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Any recommendation on a good public or charter school at Chestnut Hill?
nupe357 November 6, 2012
I grew up in Philly in Mt. Airy, the next neighborhood over from Chestnut Hill. There is only one public elementary school in Chestnut Hill and its John Jenks ES. I don't think Jenks is a very good school but it's probably no worse that it counterparts in Mt. Airy (Charles Henry ES/MS and Henry Houston ES. Finding a good public es in Philly is tough and unfortunately I don't think that any of them are close to Chestnut Hill.
In all honesty, most folks in Chestnut Hill do private schools. I went to one called Norwood Academy in Chestnut Hill but couldn't recommend it (see my greatschools.org review from Sep., 21, 2005). However, I would recommend that you consider Chestnut Hill Academy, Germantown Academy or William Penn Charter School (I know families that have had success at all of these). Plymouth Meeting Friends and Germantown Friends might also be pretty good choices (but I admit that I don't know much about either one).
Don't get me wrong, there are a handful of GREAT public schools in Philly. Two that I would recommend are Julia Masterman (5th-12th grade) and Central HS (9th-12th grade). Both of these schools offer top notch educations and many grads of their programs go on to the best colleges in the country ( I graduated from Central almost 25yrs ago and did quite well). The problem with both of these schools is that they don't cover the grade that you are in need of right now....:(
My recommendation is that (if you can afford it) you do private school from K-4 and then make the trek down to Masterman for 5-8. At that point you will have a choice as to whether to continue your child at Masterman for high school or go on to Central HS.81334
