Georgetown Day School probable pick for Obama daughters
Posted by: Will Sommer in District News, Education
Hurray. The Washington Post’s education columnist says Georgetown’s streets could soon be a little more choked with black SUVs:
The Post’s education columnist, Jay Mathews, is betting on Georgetown Day School as the Obamas’ likely choice. Mathews says this is fitting on two fronts: Georgetown Day School was the first racially integrated school in D.C., and it is similar to the academically rigorous University of Chicago Laboratory Schools that Malia, a fifth grader, and Sasha, a second grader, currently attend. Several key Obama advisers send their children there.
Sidwell Friends, that crazy Quaker school, is also in consideration. But why would Sasha and Malia want to go there? It’s crazy.
Photo from Flickr user Barack Obama used under a Creative Commons license
Entries (RSS)
Actually, Georgetown Visitation (not Georgetown Day) was not only DC’s first integrated school, it was the country’s first integrated school.
Really? A Google search isn’t turning up anything on that.
That is simply false. GDS was Washington’s first integrated school.
Georgetown Day School was founded as DC’s first integrated school in 1945. Georgetown Prep admitted it’s first African-American student in 1953.
Could we all grow up a bit, please? This routing for one school over another is unseemly. The Obama girls should go wherever they’ll be happiest, which has everything to do with who they are and little to do with the differences among the schools being considered. Since their mother knows them best and we don’t, why don’t we all just cool it and let them have as normal an upbringing as they can, despite us so-called grown-ups depriving them of privacy?
One point of clarification, Georgetown Day School is not in Georgetown. the Lower/Middle School campus is just off MacArthur Blvd near the Reservoir. The High School is on Davenport Street in Tenleytown. So traffic in Georgetown should not be greatly impacted.
After cursory Google searching, it looks like GDS was indeed the first integrated DC school. Thanks for weighing in, parents and others.
Mr. Mahaffie, I just looked it up on Google Maps and boy GDS is far from the university. Thanks for the heads-up.
Georgetown Visitation is a Catholic girls’ school. It seems to have been racially integrated since 1799: http://www.visi.org/about_visitation/historytraditions.aspx
Actually the Lower/Middle school is only about half a mile from the university. The LMS campus used to be considered within Georgetown but at some point the boundaries were redrawn and it is no longer technically in Georgetown.
[...] qualifications for actually being in Georgetown were called into question by commenters, it was still fun to imagine they would choose a school named Georgetown. Instead, they’re going with Sidwell Friends, a [...]