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Washington: Continuing a tradition among Washington's power elite, President-elect Barack Obama and his wife have decided to send their kids to Sidwell Friends School. Michelle Obama confirmed on Friday that Malia and Sasha, the incoming first daughters, will enrol at the pricey private school when the family moves into the White House in January.
Although Michelle has said that public schools were under consideration and consulted with District of Columbia school officials, the decision narrowed this week after she and the girls visited Sidwell and the private Georgetown Day School.
Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, visited classes and met with students while their mother talked with administration officials and parents. Michelle also visited both schools last week when she came to Washington with her husband to tour the White House and meet with President George W. Bush.
At Sidwell, the Obama girls will be following in the footsteps of Chelsea Clinton, who attended and graduated from the Quaker school during the eight years her father, Bill Clinton, was president. The last presidential child to attend Washington public schools in modern times was Amy Carter.
"A number of great schools were considered," Katie McCormick Lelyveld, Mrs. Obama's spokeswoman, said in a statement Friday. "In the end, the Obamas selected the school that was the best fit for what their daughters need right now."
Lelyveld declined to elaborate on the reasons, but it is believed that Sidwell's experience with handling the security and privacy of the children of government leaders played a role. President Richard Nixon's daughter Tricia went to Sidwell. Vice President Al Gore's son, Albert Gore III, graduated from Sidwell. Three granddaughters of Vice-President-elect Joe Biden currently attend the school: Maisy, 8; Finnegan, 10; and Naomi, 14.
Malia had told her parents she wanted to attend Sidwell because of her friendship with one of the Biden grandchildren, according to sources familiar with the decision.
"I think the school knows how to handle it and the kids know how to handle it," said Dahlia Neiss, whose daughter, August, is a fourth-grader at Sidwell. "Hopefully they're going to be treated as normal as possible."
The choice means that the Obama girls will be going to class on two separate campuses in two different cities. Sidwell's lower school, in Bethesda, Md., is where Sasha would attend second grade. Malia is in the fifth grade, part of Sidwell's middle school at Sidwell, located on the same campus as the high school in Northwest Washington, a few miles from the lower school.
Sidwell has between 1,000 and 1,100 students and says that 39 per cent of its students are of colour. Tuition this year for elementary school is $28,442; for the middle school, $29,442. As Sidwell parents, the Obamas will find not only supporters of his campaign but also of his rival in the Democratic primaries, Hillary Clinton.
Name change: School goes Obama way
At the behest of its students, an elementary school near New York City has been renamed after President-elect Barack Obama.
The Hempstead Union Free School District board voted unanimously Thursday night to rename Ludlum Elementary School as Barack Obama Elementary School. The change went into effect immediately, school officials said on Friday.
Officials for the Long Island district say they think the school is the country's first to be named after the first black president-elect, although similar efforts to rename schools, parks and streets are under way.
Most of the 466 Hempstead pupils are black or Hispanic, and Obama's election was a big source of pride, principal Jean Bligen said on Friday.
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