Parents move kids from suburban schools into D.C.

In 2008, Roxana Moayedi was living in Potomac. Her children were enrolled in the nationally acclaimed Montgomery County Public Schools: middle school at Herbert Hoover, then high school at Winston Churchill.

Then Moayedi, a sociology professor at Trinity Washington University, picked up and moved her family to Mount Pleasant.

“My neighbors said, ‘Are you crazy? You’re moving from Potomac to Mount Pleasant?’ ” Moayedi remembered. “But Churchill is enormous. And I like the fact that [my son] now has kids in his classes from all races, all ethnicities. Potomac was very homogenous. I think he had maybe one African-American teacher at Hoover.”

“>

More than 300 families relocated from Maryland and Virginia to the District and enrolled their children in D.C. Public Schools for the first time this school year, according to an audit of the school system’s enrollment.

The 371 students arrive on the heels of the first enrollment increase in 41 years, a 2 percent bump that acting Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson and Mayor Vincent Gray have attributed to renewed confidence in the chronically underperforming school system as they focus on education reform.

That growth is on the upswing, as 111 students moved to the District and enrolled in DCPS in 2009-2010, up from 100 the previous school year.

Several parents told The Washington Examiner that DCPS’ programs and student diversity drew them to the District. But now they are wondering if they made the right choice, as top-performing schools are stripped of funding and turnover among school leaders remains high.

Jean Boland’s daughter was 12 or 13 when the family moved from McLean to the District in 2008.

“We didn’t want to raise a sheltered kid,” Boland said. “We knew it was going to be a risk, we came in with our eyes open … but there was consensus that there was attention to making education better in the District.”

Her daughter had attended Fairfax County Public Schools’ Kent Gardens Elementary, but Boland was concerned that her shy child “would get lost in the shuffle” in the large middle school classrooms, and enrolled her at a Bethesda private school. In 2008, they moved to the District.

Boland was impressed by Woodrow Wilson Senior High School’s teachers and staff, who were “particularly sensitive to incoming ninth-grade girls, not feeling overwhelmed by the size of some of the kids.” But ultimately, her daughter landed at School Without Walls, which Moayedi’s son attends.

Both mothers love Walls, a Northwest magnet school with a 100 percent graduation rate that draws from all of the city’s wards. And both say they were shocked when DCPS proposed cutting $320,490 — about 7 percent of the school’s budget — for the upcoming school year.

“I never had to go to school to testify for anything in Montgomery. There was never anything missing,” Moayedi says. “They’re saying, ‘You guys did very well, you’re the best in D.C., but sorry, we need to take your money and give it to someone else.’ ”

Afia Stevens lives in Upper Marlboro but pays thousands of dollars in nonresident tuition to send her three children to Tyler Elementary in Southeast. She’s a fan of the school’s French immersion program, which Prince George’s County Public Schools doesn’t offer.

But, “I guess my personal experience has not instilled a lot of confidence in me — we’ve had a lot of changes at Tyler,” said Stevens, noting the multiple principals who have cycled through in three years. She said she’s not sure if her children will continue in D.C. in the upper grades.

Knowing what she knows now, Moayedi said she would have stayed in Potomac: “I made the assumption that nobody would destroy a school like that. No, I wouldn’t have moved here.”

Boland said she is also disappointed that the cuts to Walls would eliminate some teaching positions and increase enrollment, pushing students to take classes off-site.

“I’m not thrilled, but it’s too late,” Boland says. “My daughter is really happy.”

[email protected]