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I know this has probably been hashed out here already, but I am A NYer that wants to relocate (oh no, another one, I can hear the groans) w/my family. We have been doing hours & hours of research online, and Cary seemed a good possibilty, but I've been reading reams of blogs about the
nitemare situation w/reassignments in the schools. Unfortunately it is all out of date & I can't seem to find any recent comments.
By the time we move my kids will probably be 11 & 9. (2011). I'm not so worried about the year-round vs traditional schedule; but w/4 "tracks" in a year round school, if my kids are on different schedules we will never be able to take a vacation together!!
My other main concern is, are kids still being transferred constantly, and being bussed ridiculous distances from home?
Also, have taxes gone thru the roof since they are building so many new schools? I see alot of comments on here that NC has high taxes but when I look them up they are much lower than NY. It's all relative. Depending on the town a small house on LI has taxes of 10K a year.
I appreciate anyone's time in responding, I am a worrywart & am getting very anxious!!
I know this has probably been hashed out here already, but I am A NYer that wants to relocate (oh no, another one, I can hear the groans) w/my family. We have been doing hours & hours of research online, and Cary seemed a good possibilty, but I've been reading reams of blogs about the
nitemare situation w/reassignments in the schools. Unfortunately it is all out of date & I can't seem to find any recent comments.
By the time we move my kids will probably be 11 & 9. (2011). I'm not so worried about the year-round vs traditional schedule; but w/4 "tracks" in a year round school, if my kids are on different schedules we will never be able to take a vacation together!!
My other main concern is, are kids still being transferred constantly, and being bussed ridiculous distances from home?
Also, have taxes gone thru the roof since they are building so many new schools? I see alot of comments on here that NC has high taxes but when I look them up they are much lower than NY. It's all relative. Depending on the town a small house on LI has taxes of 10K a year.
I appreciate anyone's time in responding, I am a worrywart & am getting very anxious!!
Not going to comment on the schools but a thought on taxes. There are a couple of ways to look/compare taxes. One is the total cost and the other is the actual rate of taxation. I remember reading an article about housing taxation in Wake County. The article was saying that the tax rate was higher here than San Diego but you could buy the same house for a lot less and thus a lower real tax bill. Coming from Long Island you may find the same to be true. I ordered something on line the other day and the other time I ordered from the company I had it shipped to a son in Virginia. It defaulted to that address with a sales tax of $13 and change. As soon as I changed the shipping address to North Carolina it jumped to $20 and change. My reaction was oh well you can guess.
Property taxes might be around 1% of the assessed value, depending on where you live. In some towns it's a little higher. If you live outside the towns, it will be lower. You can get a small house that's assessed for $150,000, and the taxes on that house would probably be between $1000 and 2300.
About the schools: I think everyone is just waiting to see what the new school board will do.
There is also a recent thread about the busing. Parents were explaining why they drive their kids to school. For many, it was because the bus pick-up time was so early (for example, 6:15 for a school that starts at 8:00).
I've read positive things about Johnston County schools, and there's a current thread on this board about Durham schools. Lowdown on Durham Public Schools There are a lot of good neighborhoods outside of Wake County if the busing is a mess when you are closer to moving; you do have other options.
Just be sure you have a job. Those are harder to find than good schools and good neighborhoods.
Bussing - it depends on where you live and if you elect to apply to an alternate school for your address (node that you are in). One of the worse cases of bussing I've heard of is bussing kids from the area around Walnut Creek/Alltel Amphitheater off Poole Rd, east Raleigh, to Leeseville Rd schools, NW Raleigh. The kids are on the bus for 1.25hrs. Generally speaking, most kids are not bussed far. But our school district is in the midst of major changes...we don't know what to expect.
Some sites to research taxes and schools are: www.wakegov.com www.wcpss.net
Also, not meaning to sound rude, Wake County is not the only place to move to, consider Charlotte, Mecklenburg Co., or Durham County-down the road from Wake. We have 100ppl/day moving here, straining our resources. Unless you have a job, there aren't many around. the exception would be certain fields/jobs, or if you have a means to support yourself for months until you/hubby find a job.
Coming from NY state you might find the following set of data interesting for a suburban school district that prides itself on being the best in the state and one of the best in the nation.
NAACP renews schools crusade - Politics - NewsObserver.com
According to the district's own statistics, the graduation rate for Wake students receiving free and reduced-price lunch is 54 percent, compared with an overall rate of 78 percent.
I use the article link only because it is a source for the above data. Is that what you are use to?
Bussing - it depends on where you live and if you elect to apply to an alternate school for your address (node that you are in). One of the worse cases of bussing I've heard of is bussing kids from the area around Walnut Creek/Alltel Amphitheater off Poole Rd, east Raleigh, to Leeseville Rd schools, NW Raleigh. The kids are on the bus for 1.25hrs. Generally speaking, most kids are not bussed far. But our school district is in the midst of major changes...we don't know what to expect.
Some sites to research taxes and schools are: www.wakegov.com www.wcpss.net
Also, not meaning to sound rude, Wake County is not the only place to move to, consider Charlotte, Mecklenburg Co., or Durham County-down the road from Wake. We have 100ppl/day moving here, straining our resources. Unless you have a job, there aren't many around. the exception would be certain fields/jobs, or if you have a means to support yourself for months until you/hubby find a job.
Good luck with your decision!
When we lived in Lochmere in Cary in the late 90's/early 2000's, our two kids were assigned to Dillard Middle and Elementary. Those two schools got a lot of lower income kids from the Poole Road area as well. (Interestingly enough before moving to Lochmere we lived in the Leesville district right off Leesville road in Dominion Park) It pretty much seemed like a "social experiment". Make the school up of about half kids from well-off Lochmere/Macgreggeor downs/ Brookhaven (some of the more established well-off neighborhoods of SE Cary) and half lower income kids from southeast Raleigh. Tensions were always high in that school, especially in the middle school where I'd imagine the kids were more aware of their disparities and there were A LOT of fights. Mace was used at least 3 times to break up fights in my son's 8th grade year alone. The lower income kids weren't really happy with being put into a school 45 minutes from their home full of a bunch of "spoiled rich kids" and said rich kids were "intimidated" by the "scary poor kids". I can understand the reasoning behind wanting more diverse schools and giving all students in the county regardless of their parents income the same opportunities; but this really didn't seem like a good way to go about it.
Re: ImInformed post - yes, it does seem like a social experiment. I worked with a lady whose kids were bused from Poole to Leesville, neither she nor her kids liked it, after 1 yr she pulled them out.
I've also noticed that the yr end scores at Leesville which had once been excellent, have gone down in recent yrs.
Who knows what will happen with the new school board. But, if many children are moved to true neighborhood schools, and this fills some schools with higher than current/acceptable % of children in academic need, I would love to see those schools become a new model for rapid response academic intervention, so that the children have every opportunity to be as successful as possible. I hope our school board is prepared for this...
Then there are those of us who have never been reassigned in 10 years of WCPSS and our schools are close by, diverse, successful and quite peaceful.
A lot of times the "bad' stories seem to get much more air time than the good ones.
That's great... what area are you in?
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