[shkl]

Two options:

1. Buy a house in Plymouth-Canton school district around $350, more taxes
2. Buy a house around Brownstown, Woodhaven, huron, flat rock area with less money, more house, less taxes and send the kid to private school.

Help me decide, please.... oh......and btw.........I do not know any good private schools in that area. I checked the greatschools.net website but not enough to make a decision. Any input is greatly appreciated........thanks a lot in advance

[zthatzmanz28]

Plymouth-Canton is a "good" school district??

[shkl]

Originally Posted by zthatzmanz28

Plymouth-Canton is a "good" school district??

Please explain the "good"....?? Thanks!

[zthatzmanz28]

Originally Posted by shkl

Please explain the "good"....?? Thanks!

Just thought if someone was considering moving into Plymouth-Canton School district they might think it is a "good" district and not done any homework on the district to know.

[shkl]

Originally Posted by zthatzmanz28

Just thought if someone was considering moving into Plymouth-Canton School district they might think it is a "good" district and not done any homework on the district to know.

I am new to Michigan and my only source of information was greatschools.net
I know Northville, Novi, Farmington have good schools, but I have to be closer to Monroe because of work. What is my best option? Thanks a lot!

[sike0000]

How about buy a house in Canton for 130ish instead of 350?? Heck, even newer homes in Canton can be gotten for cheap.

We looked at foreclosures in Canton for 130-150ish last year around this time. Plymouth Canton school districts. A year later with home prices still declining I would imagine you could find a newer home for under 200.

With the exception of one sub I believe everything north of Palmer and west of haggerty is plymouth canton school district.

[Coldjensens]

Plymouth Canton is a very good school district or at least it was a couple of years ago when I subscribed to every school ranking and rating source that I could find. They offer a lot of great programs and options, especially at the High School level. The highg school is actually two high schools in seperate buidlings on the same campus. Students can take calsses in the other school if they need to. It is a huge high school. I cannot remember the numbers, but the I think that the high school was bigger than my entire home town where I grew up. It reminded me a great deal of a community college more than a high school.

Are you buying a house as an investment, or as a place to live? If an investment, then maybe you should rent for a while. Prices are still falling. If as a place to live, then you should focus on which community and house you like better. However I woudl suggest that you keep in mind that you can live in a cheaper house and take marevelous vacations or live in a really nice house and be stuck at home. I sometimes wish that we had followed that advice. W love our house,but it would nice to be able to afford something.

What are your kids like? There is more involved in choosing a school district than just academic performance. We ultimately decided that a small school was more suitable for our kids than one of the mega schools that offer loads of great programs, hundreds of class options, but have thousands of students. We also wanted an old fashioned school experience for our kids (where everyone knows each other, everyone attends the football games and the homecoming parade, etc. ). Other people love the mega schools for their kids.

Our kids started school in a "bad" school district in California. The oldest went through 8th grade in that district. We selected schools within that district carefully and they did very well. One of our daughters is finishing high school today and graduating in the top ten from a very competitive Michigan high school. The other is in the top 20 (as long as she does not bomb her last final today).

The message here is that your kids can get a very good education in a school district that is not top notch. If your kids are focused and not easily influenced, or if they are driven/self-motivated, then you may not need a top ranked school district for them to do well. It depends as much on you as on the school district. However if they are really young and/or easily influenced, or if they are average or below students, then you probably want to make certain tha they go to school with as many high performing students and as few low performing students as possible.

I think that our daughters may have been driven harder by the fact that they were generally at the top of their classes. Thus they wanted to work a little bit more to stay there. If they were in a more competitive school all the way through, they may have given up, thinking that they could not get to the top no matter what they did. I am not sure, it is just a theory.

Woodhaven schools are not bad and I had heard that Huron High is a very good school. It was not one of the areas that we were considering when I did the research, so I do not know. They did not appear on the lists of the top 10% of Michigan schools, but that does not mean that they were bad schools. Since we could live anywhere, we decided that we may as well look at communities with the top schools and see if we found anything that we liked. Notwithstanding that, we did consider several historic neighborhoods in Detroit as well as the City of Taylor (Taylor has average or below average schools, Detroit has mostly terrible schools with a few exceptions which are great schools).

There is a decent private school on Middlebelt road at Van Horn or possibly Sibley. I cannot remember the name of it. They are kind of harsh withthe kids, but it is supposed to be a good school. Gabriel Richard is supposed to be pretty good as well. I do not know anything about it. We did not consider private schools.

The one of the best Private Schools in the country is Cranbrook, but it is up in North Oakland County - no where near where you are looking and it costs something like $36,000 per year.

[shkl]

Thanks a lot for the excellent input. Congratulations on the sucess of your kids!

My youngest daughter is in Grade 5 and our house is not an investment but a place to live. We're looking for a 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath house in a nice neighbourhood, preferably Central Park or Vintage Valley/Antique Forest subdivision.....we've been looking for houses for more than three months now and it comes to around the 300-350 range. That's when we thought why not get check the other areas too. I sure will check the woodhaven schools

Thanks for all the feedback, please keep it coming.......

[trinkit]

I believe that the school Coldjensens is thinking of is Summit Charter (?) School in Flat Rock. If you're going to be working in Monroe, Brownstown would be a lot closer than Plymouth-Canton.