Some patience please...yet more questions about moving to Boston! (Quincy: rentals, credit)

[Atheneum]

Hi all,

Have read the threads here and have some further questions/clarifications required.

We are planning to move to Boston (from outside the US) next year. Yes, I know this is far in advance, but with 2 kids we need to plan!

I have been looking at various areas etc with a principal factor being schools, but now I see from some other threads here that you don't necessarily get allocated the school for your district...can someone please expand on how this works? This has thrown me a bit!

A little about us, we would be looking for a single family residence, probably 4 bedrooms, near an easy commute (public transport) to town but also with freeway access (I am likely to find work in the city, my husband more likely to find it in one of the manufacturing zones). And, we want good schools. So far, Brookline seems like the area most likely to fit what we are looking for. I've briefly looked at Newton, Melrose, Weston, Wellesley too but they seem a bit further or not that convenient to public transport?

Now, back to the school system: how important is it then, that you live in the "right" area for the school? Also, if we want to rent for a few months first - rentals for family size places seem quite scarce in the Brookline area - will this affect where our kids can go to school? Finally, is the schoolbus system as good as it seems in the movies, or will we more than likely need to take our kids to school? Incidentally, younger child will be starting pre-K or first grade when we get there, and older child grade 6 or 7 (our school year is different so not sure which year they will be placed in). Preliminary investigations are throwing up Heath and Runkle, any comments on these or other schools welcome too.

Any insights at all on the above will be welcome! We do have some friends in Boston, but they live in different areas to the ones we are looking at, and I would love any "insider" tips on Brookline, the other areas mentioned above, or any that may suit us but that we haven't thought of. Thank you!

[TAM88]

I believe the public schools in Boston operate on a lottery system, but I am sure someone who either has gone through it can give better information.

There are several towns right near Boston that has excellent public schools. Newton, Needham, Sharon, Brookline and even Arlington all have solid school systems. Not sure what you are looking to spend as some of them can get pricey. But there are always values to be found.

[Atheneum]

Originally Posted by TAM88

I believe the public schools in Boston operate on a lottery system, but I am sure someone who either has gone through it can give better information.

There are several towns right near Boston that has excellent public schools. Newton, Needham, Sharon, Brookline and even Arlington all have solid school systems. Not sure what you are looking to spend as some of them can get pricey. But there are always values to be found.

To be honest, I'm not really sure what we are looking to spend either...it will depend on what we can sell our house for here and what the exchange rate is when we move & bring the funds over. It will probably be somewhere $1m-$2m. Being new immigrants with no credit record in the US, I'm assuming we will not be able to raise a mortgage. I realise that is a very wide range...and that it will not buy us the "best" houses in places like Brookline, but it does seem there are enough decent ones available in that range. There are a few town names in your list above that I had not thought of, so will investigate! Thanks!

[Atheneum]

Ok so...I've read up some stuff on the lottery system, and I'm finding it rather unsettling. As we will in all likelihood not be moving at the start of the US school year, I guess our chances of getting our kids into a school we want are even slimmer. Is it really as bad as the stuff on the net makes out? To be honest, I'm now starting to wonder if Boston will be right. I love the city, but getting the kids into a good school is non-negotiable, and I'm not at all sure I want to go the private school route.

[eevee]

If you oldest child is currently in the 6-7th grade, you could try out the exam school route. However, you have to be a Boston resident in order to attend on of these schools. They also stop admitting new students past the 8th grade (if I'm recalling this correctly. J.D. O'Bryant may have different rules) so there is a ticking clock there. Some people would argue that Boston has no really good public high schools outside of the exams school. I don't know if this is true or not (I went to one of these schools so can't speak for the quality of a normal/average Boston public high school), but you'd be better off aiming for a school in a inner suburb like Newton

[Atheneum]

Thanks Eevee. I am starting to get a bit confused by the terminology/districts now, I guess a bit of lack of understanding of the local government system there, so please forgive me if this is a dumb question: when you talk about "Boston" schools, is that only in the city of Boston itself? Are schools in say Newton or Brookline subject to the same lottery system? When you say "Boston resident", does that mean someone in say Brookline or Newton is not a "Boston" resident?

[eevee]

Newton and Brookline are suburbs of Boston and not part of the actual city of Boston. So yeah, someone living in Newton isn't a Boston resident. It can get confusing (Boston has a ton on individual neighborhoods), but there should be maps floating around that note city borders and such. I can't speak on the school systems in Newton or Brookline, other than to say that they are highly regarded.

[blindfold051]

Hey Atheneum!

Unfortunately I can't provide you with any info yet because I'm planning on moving in Boston in July but I could ask for some info then, when I get there.

Where are you from? I'm coming from Europe so this is kinda big step for me+ I'm going there alone :S

I saw that your husband is going to work in manufacturing zone. Does he already have a job? I started looking for a job in Boston, so if you have any info to share I would be grateful.

And if anyone else have an idea or recommendation for a job in manufacturing zone for engineers?

Sorry for crashing here Atheneum, but it seems that we are looking for the same things (except schools for kids ) so I didn't want to open a new thread....

Thx guys!

[professeurpablo]

Many of the cities around Boston have only one public high school, so if you live in that city, your children will be entitled to go to that high school. Newton and Quincy, among a handful of others, are exceptions: each has two high schools. The city and town boundaries in most instances correspond to the school district boundaries as well, except in the case of regionalized school districts. None of the cities you mentioned is part of a regional district.

If you are really concerned about the schools at the elementary and middle levels, you can research their MCAS scores, which might show some variation. That said, in most of the communities you mention, there is probably not a tremendous difference in the raw score of each school as compared with other schools in the same city or town.

Much of Brookline is convenient to public transit, but this convenience comes at a price. Newton is convenient if you happen to live near one of the seven stations on the green line's Riverside (D) Branch that meanders through the city, but it is also extremely expensive. The same goes for Wellesley, which has only the commuter rail as a transit option, and Weston, which by the way is the wealthiest community in Massachusetts. Much of Weston would not be convenient to the commuter rail stops in that town as it is quite spread out and semi-rural.

Melrose might be a good option if you don't mind using the commuter rail or a bus to the orange line at Oak Grove. It has a nice walkable downtown with restaurants, shops, cafés and a supermarket and seems to also have a lot of young families. It would be a bargain compared to Brookline and Newton. Another place you might think about is Winchester. Although access to Boston is limited to two commuter rail stops or a lengthy bus ride to the orange line at Wellington, the downtown is very nice, and the schools are good as well. Just make sure you don't live in one of the flood zones!

Good luck!

[Atheneum]

@blindfold... No, neither of us have jobs yet. We will probably only move next year sometime (we won the green card lottery this year! We already had another immigration petition approved, but this moves us way up the queue in terms of wait time. Which is still long though...) We both have a lot of experience in our respective jobs and some connections in the US, but we can realistically only start looking properly for jobs once we have our green cards. My husband is also in the engineering field, and from browsing the web it seems like there are a lot of options in the greater Boston area for that.

@professor, thanks for that...I certainly feel a bit better now! I see that Newton South seems a fair bit further up the rankings than Brookline High? It also seems easier to find rental houses in Newton, and we would prefer to get to know the area before buying so right now Newton is making more sense. I probably need to do some more research, but from searching on the web it seems there are a number of decent looking houses in the right school areas in our expected price range. I thought Weston seemed to offer good value in terms of lot size vs Newton and Brookline, but the inconvenience of public transport and just generally high street type stuff means it probably isn't what would suit us.