Relocating to work at Dell Children's (Austin, Spring: house, school district, living in)

[cyclotron01]

My family is considering relocating to Austin. I would be working at Dell Children's. We are very concerned by several issues. Any comments would be welcome:

1. School system. We currently have 3 children in a very high performing private school (by necessity). We will not be pursuing private school in Austin, but are looking to maintain some academic rigor. It seems Eanes school district is the best match. Are there significant differences between the elementary schools in this district?

2. Commuting from Westlake to Dell Children's. I currently commute ~15 minutes (at ~630 AM). It seems Eanes is an expansive district, and the commute looks like it could vary tremendously depending on the actual house location. We are looking for the tradeoffs between commute time and liveability within the Eanes district. Price range (700-900k). We have not looked around at all yet, so have no empirical data.

3. Traffic: I never thought of Austin as a traffic nightmare, but it is clearly at the top of many concerns. Is the traffic so bad that it interferes with the activities of daily living for the average family in the Eanes ISD area?

Thanks.

[centralaustinite]

Look in Rollingwood. It is in Eanes, and very close to town.

Don't know where you are coming from but traffic concerns are relative, we are not DC or LA or even Boston! Anywhere in Eanes to Mueller/Dell will take you across town, there is no simple direct way to do it, but you would have options Mopac/183 over then back south, Barton Springs Rd to Riverside to I35, and there are back ways through east Austin that would work too. Your commute from Rollingwood would probably come in at about 30 minutes.

Daily living in Eanes is not adversely affected by traffic!

[shankaupas]

Eanes is a top notch school district. You might consider Davenport Ranch. That will put you at the Northern part of the ISD but you will have several options for commuting to work. You can cut across town on 2222 to I35 or you can take 360 to 183 to I35 to the Dell Children's hospital. If you are commuting around 6:30 am, you'd probably be looking at no more than 30 minutes and maybe less.

[meredithT]

We are in a similar situation. Let me tell you which way we're leaning. I am in the healthcare field but don't have a job lined up yet - and would like to be open to work at a variety of hospitals. Right now, I work part-time at two different ones and find that works best. We first planned to send our kids to a private school - even went to Austin and checked out 2 of them - but when I really researched some of the public schools, I realized that we didn't have to spend the $36 K a year to get very high-quality education. I am most interested in Eanes because of the short commute -- really, to almost anywhere. But I fear that when the rest of my family gets a look at the gorgeous brand-new Tuscan-style palatial homes in Lake Travis, I will lose them. You cannot find brand-new in that style in Eanes, unless you go to Senna Hills, which is literally one street away from the Lake Travis dividing line, so what's the point. Now Lake Travis schools are excellent - but the commute is another story. I see some pretty nice homes in Rollingwood in that price range, I just hope they are good enough to convince the rest of my family.