Over lunch with a small group in Milwaukee, President Barack Obama on Thursday said he plans to stay in Washington D.C. for a couple of years after his presidency so that his youngest daughter can finish high school.

It has long been speculated that the first family might stay in Washington after Obama leaves the White House. The president, though, made it sound as if it were a done deal.

Obama was having lunch with four women and one man – all of whom had written him letters about the Affordable Care Act — at Engine Company No. Three, a restaurant in Milwaukee. They talked about the weather and the Midwest.

“It always feels good being closer to home,” Obama said.

One of the women asked about Hawaii, where he was born. “Hawaii is home for me,” he replied, but suggested that his real home was Chicago. “I spent almost 30 years in Chicago,” he said, noting it was also Michelle Obama’s hometown.

Someone at the table then asked where he and the first lady would live after he was done with the presidency.

“We haven’t figured that out yet,” he said. “We’re going to have to stay a couple of years so Sasha can finish” school, he said. “Transferring someone in the middle of high school – tough.”

Obama, perhaps realizing that he had made news, then shooed the press pool out of the restaurant. “Thanks guys,” he said. “Get out of here.”

Obama speculated in a 2013 interview with Barbara Walters of ABC News, that he and his family might live in Washington beyond their time in the White House to allow Sasha to graduate from Sidwell Friends School.

Sasha will be a high school sophomore at the end of the president’s second term, giving the family a couple years to enjoy, or endure, Washington as private citizens.

“We’ve got to make sure that she’s doing well . . . until she goes off to college,” Obama told Walters in the 2013 interview. “Sasha will have a big say in where we are.”

(c) 2016, The Washington Post · Greg Jaffe