Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
My wife and I moved down from the midwest about a year ago. We're getting ready to buy and really love the West Ashley area, but have noticed that the high school gets poor ratings. We don't have kids yet, but it's still cause for concern. I have a couple questions:
What is the reason for the low ratings? With the newer developments springing up around Bees Ferry, is it likely that today's rankings will be completely different in 15-20 years and possibly even an additional high school?
As a Realtor, I can't comment on individual schools due to the Fair Housing Act but I have heard a lot of people asking the same questions about WAHS. I think the area is changing so rapidly that it's anyone's guess what the HS scene will be like in 15+ years but it will probably only get better. West Ashley is experiencing a burst of more upscale development and some very positive changes are in the works:
I think it's pretty likely to change in 15 years. WAHS is a fairly new school (it replaced Middleton and St. Andrews, they merged to form WAHS).
I live in West Ashley outside 526. If the high school aged kids in WA all went to WAHS, I bet the rankings would be way different. Many of the kids in my neighborhood go to AMHS, SOA, or Charter schools. A few go private, too.
The elementary school that we're zoned for, Drayton Hall, has a great reputation. Most people who live out here are more concerned about sending their kids to our middle schools rather than WAHS.
Wondering if WAHS is still on the up and coming? I am of the mind that the parent's involvement in the school community and their valuation of education is more important to a particular student, but need to know if violence or poor funding impact WAHS students' performance. Or is there some other reason its for lower ranking?
Also, if a home in WA requires flood insurance, does that mean water collects under the house or does it go by proximity to flood plain?
Pretty much all the area high schools are funded equally. The poorer performing and the smaller high schools actually end up drawing in much more per pupil than the others. Especially if they have a lot of special needs or remedial students.
West Ashley has a plethora of elementary schools that are well rated. What happens is that around middle school you see a lot of kids/parents headed for greener pastures. The high school still has plenty of bright/well performing students but it also has other kids pulling down the average. Wando High School in Mt Pleasant and Dorchester District 2 schools enjoy a reputation edge and you tend to see a lot of people who base their home purchases on schools heading in those directions. It becomes self-fulfilling as the more concerned/active parents then become concentrated in the schools that were already better performing.
The number and financial/educational backgrounds of the people flooding outer West Ashley will probably rise the schools standing on its own. As much as we want to believe differently a huge amount of education results really are product in, product out. If you start with kids/families more prepared and accustomed to better educational results you are much more likely to achieve them.
Also keep in mind the school district still owns two former high schools inside of 526. At some point one might have to be returned to use as a high school if WAHS starts to overcrowd. And that would be an even more interesting school since the priciest and least pricey areas of West Ashley both occur inside 526. If WAHS gains a better reputation I think you will see a lot more people utilizing it. Locally so much of school preferences are based on perception as much as reality.
Thank you mrpeatie for your detailed response. Exposure to different ideas also plays a part, including modeling respectful ways of diagreeing that might advance change. But there are no guarantees.
So is it true that school assignments are strictly done by address? How are the students going to these other schools? Are they exclusive schools? Is private education the traditional norm? Thanks in advance for your candid responses.
Last edited by PrairieGirl; 05-12-2016 at 07:32 PM..
Reason: more info
Wondering if WAHS is still on the up and coming? I am of the mind that the parent's involvement in the school community and their valuation of education is more important to a particular student, but need to know if violence or poor funding impact WAHS students' performance. Or is there some other reason its for lower ranking?
Also, if a home in WA requires flood insurance, does that mean water collects under the house or does it go by proximity to flood plain?
FEMA decides how likely a house is to flood based on what seems to be a pretty inexact science. They designate flood zones and a base flood elevation (BFE) for each zone and that, along with the elevation of the house, determines how much your flood insurance will cost. It won't have much to do with whether water collects under the house. That would have more to do with the configuration of the lot that the house is on.
Thanks for that info. LH. Flood zones are determined the same way here, can be totally bogus. Like weather radar, inexact but better than nothing I suppose.
I knew Darius Rucker was from WA buckeye, hehe. Your comment made me think of the line "Oh by the way, which one's "Pink"?" Showing my age, lol.
