Round Rock/Georgetown Area? (Austin, Killeen: fit in, crime, houses)

[Michrick]

My husband and I are looking to relocate to Texas from PA. I have family in Bartlett and would like to be within an hour drive from there so we were looking at Round Rock or Georgetown area. We are familiar with Temple & Killeen and would prefer to be closer to Austin than DFW. Any suggestions about the area? We have a 12 month old son and want him to go to a decent school and have the "small town feel" growing up. We need jobs, that is the main reason we are moving, so an area with good working potential without college degrees are extremely important. Of course low taxes and housing costs are a plus!

We also like being relatively close to shopping, within a 10 minute drive. But again, we are from PA in a very large city so that might be something we would have to grow accustomed to. We are used to working in customer service or phone sales. We can do just about anything though so long as you don't need years of experience or a degree. Thanks for your help, we are desperately in need of a change!!

[doctorjef]

Georgetown is charming. I've never heard anything bad about its school district, though Round Rock's school district definitely enjoys a good reputation. Georgetown would put you closer to Bartlett and would allow you to avoid some traffic that you would have if you were driving from Round Rock. May I suggest you might want to start a thread on the Austin sub-forum -- you are likely to get more responses there.

[TexasHorseLady]

I'd say Georgetown is your best bet. Plenty of shopping (and more in Round Rock just five or ten minutes down the road), fits your other requirements. Round Rock is a bit further in towards Austin, so a longer drive to Bartlett - Georgetown is pretty perfectly located if you are working in Austin and visiting family in Bartlett. (I live about 12 miles from Bartlett towards I35.) Another possibility would be Taylor (south on 95 from Bartlett). I don't know much about the Taylor schools, though. Perhaps someone from there can speak to that.

[doctorjef]

Taylor has some real bad poverty, a lot of really grotesque situations in which child protective services has intervened (I'm personally aware of these because of my many years involvement consulting with CPS and/or in CPS cases in various capacities) and it has had a disproportionate amount of crack cocaine and amphetamine use and related crime. I'm sure there are perfectly nice bits of Taylor, but I wouldn't choose it as a place to live. That town has had a lot of social problems. It's not nearly as nice a place as Georgetown.

[kelly katsus]

I enjoy living in Georgetown, its a nice area and close to everything. The schools I understand are good and the taxes are fairly low here. I would go to the TEA website and you can get information about all the districts you are interested in. I provided that website plus the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce. These are 2 different avenues for getting some valuable information you needed. Texas Education Agency - Welcome to the Texas Education Agency and www.georgetownchamber.org Good luck in your decision!
Kelly

[Michrick]

Thank you for the information everyone, we appreciate your candid opinions

[TexasHorseLady]

Well, I do know people that live in Taylor and their neighborhoods, while being distinctly different (one older homes, one newer) in no way match your description. I also know at least two teachers in the Taylor school district who do not match your description, either. Given your description of how you know about the information you do, I would tend to think that it would, naturally, be a bit skewed in perspective.

I'm always suspicious when someone denigrates an entire community. It almost never turns out to be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, though it may be the truth from the angle that whoever states it is looking at it from.

[doctorjef]

Williamson and Travis counties were very much part of my turf on an inter-agency contract with CPS for several years, then in terms of consulting with a private foster care agency (all CPS-derived placements) and various other private practice endeavours. I can tell you that relative to Georgetown and RR, Taylor had a disproportionate amount of child abuse and neglect that frequently went hand in hand with drug related crime. The city did do some things like bulldoze a row of crack houses many years ago, which may have helped with some of the drug related crime. I don't know to what extent DPS and other law enforcement agencies may have succeeded in cleaning the town up. However, Taylor was actually a significant drug distribution depot for many years, if it still isn't today. Further, IIRC there were some scandelous problems in local law enforcement there a number of years ago and it's difficult to know how long the aftermath of that sort of thing can last. Corruption and mismanagement can become long-term aspects of local law enforcement in any given community and drag on for years. Yes, my knowledge does come from a particular professional role dealing specifically with the seamier side of life in Central Texas, but it does allow me to make comparisons about what was going on in various communities for the almost 20 years between 1985 and 2004. Some of Taylor's problems were also the subject of reports on local tv news and in the Am-Statesman, so this wasn't out of the news media's and public's attention either.

I'm sure that some white middle class folks in Taylor are perfectly capable of ignoring the problems in their own backyard, or perhaps more accurately be blithely oblivious to the same, and perhaps things have actually got better there. But I wouldn't ever choose Taylor over Georgetown or Round Rock.

[TexasHorseLady]

Like I said, if what you have is a hammer, everything tends to look like a nail.

Yes, I'm sure Taylor has its problem, one of which is poverty. I also know that Taylor has been steadily improving over the past few years that I've been keeping an eye on it, and I hate to see anyone write it off (or any community off, come to that) based on the opinion of an invisible person on the internet.

For example, East Austin right downtown - you want to talk hotbed of crime and drugs? But it is currently a hotbed of activity as far as redevelopment and restoration is concerned, and I've been watching some similar things happen in Taylor (watching a steady march of it, actually, down through a bunch of streets that some would have considered marginal not that long ago but that are being brought back to their former beauty by people buying them up and restoring them and moving their families in and living there, making them neighborhoods once again).

So, your perspective from the standpoint of what you described above and my perspective from the standpoint of what I've been watching over the past 5 years are different. They intersect at a certain point in the past, but we're coming at it from different angles and so the picture is not the same.

That's what I meant by: "I'm always suspicious when someone denigrates an entire community. It almost never turns out to be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, though it may be the truth from the angle that whoever states it is looking at it from."

By the way, "white middle class folks in Taylor" does NOT describe all of the people I was referring to when I mentioned knowing people there who didn't fit into your picture frame. One of them, I believe, it might fit, maybe.

[hound 109]

Originally Posted by doctorjef

Georgetown is charming. I've never heard anything bad about its school district, though Round Rock's school district definitely enjoys a good reputation. Georgetown would put you closer to Bartlett and would allow you to avoid some traffic that you would have if you were driving from Round Rock. May I suggest you might want to start a thread on the Austin sub-forum -- you are likely to get more responses there.

Someone looking from another state might be wise to not look at "School Districts" when comparing places to live.

Georgetown ISD is pretty uniform & only has one (soon to be two) HS. But RRISD runs from east of I 35 over 20 miles to west of 183 (the great hills / canyon creek area) & the quality of the schools vary widely. (From average in the east to the best in greater Austin in the west).

Generally speaking, Georgetown is a real town (with a county courthouse & square & a college) & Round Rock is a huge swath of suburbia.

Here's a map site that i found helpful for schools (as opposed to ISDs):

Texas School Performance Maps

After selecting schools from the map above, you can get qualitative info on them here & on Great Schools.net