I’ve lived a good deal of my life around the area, and it’s great overall if you like the semi-rural suburbia thing. Definitely pay attention to the amount of traffic on some of the streets as mentioned above. Fuerte, Grandview, Calavo, Lemon Ave., Conrad, and a few others are NOT kid-friendly: no curbs/sidewalks, blind corners, and people drive faster than they should.
Since you have kids and no one has talked about the schools yet, here’s a quick summary:
My wife teaches in the area’s elementary/middle school district (La Mesa-Spring Valley School District, which is also where I went to elementary and junior high), and it’s a pretty solid and stable group of teachers & administrators. The schools themselves vary a surprising amount: Murdock Elementary serves a middle-upper class clientele, but Spring Valley Middle School a couple of long blocks down the street has some mild gang problems. La Mesa Middle is about the same as SVMS. If you go north of I-8 to Fletcher hills, the schools are about as good as public schools get (Fletcher Hills Elementary and Parkway Middle; Northmont Elementary is said to be just a small step behind).
Parts of Fletcher Hills deserve a look if you’re thinking about Mt. Helix. Streets/areas to consider include Hacienda; the area enclosed by the loop formed by Murray Dr. along with some of the adjacent neighborhood north of the eastern end of Amaya; and Tyrone plus connected cul de sacs and dead end streets on the western slope of the El Cajon valley.
Take a leisurely drive around and see for yourself. I’d take Mt. Helix or Fletcher Hills over anything on the I-15 corridor. I like older neighborhoods, so YMMV.
High schools are all in the Grossmont Union High School District. Helix serves La Mesa proper and some of western Mt. Helix. It has traditionally had a rougher group of kids than Grossmont HS (which serves Mt. Helix proper and Fletcher Hills); Monte Vista HS (serves Casa de Oro and south to Jamacha Rd.) is traditionally on a par with Helix.
Don’t let the “rougher” schools scare you, however–all things are relative. A friend of mine went to Murdock, Spring Valley Elementary (now closed), Spring Valley Middle (Junior High in those days) and Monte Vista HS. He went on to Stanford and then law school, so it’s not like any of the schools I’m talking about are in the ghetto.
I can ask my wife for more specifics if you need them. Anything for a fellow pigg. 🙂
The funny thing is that we’re homeschooling our kids so this topic isn’t all that relevant to me.