Do most people in WA a. Move before h.s. or b. send their kids to private schools? Trying to get a sense of why the scores of the public h.s. is so low. My concern is that affordable housing may come with a terrible price in the form of low performing school. Have WA demographics recently changed?
I have to disagree about the FEMA designations being bogus. They simply take different criteria into account. Some areas flood because they are low lying and get most of the rising tides & runoff from a storm. Others are positioned so that a storm surge/waves will basically crash against them. So two pieces of property with the same elevation can have a completely different likelihood to flood if one is against a larger body of water, one is lower than the land around it or one is further inland. Also keep in mind you do not want to live in a 'bowl' where you are at a safe height elevation wise but the lowest height in the area- that would mean you collect everyone else's runoff. One of the neighborhoods in further out WA had just that scenario last fall and FEMA is looking into buying it out because there is no was to mitigate that scenario.
As far as schools/demographics/trends West Ashley is basically the oldest and closest suburb so it is well established and has a fuller range of incomes/wealth/old vs new residents than most of the other suburbs. It also has had development surges about every 15 years in different and typically further out locations. Basically the closer to downtown areas are from the 20s-40s, closer to Northbridge from the 50s & 60s, further out 61 from the 70s/80s and further out 17 from the 00s with a lot of infill occurring over time. This means you have a much bigger range of housing and backgrounds. Most younger people either want closer in for location or further out for either newer or lower housing cost (meaning newer/nicer at a cost similar to close in or older further out at a cost savings, not newer and cheaper.)
To compare James Island developed mostly after the original surge in WA then had a big surge of people moving there in the 90s when a direct connector to downtown was completed. James Island is also more contained so it hasn't kept inching further and further out. North Charleston used to have two military bases and still has most of the businesses and some manufacturing so the types of businesses/activities typical for those made it less attractive to many families. Mt Pleasant is an old town but really only took off as a suburb in the late 70s and 80s. Since about the mid 90s it has been the de facto nicer suburb and ground zero for upper middle class transplants. This is either partly caused by it having the highest rated high school or contributes to it having the highest rated high school. Summerville is much further out & can function as its own town but its major draw to many transplants is that the Dorchester 2 school district is the most uniform and has the highest average (but not individual) rate schools in the area. Goose Creek is a similar distance to downtown as Summerville but has no real feeling of being a town, has traditionally had more of a military presence & has been stuck in a similar comparative rut with Summerville schools that WA has with Mt Pleasant. Johns Island schools are horrible.
Basically what you see- with the exception of James Island Charter HS- is that the schools perceived as stronger get the lions share of transplants who are more concerned with schools. And that often translates to the ones who also spend more on housing so introduce a certain level of financial self selection. West Ashley has about 7 strong elementary schools, then two middle schools that are OK and one high school. So what you see is that as the kids move up to the next level the higher performers and the lower performers average out.
By the time you get to high school you see a large number of WA kids in the two magnate schools- Academic Magnate HS and School of the Arts that serve the entire county. They obviously were bright enough/educated enough to earn the placements but by going there (in larger #s than the other areas) they also let a little more slippage occur ratings wise at WAHS. There are also about a half dozen local private high schools. The most prestigious/highest $ one is actually located in West Ashley. Typically the kids in those started private much earlier but its not unheard of to have people shift their kids when they get to the upper grades and the parents don't like school sizes/offerings. The other route you sometimes see is going out of district to another local HS but this isn't that typical. In some regards I think merging the two WA high schools into one school that shared neither name & had an entirely new location was probably an error in that it killed any school loyalty/familiarity in that part of town.
One thing to keep in mind is that aside from James Island the other high schools can be further out and seeing continued surges in population. Mt Pleasant/Wando in particular is huge at 4000 something students. Summerville was also enormous before it finally split. West Ashley is not that size yet but after decades of being an area with an aging population it has seen a lot more younger families in the last 10 years and the Bees Ferry area is booming. Plus the WA high school is not far from Johns Island so some of the people moving there might try to use WAHS out of district. So the schools you seen now will be very different even 6 years from now & no one can truly guess who will be the winners/losers when they add schools/redraw attendance lines.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
