Best city/neighborhood for young funky family

[calicoastal]

Originally Posted by NewbiePoster

OP, another option is Montclair (Oakland). You'll be guaranteed good schools, and it's a great neighborhood. All the amenities you want, great for kids. You should visit all the areas you're interested in, and decide which feels right.

Montclair has great elementary schools, but where do you send your kids after that? Skyline High has an API score of 1 now. Yikes, hard to spin that any way positive. I thought state funding gets cut off with a score that low. I suppose you can send your kids to private school, but that only makes sense if real estate is much cheaper than alternative areas. On a side note, what is the cause of the terrible decline at Skyline? It used to be the best high school in Oakland not long ago, with an API score of 5 in 1999.

I always felt high school was the most important school K-12. Elementary education can be easily supplemented, but the teen years are when your kids can really get on the wrong path to adulthood.

[NewbiePoster]

Originally Posted by calicoastal

Montclair has great elementary schools, but where do you send your kids after that? Skyline High has an API score of 1 now. Yikes, hard to spin that any way positive. I thought state funding gets cut off with a score that low. I suppose you can send your kids to private school, but that only makes sense if real estate is much cheaper than alternative areas. On a side note, what is the cause of the terrible decline at Skyline? It used to be the best high school in Oakland not long ago, with an API score of 5 in 1999.

I always felt high school was the most important school K-12. Elementary education can be easily supplemented, but the teen years are when your kids can really get on the wrong path to adulthood.

Skyline? I was going off the positive reports about Oakland Tech. So, a Montclair location would require private schooling for HS. For Middle School, Montera can't be beat, from what I understand. Some Berkeley parents feel pretty strongly that Berkeley High isn't all that, either. Private schooling is a thing in some parts of Berkeley, especially for HS.

[calicoastal]

A good private high school will set you back $30-40k per year per student though, non tax deductible, or upwards of $300k for 2 kids. Catholic schools are a bit less but the religious aspect is a factor. It certainly isn't an option for everyone.

[DrOctagon]

Move to Portland. You'd love it.

[NoMoreSnowForMe]

You can have chickens in Berkeley. And geese and ducks and even turkeys.

Their enclosure must be at least 25 feet from any neighbor's house (not fence-line, but dwelling, is how the code reads). It can be closer than that to your own house.

You are not allowed to color or dye your chickens (not kidding, it's in the code) lol! No green chickens for you!

You can even have 2 female goats, and I don't see any restrictions on distance to your neighbors.

Sorry, no sheep or male goats allowed.

Here are the codes:

Municipal Code and Zoning Ordinance - City of Berkeley, CA

Look under "rabbits, domestic fowl, etc...."

[davdaven]

Sounds like Berkeley and Oakland are for you. However, as noted above, schools are a mixed bag. Oakland has some real misses, and although I know my share of Berkeley High School graduates, it is not really a "good" school. Drugs are a huge problem there, and violence (e.g., the recent street fight that shut down part of downtown) is problematic too.

If you are looking for a happy medium of funky culture and good schools, you should look into Albany and Alameda. I don't know if they allow chickens and goats like they do here in Berkeley, but I wouldn't decide where to live based strictly on those two things. Albany is more sedate than Berkeley but blends pretty seamlessly into it, and Alameda's separation via bridges/tunnels helps keep out some of Oakland's grime.

[NoMoreSnowForMe]

I am the backyard chicken researcher tonight :-)

Yes! You can have chickens in Alameda. There is even a group you can join of Alameda chicken folk:

Alameda Chickens - Home

The City of Alameda is working on changing their backyard animal code:

Backyard Farm Animals | City of Alameda

You would still be able to have chickens, looks like they just want you to have 4 square feet per bird in your coop, rather than a fixed number of chickens allowed.

[jade408]

Originally Posted by NewbiePoster

Impressive. What did they do to pull that off?

Not sure. Oakland schools on the whole have been improving too. I keep meeting parent who rave about it. (I don't have kids and most people I know have kids under 5 and live in South Bay, but my sister is more in the loop as she knows way more oakland parents. And has a few coworkers with kids at Oakland Tech.

[Shelacious]

I continue to run into Oakland Tech students (met a handful of them just this summer for the Mayor's summer intern program) who attend/are graduating from Tech and doing well academically. My department's summer intern graduated from Tech and is attending Cal Poly SLO in the fall, and he's NOT in one of the academies. I defininately think it's the best public HS in Oakland right now.

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by NoMoreSnowForMe

You can have chickens in Berkeley. And geese and ducks and even turkeys.

Their enclosure must be at least 25 feet from any neighbor's house (not fence-line, but dwelling, is how the code reads). It can be closer than that to your own house.

You are not allowed to color or dye your chickens (not kidding, it's in the code) lol! No green chickens for you!

You can even have 2 female goats, and I don't see any restrictions on distance to your neighbors.

Sorry, no sheep or male goats allowed.

Here are the codes:

Municipal Code and Zoning Ordinance - City of Berkeley, CA

Look under "rabbits, domestic fowl, etc...."

Fabulous info and link!