Camas Elementary Schools (Everett, Washougal: buying a house, buying, construction)

[PNWrn]

Hello, our family is hoping to relocate to Camas later this year pending employment. We live fairly nearby in the Mid-Willamette Valley in Oregon so we have been up to visit. I am looking for specific information and opinions on the six elementary school options. I found some helpful info already but it was several years old. Our kids are 2, 5, and 9, so we'd have 2 kids in school this year. Our oldest has ADHD and would probably require some additional services. Thanks for the feedback!

[texasdiver]

Don't overthink it. They are all pretty equivalent. If you look at the boundary lines you will see that Camas school district does a very deliberate job of distributing student populations equally between schools so that there are no poorer or richer schools but they all have similar mixes. Likewise the teaching and administrative staffs rotates around to some extent so just because you like a particular principal or counselor doesn't necessarily mean they will stay at that school anyway. There certainly isn't one school that is better for Special Ed or similar services, they all have good people. I would distrust any rankings that distinguish between schools based on parent reviews or test scores. That's pretty much statistical noise.

Find the home you like with the commuting patterns (work, shopping, school etc) that work the best for you and the schools will work themselves out. If you have 2 and 5 year olds I'd be looking to be close to schools and parks so your kids can walk to playgrounds and walk to schools on sidewalks. Our youngest attended Prune Hill and we were happy with that school. I don't have any specific experience with any of the others.

[PNWrn]

Thank you very much for the feedback, that’s good advice. We’ve had bad experiences here with schools that are regarded highly so we’re nervous.

[izzy2017]

I think texasdiver is right, there's only small differences between the schools. Lacamas Heights is smaller and more rural, Woodburn is a lot of newer people and also some rural, Prune Hill, Dorothy Fox, and Grass Valley are all West Camas and the hill, Helen Baller is kind of a mix of both downtown and West Camas. We had an excellent experience with Grass Valley, so I can recommend it but all of the schools are pretty good.

If you really want to be particular you can check School Digger for stats, but I wouldn't hesitate to send my kids to any of the schools.

[PNWrn]

Great info! ��

[texasdiver]

If you look at the school boundary maps you'll see what the district has done:

http://www.camas.wednet.edu/Camas201...y-Map-2018.pdf

For example:

Prune Hill elementary which is on the west side of Prune Hill closest to 192nd also draws from all the western sides of the downtown area (west of the paper mill) even though Helen Baller is a much closer elementary to that part of downtown.

Likewise the whole extremely affluent Lacamas Shores area all along Lacamas Lake almost to Costco feeds into Helen Baller elmentary downtown rather than the closer Grass Valley elementary along with the less affluent areas downtown and on the north side of downtown around the football stadium and Crown Park.

Finally the older areas east of downtown bordering Washougal and the Columbia feed into Woodburn elmentary rather than the closer Hellen Baller along with the upscale areas on the hills above Washougal and all the new subdivisions going up around Woodburn Elementary itself.

Essentially all the lower income areas with more modest housing which are concentrated downtown have been sliced up and distributed to three separate elementary schools and two separate middle schools rather than concentrating them as many other districts might do. That means, for example, that kids on the west side of downtown in the Forest Home area get bused all the way to Skyridge Middle School rather than to Liberty Middle School which is 5x closer. But then all the elementary schools and middle schools end up with a fairly similar demographic mix.

I would most definitely pay attention to school boundaries in terms of how close you will be to your kid's schools. In many instances you can live within walking distance which is nice because all the schools also have adjacent parks and playgrounds and being able to walk to playgrounds on safe sidewalks is great for the little ones. But that is a question of geography not school quality.

For example, one of the downsides to buying a house like this one https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sal.../66648281_zpid which is a $1.75 million house on the north end of Lacamas Shores along the lake and next to the golf course is that your kids will be bused all the way into downtown to attend Helen Baller and Liberty next to the football stadium rather than the much closer Grass Valley and Skyridge schools that are walking distance away. The schools are fine, it's just going to be a hassle to get there, especially if you choose to drive them for any reason because all the school traffic going that direction gets funneled through the single traffic light intersection at Lake Road and Everett (at the southern tip of the lake) and traffic often backs up during peak times along Lake Road. I've seen it back up for up to a mile there but that might also have been due to construction. There is no other logical way around unless you zig zag way out of your way up Sierra to the top of Prune Hill and then down into downtown via Fargo St.

I would not worry one bit about the quality of any of the schools in Camas. But I would consider school boundary maps when buying a house for the sake of convenience and living near your schools if you have 3 school age kids.

EDIT: For what it's worth, I agree 100% with how the school district has drawn up boundaries. I'm just pointing out the effects of that when you shop for houses. Had they gone the opposite approach taken by many communities and ended up with higher performing richer schools and lower performing poorer schools it would have dramatically changed the community over time. That is what I saw a lot of in TX. Then you end up with less investment and interest in redeveloping the poorer areas because people with kids don't want to move there because of the schools and it creates a vicious cycle that is difficult to escape from. That is how our old town of Waco was with desperately poor schools next to extremely affluent schools and all the development dollars going to one side of the line and not the other becuase of the perceived differences in schools. Camas has far lower degrees of inequity party because the whole area is more solidly middle class but also because the schools are all equally good so school choice doesn't drive housing choices and development.

[PNWrn]

Wow! That information is so thorough and helpful, thanks for taking the time to write that. I had seen the boundary map but had not analyzed it or noticed the schools aren't centrally located for all.