Posted on 11/21/2008 5:11:02 PM PST by Elvina
Clinton, Daschle, Geithner… The big-name speculation over President-elect Barack Obama’s Cabinet appointments can wait while Obama watchers focus on another critical name that surfaced on Friday: Sidwell.
The Associated Press is reporting that the Obamas have chosen the Sidwell Friends School in Washington for daughters Sasha, seven years old, and Malia, 10. The private Quaker school’s alumni include former presidential offspring Chelsea Clinton and Tricia Nixon Cox, as well as House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank and a former princess of Japan.
Sidwell Friends beat out another elite school, Georgetown Day School. Michelle Obama and her daughters reportedly visited both schools on Tuesday. Sidwell, with campuses in Northwest Washington and Bethesda, Md., is home to nearly 1,100 students from pre-Kindergarten to 12th grade. Tuition at the lower school is $28,442 and $29,442 at the middle and upper schools.
A spokeswoman for Michelle Obama was quoted by AP as saying the Obamas feel Sidwell provides “the best fit for what their daughters need now,” including being able to accommodate security and privacy concerns. The Obama girls have also become good friends with Vice President-elect Joe Biden’s grandchildren, who attend the school.
The Obama family also discussed public school options for the girls, according to Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty. The girls currently attend the private University of Chicago Laboratory Schools located in Chicago’s South Side.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.wsj.com ...
They are both beautiful young ladies and will always be in the public eye, especially with their Father being American's first black President. I wish them well.
sw
15% acceptance rate, so it’s very competitive. Of course, I’m sure being a daughter of a President makes things a lot easier.
I thought Obama pumped over $100M into Chicago public schools with his buddy Ayers to fix public schools. If he had actually done a good job, wouldn’t he send his own kids into his “success story” schools?
(ignoring the fact that he “fixed” the Chicago schools and he’s sending his kids to Washington schools, of course)
(And PLEASE; stop making me defend him!)
ML/NJ
*** And what do you propose to do to protect the “kids we never read about”? ***
I’m no education expert, and my post was more along the lines of “government controlled stuff is so much better like Universal Health Care, Retirement Funds, Pre-School Care, etc. - as long as we don’t need to use it.
As far as education goes here are a few ideas I’ll toss out there:
1) Get the Fed’s out of the local schools.
2) Have teacher’s pay reflect their teaching and care of the kids.
3) Bring discipline into the schools that don’t have it.
That’s just a lame start - I’m sure their are all sorts of ideas out there - including vouchers. Heck - make parents pay some of the costs directly for public school instead of out of their taxes and maybe they would take more interest in what they were “paying for”.
But, my point remains the same. Here is Big Government Obama telling us that BG will solve everything - except I guess public schools.
If you want the children of the president to be safe and secure you are happy about this.
I agree those are all good ideas.
I think though that Obama is not wrong on a need to improve public schools (your ideas are much better than any he may have I’m sure) and the decision for him to send his kids to private school isn’t wrong.
I would think the Secret Service would step in and say the idea of providing competent day in and day out security at a public school would be much more difficult than it would be at a likely already far more secure private school. Having the first children in class would be just another distraction in public schools which need fewer of those rather than more.
hmm......what was the name of that little church that (Stanley)Ann Dunham attended when she lived in Seattle?,
wasn’t it called the “little red church” or the church with the red door?
yeah,it’s one of those quasi elitist schools funded by the Univ of Chicago and their core student base is children of employees and then to make up the diff by busing(not necessarily geographic)intellectually disenfranchised kids ethnic and minority groups to comprise a student body so when test(ing)-NCLB- time comes around those test results are part of a study group submitted to another larger group of university funded projects ....i could go on & on & stand to be corrected ,imho,afterall i’m still a noob but happy to have the privledge of posting here. FREEP news lives!!!
From a logistics stand point a smaller (I’m guessing) private school would be a lot easier for the first family’s special needs. And as much as I despise Obama’s ideas - he sure does have a couple of really cute kids!
I did a quick search just to see what President Bush’s daughters did - I guess they are older than I thought! They were already in college by the time he was president - but went to Austin High School when he was Gov.
I’m guessing Nixon was raised in a Traditional Quaker household!? ;)
“Community service is an important part of the Middle School.”
You do realize that Obama’s children would be surrounded by secret service agents no matter where they went, private or public schools.
Maryland "Freak State" PING!
Yes. What does that have to do with a smaller private school being easier to maintain security in than a likely much bigger public school?
“28k ? Movin on up...”
Well they will be spending more, but it’s not like they were slumming in Chicago.
http://www.ucls.uchicago.edu/operations/registrar/tuition.shtml
I hope Grandpa Joe isn't helping his grandchildren with their homework. They'd get busted for plagiarism.
I have no idea, sorry.
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