A community for Northern Virginia -- Alexandria, Arlington County, Fairfax County, Falls Church, Loudoun County, Prince William County, and the surrounding areas.
Hi all - does anyone have experience with either Riverside High School (Leesburg) or Broad Run High School (Ashburn) and can offer the pros/cons of each? We are evaluating between these two school districts for our kids and wanted to get feedback on either or both. Many thanks in advance!
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They're both high schools in the same good quality school district. Riverside is newer than Broad Run and is in a fancier neighborhood. Your student(s) will get a solid education at either of them.
Do your kids have any clubs or sports they are interested in? I think one difference in the high schools can be the extracurricular activities available. One of my kids LOVED debate, and Broad Run had a very strong, well rounded team and an amazing coach at the time. They went to lots of tournaments. I know some of the surrounding schools did not have as much breadth in their debate club offerings and I was so thankful that my child was at Broad Run. This is just an example of one area to help you decide between schools.
That's super helpful, thank you! Is there a good way to tell which high schools excel in which special interests/extracirriculars? My daughter's strongest subjects are math and science. Which of these high schools has the strongest math, robotics, and computing clubs? We are hoping to have our daughter apply for Academies of Loudoun too (one year left to do that), but not sure if she'll get in.
I think to find out for sure, you will have to collect multiple data points and cross reference them. If you ask a parent “does x high school have a good computing club” then you’ll likely get a “yes” regardless because we are all proud of our schools. Things to ask - how big is the club? Do they go to competitions? How many? Had the team coach/ sponsor been doing this a while and are they going to coach/sponsor team again? Can everyone join who wants to? It is an unfortunate thing IMO that the formation of a club is determined by whether a teacher wants to sponsor it. For things like robotics - I’m not sure how that works at a high school level. I do remember in middle school that there were some groups of parents that joined their kids together in a team and refused to let outsiders join. But they were not the “school” team. So, even if you hear there is a robotics team I would wonder if it is an exclusive thing. I would tell you more about BRHS but info is dated by now. I think folks here on r/nova might be able to give info, or perhaps there is a LCPS sub. Good luck!
Thank you for your feedback!
The base education is going to be pretty similar between schools in the same district like that. Like someone else said, look into extracurriculars. Depending on what your kids are in, different schools might be better options than the other. There's going to be a "THE" school to go to for debate, theater, football, lacrosse, etc. Our kid is still in kindergarten though, so we don't have all the info yet one which schools are best for which interests.
How do you have a choice?
Perhaps they’re looking to buy a home in one of the two districts.
That's correct, looking into which area to buy a home.