I’ve never understood the school district fixation myself.
When we picked a neighborhood in which to raise our kids, we picked an area where the neighbors were much like us in their attitudes and their income level. We didn’t want our kids to feel like the poor kids (by buying in at the top of what we could afford) nor the rich kids (by buying too far below what we could afford). We wanted them to feel like they fit right in.
That has worked very well, as they are both happy, well adjusted and ready to enter adulthood with a very good set of morals and self images. Parents and home life are far, far more important to a child’s well being than school district.
But schools do play some role, so I quietly smile when people pay hundreds of thousands of dollars extra to buy a home simply because of a school district. Who am I to judge?