Lisle vs Woodridge school districts (Naperville, Bolingbrook: 2013, lawyers, new home)

[Homers]

I am considering 2 properties to buy. One of them is assigned schools in Lisle school district and other is in Woodridge school district. I will appreciate if someone living in these districts can give me some information about these districts. I am finding it very hard to decide between the two.

[chet everett]

Woodridge schools are not performing as well as those in Lisle. The Lisle district is a unit district, that may allow for better coordination between grades. The middle school at Lisle is 6-8 while Woodridge has an older style 7-8 Jr. high.

LISLE JR HIGH SCHOOL: School Profile

Neither school is other than middle-of-the road numerically but depending on your price point it probably makes sense to go with Lisle.

[holl1ngsworth]

Originally Posted by Homers

I am considering 2 properties to buy. One of them is assigned schools in Lisle school district and other is in Woodridge school district. I will appreciate if someone living in these districts can give me some information about these districts. I am finding it very hard to decide between the two.

The quality of the Woodridge SD 68 elementary schools varies greatly and they feed into a number of different high schools. Some of those high schools are more desirable than Lisle High School and some are less.

Homes on the north side of Woodridge are to assigned Downers Grove North and Naperville North, both generally more desirable than Lisle High. Homes on the south side are assigned to Bolingbrook or Downers Grove South, both generally less desirable than Lisle.

What's the elementary/middle/HS combo assigned to each of the homes you are looking at?

Chet nailed it on the district vs. district match up, but depending on the exact combos at play, there may be an opportunity for the Woodridge home to get the nod.

[ofcjim40]

You both nailed it. We actually just sold our house in Woodridge and will be moving "further out there". Our child isn't school age yet, but where we were she would not have been going to the the public 1-8 grades. We would have sprung for Catholic HS. But we would have been Downers Grove North HS which is very desirable, and I believe is one of the reasons we were able to sell our house so fast and for the amount we did.

[Lookout Kid]

Originally Posted by ofcjim40

But we would have been Downers Grove North HS which is very desirable, and I believe is one of the reasons we were able to sell our house so fast and for the amount we did.

Definitely. Downers Grove North has considerably better test scores than Downers Grove South, and also tends to serve the more upscale areas of Downers Grove.

[agallan]

Originally Posted by Lookout Kid

Definitely. Downers Grove North has considerably better test scores than Downers Grove South, and also tends to serve the more upscale areas of Downers Grove.

Overall true, but with an asterisk that I would like to expound upon. Downers North attendance area does serve the areas near downtown Downers that have a lot of the beautiful, large historic homes which are very expensive. The rest is upper middle class and very nice. The key is they don't really pull in much attendance from less desirable towns, so you have a pretty homogenously fairly-wealthy demographic.

Downers South (my alma mater, declaring my bias!) attendance area generally includes the area further away from Downtown, so the original homes include a lot of post-war ranches/split levels which are more modest but still nice and many are on very large lots (I grew up on a 130 x 300' lot). However, in the late 80's and through the 90's and early 2000's, there has been new subdivision development (largely Gallagher and Henry) which has brought fairly large upper middle class new homes to the DGS area. And starting in the mid 2000's, many of the smaller (less expensive) post-war homes on large lots have been torn down and replaced by new large upper middle class "plus" homes (which actually look fairly appropriate since they are on large lots). I can tell you I always felt privileged to live on the south side of DG, and there was no shortage of high school kids driving brand new cars to school at age 16.

DGS is an excellent school, though I do think DGN is better. What hurts DGS is that it draws in kids from Bolingbrook. They don't have good preparation, and come from a very different socioeconomic world than the rest of DGS... kind of like Hodgkins kids who go to Lyons Township. I tended not to be in classes with those students, so it never really impacted me. I just think their test scores drop others down. I don't have any data on this, but I would believe that if you took the top 50% or whatever from both schools there would be similar performance. There is no shortage of Doctors, lawyers, dentists, physical therapists, business professionals, etc from the class, and most everyone (so not just the top students) went to good colleges (mostly UofI) and have good jobs.

Also pretty sure I would honestly not call Lisle HS preferable to DGS. It is a very small school with limited opportunities and doesn't really serve any nicer of an area than DGS.

[ofcjim40]

The portion that DGS draws from Bolingbrook is fairly small at least. And of course both DG HS's are leaps and bounds better than Bolingbrook HS.

DuPage county property taxes are getting a bit crazy though. I'm in a small ranch house (under 1400 ft) on a smaller lot and pay $6200 a year.

[holl1ngsworth]

Originally Posted by agallan

Also pretty sure I would honestly not call Lisle HS preferable to DGS. It is a very small school with limited opportunities and doesn't really serve any nicer of an area than DGS.

I said Lisle High School was "generally" more desirable than DGS -- its quite marginal, but my preference would still be Lisle. In 2013, Lisle had a higher percentage of low-income students but still managed to outscore DGS on the PSAE and College Readiness indexes, while graduating a higher % of students as well.

Lisle has higher scores than it did five years ago, an upward trend, while DGS has seen scores fall during the same period.

This could be due to Lisle's small size vs DGS (~550 students vs ~3000 students) which keeps classes smaller and overall spending-per-student higher. But as you pointed out, this may also limit extra-curricular opportunities at Lisle.

Downers South, Lisle, Downers North and Naperville are all great high schools and probably fall into the same tier -- but fact is there are degrees of desirability more-or-less set by home buyers moving into the area. And while the differences are marginal among these schools, the preferences still exist.

The only one I would single-out as not being up-to-snuff is Bolingbrook. If given the choice between Lisle HS and Bolingbrook HS, OP should choose Lisle.