Education Becoming Top Issue For D.C.

If there is good news in the census numbers, it is a 13 percent increase in children 3 and younger, many born to couples who bought homes during the housing boom that followed Williams's 1998 election. The question is whether those families will leave for better schools in the suburbs.

That temptation hangs over Takoma, a liberal and racially diverse community of charming old houses on shady lots a few blocks from the Maryland border. New arrivals tend to be two-career families who believe strongly in public education. Over a recent neighborhood dinner of vegetarian burgers and butternut squash soup, a half-dozen parents described the agony of trying to find a place for their children in D.C. schools.

David Arthur, a lobbyist for a Detroit law firm, and consultant Denise Woods said they were only vaguely aware of the school situation when they bought a house as newlyweds in 2000. Then Maya was born, followed by Zoe. And thus began what Woods called "this nightmare process."

The couple quickly learned that their friends don't use the local school, the Takoma Education Center, dismissing it as hostile to parents. So they tried to enroll Maya, now 4, in the Spanish immersion program at Oyster Elementary in Woodley Park.

Oyster and other high-performing public schools have little room for out-of-boundary students. That left the expanding charter system. But sought-after charter schools conduct lotteries for admission, forcing parents to trust their child's education to a series of nerve-wracking games of chance.

At Woods's favorite, the Latin American Montessori Bilingual Public Charter School in North Michigan Park, Maya pulled No. 75 on a waiting list of 90 English-speaking students. She won a pre-kindergarten spot after proving to administrators that she was qualified to apply as a Spanish speaker.

Arthur and Woods are happy with the school, known as LAMB, and hope to send Zoe there, too. But LAMB goes only to the sixth grade. Arthur is worried about what happens after that. And he feels guilty as he watches other children walk to the neighborhood school his family has rejected.

"Sometimes it feels like we're abandoning the local public school instead of working to make it better," he said. "But at some point, you can't make your own child part of an experiment to save the world."

Staff writer Jay Mathews and staff researcher Bobbye Pratt contributed to this report.