D.C. area families board students at local private schools

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Students head for boarding school but stay close to home

A growing subculture of private school students are boarding at institutions within driving distance of their homes, a set-up that allows them and their parents to avoid the crawling D.C. commute and to get the boarding school experience without being 500 miles away in the anxious post-9/11 era.

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Cole said that many parents find educational benefits in a boarding school but that they are less inclined to send children to a school in snowy New England.

"I think parents are wanting to be part of their children's lives," she said. "Twenty years ago, there was more comfort with that separation."

That's the case for Todd Van Hoose, an Alexandria lobbyist whose daughter is a sophomore at Madeira.

"With kids' schedules and our work schedule, frankly, we're only missing each other at dinner," he said. "You get the best of both worlds. We make all of the soccer games," and his daughter benefits from the independence of boarding school, he said.

"We talk to her every day. We see her two or four times a week," he said. "From our perspective, it wasn't that big of a switch." He said that it would have been "almost logistically impossible" for his daughter to attend the school if she hadn't boarded, given his and his wife's long work schedules.

That was also the case for Marshall Forney Jr., a sophomore at St. Albans whose family lives in Dale City.

His school commute used to be a slog: an hour and 15 minutes each way, inching along Interstate 95 from Dale City to the District on bleak early mornings.

Now, it takes about 45 seconds -- out of bed, along a hallway, down a polished hardwood staircase and into a classroom.

"It's making me mature faster," said Forney, a sophomore. "And you're not that far from your loved ones."

Forney started as a day student at St. Albans in the eighth grade. He had to leave the house by 6:30 to make St. Albans's morning bell at 7:45. He would get home about 7:30 at night. Freshman year, he attended Bishop O'Connell High School in Arlington County, but by summer he was ready to return to St. Albans, he said. The high school schedule meant that he would be getting home even later -- and that there would be a four-hour mountain of homework waiting.

"I came up with the boarding idea," he said. "Me and my dad had to convince my mom."

Forney and his parents stay in touch with phone calls and texting, and sometimes his mother stops by in the evening after she finishes work in Crystal City. He still makes it home for church most Sundays.

And he said he is enjoying living on campus.

"There's more free time" without the commute, he said. It's a good social experience, too. "When we graduate from here, the people in the dorms are going to be the closest," he said.

Still, though, he said that distance sometimes has a downside.

Forney said he misses his 12-year-old sister at home in Dale City. Their mother, Renee, said the feeling is mutual. And even Forney's father, who was supportive of the boarding idea, showed a crack in his usually stoic facade on the early September weekend his son was packing his bags.

He dug up videos of his son's childhood, Renee Forney said. Images of a time gone by flickered on the screen.

"That's when it really hit me," she said.