Chicago Bound...Hopefully...Maybe (Evanston, Skokie: apartment, rental, homes)

[TonysHersheyGirl]

My boyfriend is stationed in Chicago until 2012. I've decided that I want to go back to school and move closer to him. I'm at a loss as to where to begin and have searched this forum for days gathering information.

The school we're both looking into is Loyola. The neighborhood we're thinking of as being ideal for that purpose is Rogers Park HOWEVER from what I've gathered it's more of a college neighborhood and I have an 11 year old daughter and an 8 year old son so I don't know if it's family friendly.

I know there will be sacrifices that have to be made but I'd like to come as close as possible to finding a place close to Loyola, is family friendly, has good elementary schools, a descent night life, and is diverse, and somewhat affordable. Our budget for a place is 1800.00 we can stretch it a little more but would like to stay in that range if possible. I think we'll be getting a housing allowance through the military but I'm not sure just yet.

I'm interested in finding a job, but have no idea where to start looking. I may be looking into signing on with a temp agency and see where that leads. Career builder and the like are good sources but I also know that they have about a 3% success rate so if anyone can give me an idea of where to start looking that would great. I work as an A/R Clerk now if that helps at all.

So flood me with suggestions please!

[oakparkdude]

As a newcomer with school age kids, you should avoid Chicago Public Schools. Unless private schools are an option, you should find a nearby suburb with good transit access to Loyola. Evanston would likely fulfill your criteria (although I'm not 100% certain about rental rates there.)

[chet everett]

Loyola is a very pricey option too. What are you studying? Have they offered some tremendous deal to you? There are public universities in the are that would be far less costly.

I would not classify the bulk of Rogers Park as "a college neighborhood" -- Chicago has strict limits on underage drinking, most of Loyola's professional and medical offereings are at their other campuses, heck even few of the faculty live near by. In fact parts of RP are flat out unsafe.

By "stationed" I assume that bf is in military? I suspect at Great Lakes, so I can see how that "looks close" on a map, but realistically if he is driving the the Naval Training Station the commute to someplace like Northeastern Illinois University is trivally longer, that area is generally safer, and you'd save a fortune on tuition. Northeastern Illinois University Chicago

I agree that if you have a school age child you would be jumping through a lot of hoops to try an track down a Chicago Public School that is performing well. It would be far easier to live in one of the 'burbs near that area like Skokie, Niles, Morton Grove or Lincolnwood. If you drive you will find that area also has more employment opportunities and you can generally get a nice apartment or even rental home in your price range.

Good Luck!

[Drover]

Rogers Park is definitely not a conventional "college" neighborhood. You won't find packs of frat meatheads marauding through the streets on Friday and Saturday nights. You won't find self-congratulatory hippie-wannabes gathering in drum circles, handing out fliers or generally looking for grievances to protest about. Rogers Park is just a standard urban neighborhood that happens to have a college campus on it.

As for the kids... as others have mentioned, CPS schools suck. If you have your heart set on Loyola, live in Evanston, which is about a mile and a half north of Loyola. The schools, while not without their problems, are much better than those in Chicago.

[chet everett]

Although Evanston opens a whole other can of worms -- the least expensive stuff in Evanston on the Chicago border is probably no safer than cheaper stuff in Chicago. And the different schools that serve that area are also plagued with issues.

[Johnny Northside]

As a product of Chicago Public Schools and someone who's familiar with both the city and near-suburban schools these days, I find it incredible that so many people can pile on and trash CPS out of hand. Fact is, there are plenty of decent-to-excellent grammar school options (which is what we are talking about for the OP's purposes) within CPS for parents who are willing to drive a short distance to get their kids to a good school and/or those who have the flexibility (such as the OP) to choose a new neighborhood based almost entirely on the local school. Chalk that up as a parent's mandatory contribution to aiding a child's education -- right there with helping with homework at night, trips to the museum, etc. Some examples of acceptable grammar school options on the North/NW Side include: Solomon (a short walk and one bus from Loyola), Beaubien, Sauganash, Edgebrook, Wildwood, Oriole Park ... In near-in suburbs, districts like Evanston-Skokie all th way around to Forest Park are suffering from the same problems that are perceived to be present systemwide in CPS grammar schools -- children unprepared to learn because they come from broken homes, homes where English is not a primary language or where education in general is not valued. When teachers have to deal with these "problem kids" (in most cases, it's the parents who are the problem), it takes the teacher away from the students who are ready to learn. That's the same in the city and in the suburbs -- the latter being where Mayor Daley's relocation program (right or wrong) is forcing more of these families every year. The fact is, yes, CPS could be a lot better. But it isn't as bad SYSTEMWIDE as it used to be 10-20+ years ago. There are plenty of places and ways to get a good education within CPS. To simply dismiss the system as a whole in threads like this sends an inaccurate message.

