Where to Move in greater SJ area with great elementary schools (San Jose: rentals, buying a house)

[acanaday]

We are looking to move this spring to the greater San Jose area. Schools, in particular elementary, are very important as we have two young kids. Commute is less of a factor (an hour is fine bc its only a few days a week). We'd be renting initially for the first couple years. We're looking for a safe place with good schools that have a nice balance with academics but helps create well rounded kids. We've had Cupertino suggested as well as Fremont. What is the culture like there? Other ideas? Any thoughts are much appreciated!

[mossly]

We moved here over the summer, also with elementary-aged children. Our short list for school districts was Los Gatos, Union, Campbell, and Cambrian. We went with Cambrian in the end because that's where we happened to find the best house for the rent money, but any of them would have been fine. We felt like they were all good without being kill-yourself-over-one-bad-test-score pressure factories. (Well, Los Gatos is kind of on the edge in that regard - plus, long-term, we couldn't ever see buying a house there.) Cambrian is very diverse and we like that a lot.

However, we were constrained by commute. If you look at these districts on a map, you'd see they're all basically adjacent, and for us that was deliberate. I'd strongly advise you not to gloss over the issue of commute, even if it is only a few days a week, because the traffic here is just that intense. And what starts out as an hour commute can easily turn into 90 minutes or more on a bad day.

[jk88cal]

Different folks have different assessment on what is great school. Using test score is the easiest quantitative comparison. Schooldigger website has aggregated the new Common Core test scores and ranked all California schools.

Cupertino is often top of the list. Schools are 90% Asians. School focuses on core academics and less on other areas.

Other top school districts are Saratoga, Los Gatos, Los Altos, Palo Alto, parts of Mountain View, parts of Sunnyvale (goes to Cupertino Union district), West San Jose.

Then further away, these areas also have great schools but at lower price due to commute: Almaden, Evergreen, parts of Fremont.

[Bonbonk5]

Good luck finding rentals or even homes to buy in the South bay. Might be best to rent in a less expensive place and take your kids to private schools. Or Charter schools. That being said, some of the best Elementary schools and my kids went to them, are, Cambrian elementary school district. Also good is Union school district. Campbell elementary which is part San Jose, Campbell, Saratoga (I think) Some schools in the San Jose school district , which is huge are good. Not all so check it out. Be nice if people can live and go to the local school near them, but does not always work out that way. Seems most of the *good schools, for Grade K to 6 and Middle school* falls off in how good they are, test scores etc by High school. Cambrian is great and feeds into Campbell union High school, where also the Union and Campbell elementary , feed into, then test scores and how good schools are drops off. But the HS district in that area is still better than some other parts of SJ. Teachers are paid more so you do get some better quality teachers. The big difference is there is a lot of parent help and involvement than some other schools, districts that hardly get any. My kids went to Sartorette, Ida Price and Branham HS. But because of these good schools homes rent in the 3K to 4K and sell near a million now.

[Wintermomma]

greatschools.net is a helpful resource.