Reply to Real estate/school district selection advice I've heard as a new parent

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[quote=Anonymous]It’s fine to target “good” schools, but you are wise to point out that that equates to good for your family may differ than what is good for another family - and why Great Schools ratings are not a stand alone metric.

Look at neighborhoods where your family will fit in. Don’t buy the nicest house in the neighborhood or the smallest / worst house in a great neighborhood. Look at renovations in the neighborhood. We looked at one house that was perfect for us, but half the street had been renovated into new houses twice the size. We didn’t plan on that type of renovation, so we chose a different house. Look at the cars in the driveways and the toys on the lawns. Look at the bumper stickers. Strollers, swingers, minivans, etc. Will tell you if these are “your people”. Luxury cars, private school stickers, or things that hint at a mainly empty nest neighbors probably won’t be a good fit. When you have elementary age kids, having friends and neighbors close by is a huge help.

Look at Great Schools, but also look at the demographics of the school. Look at test scores but also look at scores for kids who look like yours. Look at photos in the local paper of school groups, the school play, sports teams, etc. There may be other POC families at the school, but if your family is upper middle class and the other kids who look like yours are poor or not engaged in activities outside of school, you may not interact with those families much. My children’s school is 30% LatinX, but there is a huge overlap between those kids and kids who live in apartments on the edge of the boundary with parents who speak little to no English. If a LatinX family moved into a $800k house typical of our neighborhood, they would have more interaction with the mostly white families in our neighborhood than the LatinX families that show up on our school’s demographics.

Lastly schools do change. Boundaries do change. That’s not a reason to just shrug and not try to find a good fit. Look at the renovations and direction off change in the neighborhood. Look at how boundaries are evaluated and changed where you are considering living. Learn the process, but in general live as physically close to the desired school as possible. The people who get shifted are usually those neighborhoods at the boundaries. [/quote]

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