Choosing a High School

All,

I know that most of the readers and contributors to this forum have kids that attend Briar Woods, but I was wondering if you had to recommend one of the three high schools Briar Woods, Broad Run or Stone Bridge to someone who is looking to move into the Ashburn area. What high school would you recommend to them and why? We have a new person who is joining our company (with high school aged kids) and likes the Ashburn area, but wanted to know if I had a choice what high school would I choose. I can't provide a good answer as our kids have not attended any of the Ashburn high schools.

I would appreciate if this was a positive response and not any bashing on any school. Thanks in advance for your help.

 

that'd gonna be a tough one, everyone has different needs and opinions on what makes a school great. they are all good schools academically. this link shows school ratings from a wapo report: http://ashburn.patch.com/articles/where-do-schools-rank

us news had a report showing stone bridge as a top ten school in va:
http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/virginia

just read criteria for rankings carefully.

if sports matter, both bwoods and stone bridge dominate many sports. we probably would have chosen stone bridge since our son plays baseball.

they need to look at their kids' interests to choose, then look at homes available on each district.

do they have special needs? do the kids participate in certain clubs? they will need to do their own research but I don't think there's a bad choice... the kid determines the experience more than the school anyway...teens can make any place totally awesome or totally suck.

 

My recommendation would be to not move with the assumption that you will be attending a certain high school. At least not for more than a few years.
For example, parts of Stone Bridge and Broad Run will be moving to the new Lansdowne High School. Part of Briar Woods will be moving to HS-6 when it is built in a few years in Loudoun Valley Estates.

 

I agree with vacliff. From our 10 years of experience here, only if you live within walking distance (less than a mile), can you feel comfortable that your child will probably not get moved before they finish with that school.