Question about schools inside the loop? (Houston, Van: apartments, buying a house, neighborhoods)

[kaelti12]

Hey y'all, me and husband are buying a house soon and I've noticed something that I'm curious about. We don't have kids yet(and won't for several more years) but I've been paying attention to the schools, at least in terms of diversity.

How come a house can cost 350k plus and be in a nicer inner loop area(Rice Military, the outer Heights etc...) but yet the school is 88% or even 90% Hispanic. Please don't get me wrong, I'm all for diversity but that's not diverse, for anyone. Are there a lot of multi family homes? Apartments? What causes them to be so heavily Hispanic?

[travelguy_73]

DINKs typically buy those townhomes. Houston inner loop neighborhoods can be a crazy quilt of income diversity, so surrounding half million dollar townhomes, you will have apartments and dilapidated homes on $300k lots.

[kaelti12]

What's a DINK?

[jerbear30]

The lack of diversity in Houston public schools is primarily due to upper income white self-segregation. But also consider that true diversity in those schools would not equate to a majority white school. The city itself is not majority white.

[houstonfan]

People in that area who own the expensive homes usually don't have kids, and if they do, once they get to school age, they usually move to the burbs for better school, more neighborhood kids, bigger backyards, or go private school. So the kids that are left are the ones that are the oringal demographics before the neihgborhoods gentrified.

[houstonfan]

DINK is double income no kids

[kaelti12]

I'm not necessarily looking for a predominantly white school, we plan on adopting a child, possibly from another country, so their race will be different from ours anyway. But I would like to see them in diverse school, and I worry with 88-90% Hispanic, that the language barrier among the students and our child's potential friends would be an issue.

Although, with our timeline for kids needing schools being around 8-10 years anyway, we can always just move to burbs like others do. I was mostly just curious as to what caused it.

[Bike4Life]

You are right. Reagan HS zone has been a large Hispanic area for decades. But as houses have been snatched up by yuppies and empty-nesters, we should be seeing this trend change. But it has barely changed in the last 5 years. Perhaps we need to wait another decade to see this reflected on their school profile.

Still, my neighborhood home owners is about 10% Hispanic but the neighborhood elementary school is 59% Hispanic and 73% on free/reduced lunch. So, it must be the run down apartments on main streets that bring down the entire schools. This is a frustrating process that many homeowners try to figure out.

[N. Buck]

A little off topic because I believe the question has been answered, but as a parent I tend to take a few factors into consideration for my son's schooling:

1. Test scores. Yeah, it's not right, but you gotta do it...
2. Reverse engineer the school track. Which high schools send kids to better colleges? Which middle schools feed into them? Which elementary schools feed into the middle schools?
3. Parent involvement. Big PTA? Good deal!

Keep in mind that the inner loop is zoned to HISD. You have a choice to send your kids to excellent magnet schools or the neighborhood schools. I have friends who drive all over town because their kids are in Vanguard schools. I plan on doing the same thing.

The price you pay to live in the hub I guess...

[houston-nomad]

Vanguards/Magnets are a big part of why some neighborhood schools don't reflect the neighborhood. These can be great options and are a wonderful plus to HISD, but the downside is that the neighborhood school can become the Island of Misfit Toys-- the place for the kids whose parents don't have the wherewithal to work the magnet system, or kids who don't have the academic or conduct grades to cut it in the magnet system. A magnet or vanguard program can maintain high standards and "exit" the kids who don't cut it (I just heard this term used at a magnet middle school). Where do the "exited" kids go? Back to their neighborhood school. The neighborhoods surely suffer for being the school of last resort.