Eanes - Valley View - Is is weird that the school is 5 miles away ?

[owlman]

Originally Posted by cwl1994

You may say that is odd for those two elementary schools to be close but Vally View elementary and Forest Trail elementary share a drive way in eanes isd. The only thing that separates them is a chain linked fence. Much more bizarre.

When I was a kid one of them was K-2 and one was 3-5, so it wasn't weird at the time having Valley View and Forest Trail right next to each other. At some point in the 90's all the elementary schools in Eanes switched to K-5; I guess a study found it was better for the fragile youngins to stay in the same school for all the elementary years

[austin-steve]

Originally Posted by leahkeeler

We are looking at a house in Austin Hills Estates (right off Marley) which is zoned to Valley View Elementary 5 miles away. I have never seen a a scenario where the school is not physically in the area it is zoned to. I would love to hear from some of the parents who live in the are.

-Is is 'weird' to have a school so far away?
-How long by bus? How long to drive home if the kid stays for after school activities. Do many parents carpool?
-Does it take away from a sense of community?
-Do the kids hate it /or not even care?

Does anyone have any idea on how that zoning care around? is it due to growth further out?

I really appreciate any answers you have - this is a huge concern for me with a particular piece of real estate we are looking at. My kids are going ot be incoming 2nd and 5th graders - girls.

Thanks! Leah

It's not weird, nor is it a problem. Many ISDs across the country that started rural and saw strong growth decades later have less than ideal geographic after-effects like this.

Look at an ISD like Dripping Springs, nobody walks to any school, except the people in Belterra because all of that is newer. What's "weird" there is to NOT have to ride a bus or be driven.

The only K-12 walkable neighborhood in Eanes are the ones near Walsh Tarlton that feed into Cedar Creek ES -> Hill Country MS -> Westlake HS.

[blakely]

Nothing necessarily wrong with it....you just have to decide if you want that distance between home and school (do you plan to volunteer a lot, etc.). It's not terribly far mile-wise, but during the morning commute, that stretch of Bee Cave Road going east can be quite slow...just something to think about if you don't plan to put your kids on the bus. I think what seems odd to some people is that Barton Creek Elementary (also Eanes ISD) is really close to the neighborhoods off Cuernavaca that feed into Valley View. So why is that? Basically, Valley View has served the Cuernavaca area for some time, but after new development emerged which included Senna Hills and Barton Creek West, another elementary school was needed to support all the population, so Barton Creek Elem was created to serve those newer areas, but the Cuernavaca area continued to feed into Valley View.

So if you like that general area but want to live closer to school in Eanes ISD, you could buy in the Barton Creek Elementary territory. Most of the other elementary schools in the district are closer to the neighborhoods they serve.

[neddy]

There are plenty of Leander ISD elem. schools that area only a few blocks apart and then Wiley,Stiles and Leander MS are all within maybe what 2 or 3 miles of each other...Just the way a district grows.