I get tired of reading over and over here how a contingent of regular posters laud ONLY I-56 corridor schools and the (heavily indebted) PUSD over all other schools in the county …. as if the other schools/districts didn’t exist and/or weren’t “good enough” for their kids to attend.
It’s all a crock of BS and and I’m happy to report that the UC and CSU doesn’t see it that way.
We’ve even got Piggs posting here from out of state who may not have lived here for years advising other out-of-state incoming posters on the “best schools” in SD County, but undoubtedly some of their kids didn’t even make it out of elementary school before they moved away.
Unlike a poster who has resided in SD County for well over 35 years and in CA for 50 years (describing myself), we’ve got the blind leading the blind here with a bunch of anecdotes describing their (negative?) perception of “disadvantaged kids” being bussed into LJ schools which has been going on long before most of you got here (excepting native San Diegans, of course). We all know that parents don’t make the rules and never will … anywhere in the country. School districts do … in compliance with the HUGE patchwork of state and Federal law controlling them.
Why even discuss the presence of out-of-area students attending a particular school, unless they actually live in MX and are fraudulently “stealing” spots from area-resident students causing them to attend an out-of-area school? (Yes, this DOES happen and in more districts that you might think.) Especially in a large urban district where EVERY school has some. What difference does the presence of out-of-area children in your child’s school make to them? Does their presence lessen the opportunities offered to your child to excel in the same school?
I didn’t think so.
When you are buying into a school “attendance area,” you are buying into *all* the levels of public school within it. And as we all know, only the HS grades (grades 9-11 or 10-11, depending on university system) are averaged together for college admittance. When push comes to shove, a student’s GPA in those 2-3 grades (along with their SAT/ACT scores) are all that matters in the end.
In this case, the OP asked only about TWO particular areas they are interested in where the housing stock is vastly different from one another. One has more custom homes than tracts (some which offer views unmatched anywhere in the world) and the other has almost all tract developments. Comparing these two areas is essentially comparing apples to oranges. By virtue of its location and housing stock, CV is not even in the same league as LJ and never will be.
I currently have a kid enrolled in public HS here and have already gone through all of this (college admissions/getting thru college/college graduation) a time or two :=0
Nazzy, if you haven’t come here personally, driven the streets in your target areas and actually viewed properties, it is difficult to describe how your family’s life would be living in each area. You actually have to see for yourself with your own eyes the differences in housing stock in your two areas as they are great. We also don’t know what you are used to living in (age, lot size, house sf) so don’t know what you would be most comfortable in.
In the two areas you mentioned, I would choose location, lot and house over schools since the schools are comparable at all levels. Whatever schools go with that house, so be it. It is unwise to shop schools over house because you don’t know if in the future an overcrowded school in your attendance area will redirect some resident students to other district schools or redraw school boundaries as they have the right to do. We must be ever mindful that school districts run the show, NOT parents.