[chet everett]

Johnny:

No argument from me on the fact that there are decent schools in the CPS, the problem is that without having the exact list of which schools are current making "adequate yearly progress" and then knowing the exact "local school attendance boundaries" and then knowing if the school is at or below the level of enrollment when the stats were compiled... Those are the kind of hoops I mean.

Much easier to say "Lincolnwood has three schools, none of which is on any list of doom".

Throw in the fact the OP is clearly "not from around these parts" and the suggestion of towns that basically border Chicago but offer much easier path to good schools, safer living arrangements and a host of other positive benefits for some one relocating the issue is not so much bashing the CPS, but saving folks from being assaulted with a barrage of data in one post... You may note that I said Evanston has some similar issues to the CPS, and I think there are probably some individual schools in some towns I recommend that are going to be on Academic Watch List but it ought to be a heck of lot easier for some one moving to track down one or two schools with issues than to figure out that Edgebrook, Sauganash and a half dozen of other such names are neighborhoods in Chicago that may have a similar sounding school that is NOT in the "attendance area" or other such oddities...

I further do appreciate that CPS, on the whole, may not be as bad as it was in decades past, but the City makes pretty much ZERO effort to help make sense of which sense of which schools are going to accommodating to folks relocating and given the choice between competing for a rental "anywhere" in a good district and trying to target a select attendance area the choice for me is easy...

[Drover]

Originally Posted by Johnny Northside

As a product of Chicago Public Schools and someone who's familiar with both the city and near-suburban schools these days, I find it incredible that so many people can pile on and trash CPS out of hand. Fact is, there are plenty of decent-to-excellent grammar school options (which is what we are talking about for the OP's purposes) within CPS for parents who are willing to drive a short distance to get their kids to a good school and/or those who have the flexibility (such as the OP) to choose a new neighborhood based almost entirely on the local school. Chalk that up as a parent's mandatory contribution to aiding a child's education -- right there with helping with homework at night, trips to the museum, etc. Some examples of acceptable grammar school options on the North/NW Side include: Solomon (a short walk and one bus from Loyola), Beaubien, Sauganash, Edgebrook, Wildwood, Oriole Park ... In near-in suburbs, districts like Evanston-Skokie all th way around to Forest Park are suffering from the same problems that are perceived to be present systemwide in CPS grammar schools -- children unprepared to learn because they come from broken homes, homes where English is not a primary language or where education in general is not valued. When teachers have to deal with these "problem kids" (in most cases, it's the parents who are the problem), it takes the teacher away from the students who are ready to learn. That's the same in the city and in the suburbs -- the latter being where Mayor Daley's relocation program (right or wrong) is forcing more of these families every year. The fact is, yes, CPS could be a lot better. But it isn't as bad SYSTEMWIDE as it used to be 10-20+ years ago. There are plenty of places and ways to get a good education within CPS. To simply dismiss the system as a whole in threads like this sends an inaccurate message.

Face it, CPS is a bureaucratic fustercluck. There's a reason why hundreds of thousands of young families -- many of whom detest the idea -- disrupt their lives to move out do the suburbs after learning what it takes to assure their kids will end up in a school with an environment conducive to actually learning such things as, say, the value of using paragraph breaks.

[MannheimMadman]

lol. Where is that wall of text picture when you need it?

[surlycue]

Originally Posted by MannheimMadman

lol. Where is that wall of text picture when you need it?