President-elect Barack Obama and Mrs. Obama Decide to Send Daughters to Sidwell Friends School

Although Mrs. Obama has said that public schools were under consideration and consulted with D.C. 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. Mrs. Obama also visited both schools last week when she came to Washington with her husband to tour the White House and meet with President and Mrs. 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 yesterday. "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 there. 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."

Neiss added that Obama's election was "a much bigger issue" to her 9-year-old daughter than the prospect that his daughters might become her classmates.

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, is where Sasha would attend second grade. Malia is in the fifth grade, part of Sidwell's middle school, 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 39 percent of them self-identify as students of color. Tuition this year for elementary school is $28,442; for the middle school, $29,442.

It has long been the choice of politically powerful and moneyed families. As Sidwell parents, the Obamas will find not only supporters of his campaign but also of his rival in the Democratic primaries, Hillary Clinton. Her pollster, Mark Penn, sends his children there, and Lissa Muscatine, a longtime speechwriter, is on the board of trustees.

Malia and Sasha will be transferring from the private University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, which have about 1,700 students.