Not sure if you’re still checking on this blog, but I hope I can help. My family and I have just moved to La Jolla from Santa Barbara about a year ago and just recently spent a lot of research into this as our first daughter was entering Kindergarten at the time. Now after just finishing her first year (Torrey Pines Elementary), I have these insights to add.
1. Well funded = More programs- The school has a lot of fundraising events. This allowed my daughter to have a music teacher, science teacher, and computer teacher. Not sure if this is available in other San Diego Unified schools, but it was a great option.
2. Parents – The majority of the parents are well-educated and related to UCSD as reseachers/teachers/doctors. Some of the families are on visas, others are here on research grants, and others are here more permanently. At first I thought this was a negative, I was thinking it would be like Beverly Hills 90210 and the kids would be made up of the upper echelon, but I think I would rather have this now. The parents are very supportive and come in weekly to teach the kids about their profession (ie. one mathmetician parent taught the kids Fibonacci series). In addition, having a makeup of parents whose lives are devoted to science and academia doesn’t hurt.
3. Diversity – Because of the student makeup, her class had 5-8 different nationalities and languages. She was able to play with kids who spoke French, Korean, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew and Indian. Personally I enjoy this, as everyone had different backgrounds and pot luck parties were fun and interesting.
4. API Scores – I guess scores don’t hurt, I believe TPES’s was 990 which placed them somewhere in the top 20 elementary schools in California.
5. Class Size and Makeup – I thought the class size was perfect, not too big not too small (around 16 kids). In terms of demographics, I would say it was around 20% asian, 20% african american/hispanic, and 60% caucasian. Asian parents were predominately researchers from Korea/Japan and a couple local professionals (which I am), caucasian parents were mixed with local researchers/doctors and some from abroad, and the hispanics/african americans were local too (not bussed in as someone was saying). In terms of socioeconomic I think it’s varied. I would say that none of the parents were in the top 1%, but I don’t think anyone was really hurting too. I think the majority lived around the area we do (UTC/La Jolla Village area) and rent or own a condo. In terms of median household income, I would say most were > $150K/yr < $600K/yr (with the exception of the researchers from abroad, since many were single income households).
6. Nice house = Big $$ - When we moved here our idea was to rent first, figure out the area and buy later. Unfortunately, now we are currently priced out of the market based on our needs and wants. We are currently looking around the same price range as you are, and like someone else alluded to, SFR in that price range will get you a 1,200 sq ft fixer upper, or a condo. In addition, as someone else mentioned, most affluent homeowners in the area send their kids to private schools (eg. La Jolla Country Day) and your kids will probably not be playing, or going to the same schools as the kids on the block.
So right now we are looking at Carmel Valley and Scripps Ranch; hoping to find the 2,500 sf+ house of our dreams with a good education system. Unfortunately it's a little farther from the coast than we would like and a little cookie cutter, but at least I don't have the 45 minute-1 hour commute from Temecula and Poway like some cooworkers. If you would like to discuss further feel free to shoot me an e-mail.
