventures.