Homes In Good Public School Zones

Studies show that the school a child goes to has little impact on their future success. The biggest factor in their success is their parents involvement. Also school ratings are very dubious. It's highly related to household income because kids from poor homes get poor nutrition, their parents are working to much to read to them and help them with homework, etc.
We avoided private schools and chasing rating and instead bought a house that gave us a higher quality of life and less debt. We're close enough to the public school to walk them there and they can walk on their own when they're older. Their friends live nearby too.

Agreed on school effect. However, group of peers one grows up with and befriends has tremendous impact on success. These good peers can generally be found in good neighbourhoods. Anyhow, not looking for a debate. Thanks for your input.

agilowen wrote: ↑ Agreed on school effect. However, group of peers one grows up with and befriends has tremendous impact on success. These good peers can generally be found in good neighbourhoods. Anyhow, not looking for a debate. Thanks for your input.

Yes, you wouldn't want to go to the worst school, but anything average or above should be OK.

As far as renting, we had friends that did that to get into the alternative school outside of their area. They rented a basement apartment and let a nanny/sitter live there for free in exchange for picking up their kid. They only did that for 6 months because the school doesn't check for address. I do think they kept the Canada Post forwarding service active.

I wish I could upvote your comment more than once, engineered. The only plausible reason for Canadians obsessing so much about "good school districts" is that they watch too much Canadian television. A few of my coworkers actually send their kids to private school because they don't like their neighbourhood schools, because of ratings and the fact that the peers would be "bad."

Quality education is a right, and necessary for a functional society; if they actually thought their neighbourhood schools were "bad," they should be taking to the street.

I don't have to, because I'm pretty sure they're wrong. The school "ratings" are actually ratings of the kids performance, as engineered noted, and a lot of that reflects the fact of kids who come from other countries who might not speak English as a first language. I view that as a benefit, not something to be run from: kids in 21st century Canada need to learn how to deal with people from other cultures (as friends, coworkers, clients, employees, or all of the above). The kids whose parents struggled to buy houses in "good school zones" might not know how to.

Anyway, with all that said, it depends on how tight the school is in your preferred area, the year that you move. I work with one family who happened to be renting in the zone of a very desirable (and at-capacity) school, and the school board sent the kid to the new home school. We talked about the disruption to the child, and the fact that other kids in the past hadn't been treated that way, but no luck.

So, your strategy would be a crap-shoot, but probably the odds would be in your favour.

engineered wrote: ↑Studies show that the school a child goes to has little impact on their future success. The biggest factor in their success is their parents involvement. Also school ratings are very dubious. It's highly related to household income because kids from poor homes get poor nutrition, their parents are working to much to read to them and help them with homework, etc.
We avoided private schools and chasing rating and instead bought a house that gave us a higher quality of life and less debt. We're close enough to the public school to walk them there and they can walk on their own when they're older. Their friends live nearby too.

x2

I went to the ghetto-est school in TDCSB (mind you we were the PILOT PROGRAM FOR CAMERAS IN SCHOOL HALLWAYS due to violence ) and hey, while I'm not raking in Wolf of Wall street money, a ton of my mates "made it" and I'm personally doing very well. I graduated with honors being a student-athlete to boot with all the background noise.

My friends were either jailed and/or arrested . A ton of kids didn't have father figures and were from broken families. A good amount were from families earning minimum wage.

I always hear the "good school district" argument, but I never join the conversation.

I have to agree with everyone that "good schools" doesn't matter so much. The high school I went to had a reputation as the school where street drugs was most accessible in the entire city. I never went looking for trouble and trouble never came look for me. Personally I am more concerned about good neighborhood for reasons other than school.

Where I live, it's a good elementary school. Across the street from where I live it's a bad school. (Literally across the street. Same street but odd numbers are our school district and even numbers are a different school district, as our street is the dividing line.) Why is it a bad school? Not only does it get low ratings, there are a few crack dens nearby, and naked crackheads have come knocking on the school doors and windows a couple of times. Yes naked. A friend has worked there before and says a disproportionately high amount of the kids are very disadvantaged with significantly more problems at home than average.

If I lived across the street, I would have considered putting my kids in private school, or other school options.

We've had people knocking on our door and leave notes asking to pay rent to get access to our address. Very annoying. I know of one couple down the street (about a dozen houses out of the catchment) cheating somehow to get their daughter in. More often this year after Fraser rated the elementary school 9.4.

agilowen wrote: ↑ Our son is nearing school age so we are naturally looking to relocate within boundaries of good schools in Ottawa. However, houses in these good school zones are considerably more expensive. There are rentals that are affordable but we would have to downsize a bit. My question is: if we were to rent in those areas for the first year and sign our son in said good school, would he have to transfer schools if we moved out of the area in the future? If so, could one keep the rental and pay its monthly fees while living elsewhere (effectively having two residences to avoid being kicked out of the school)?

Op, you are not the only one (thousands of families go through this).
I bought my new home specifically in Kanata North to get my kid into WEJ.
It's up to the pricinpal and enrolment numbers that dictate whether your kid can stay in the current school; when moving out of the zone.

Well that's interesting. The bad school I was talking about above has disappeared off Fraser Institute's website. I can't find it anywhere, except in old ratings documents. I'm not surprised though, as the school was in the bottom 10% of the entire province whereas my school district's rating is in the top 15% of the province. Because of this, nobody wanted their kids in that bad school. I wonder if that school asked FI to remove them.

It's amazing what a difference a few feet of road makes. Our side of the street has a top 15% school, and the other side of the street has a bottom 10% school.

frogger wrote: ↑ We've had people knocking on our door and leave notes asking to pay rent to get access to our address. Very annoying. I know of one couple down the street (about a dozen houses out of the catchment) cheating somehow to get their daughter in. More often this year after Fraser rated the elementary school 9.4.

My local school has been very strict in getting all the documentation (as I imagine are all the schools these days). They say they fairly consistently get people trying to fake their way in.

BTW, some in the admin office were a bit grumpy to me initially when I was asking questions. That all changed when they finally confirmed I lived in the area. I guess they get a lot of inquiries about admissions and are leery because of the people trying to get in with fake addresses.

i have a really close friend whom bought a house in a very highly desired school catchment so there child could enroll there, great area everything going for it but there kid was not interested or maybe not good at school even with extra tuition they paid for every year outside from school. i guess u can give your child the best possable chance but if its not in them it wont happen.