Possible move to Walla Walla need opinions please (Seattle, Vancouver: low income, best neighborhoods)

[cc0813]

Hello,

My husband has been offered a job in Pasco. I'm currently a stay at home mom and we have 2 sons. One is in 1st grade and the other is 2 years old. We're not sure about living in the Tri-cities area and he could commute from Walla Walla. Here's the deal. I'm really unsure about this move. We currently live in the Corvallis, Or area. A pretty liberal and progressive kind of town. Our son goes to a very highly ranked dual immersion school that he's flourishing in. In fact Corvallis has some of the best public schools in the state. Very low crime and nice people, no gangs, cultural diversity and tolerance. The two biggest issues we have living here is that 1) housing is terrible in Corvallis unless you're rich so we can't actually afford to live there.. we rent nearby but would really like to own our own home but it's not likely we'll ever be able to afford something decent in Corvallis. I should say that the houses in our price range in Corvallis are tiny, built in the 40's or 60's and generally haven't been updated since and for that they will charge you over $320,000. So my son is a transfer student in Corvallis because we really like the schools but we can't live near his school. Or we could we just don't want to live in the crappy houses we could afford. 2) My husband is unhappy with his current job.

However, I'm really reluctant to pull my son out of the school he's in. The chances of us landing in another school district that is as diverse and highly ranked are pretty slim. No offence to the Tri-Cities or Walla Walla but our current school district is ranked higher and our son is happy. I love the tolerance of the people in this area. Our son's teacher was able to teach a section on Christianity, Judaisim and Islam as the three most practiced religions in our area (just teaching about what they are, not from any standpoint of what is better) and no parents complained. We don't really practice any of them but want our son to be aware of all of them. I know in other parts of the country that probably wouldn't be possible. Yes we have muslims here and everyone gets along gasp. - sarcasm.. I know that's possible in other areas.

The job in Pasco is higher paying and would be a good job for my husband. My husband and I lived in Walla Walla years ago and liked it but we also were a lot younger and didn't have children so consequently never really noticed how good a place it was for raising children or what were the best neighborhoods for kids, etc. We lived in a tiny apartment near Pioneer Park and I walked all over the neighborhood with our dog. It didn't feel dangerous or anything to me and I enjoyed the weather. I don't know how or if the city has changed since we lived there. We're also probably more liberal and progressive leaning than the general population there. Certainly more so than the people of the Tri-City area. So what are the best neighborhoods for kids in Walla Walla? Would you move from an area with great schools and very little crime to go to an area with more crime and not as great schools if the job was better?

Sorry for the long post but I would welcome any input from people raising kids in the area so we can have a better idea of what to expect if he takes the job.

Thanks!

[Smitty211]

I'm a Walla Walla native. Born and raised, but worked in CA most of last year and now living in the Portland area.

While I haven't kept a close eye on housing costs, WW isn't as cheap as it used to be. I do know it's not outrageous like Seattle, Portland or even Bend, but tourism has really been booming the past few years, thanks to the presence of local wineries.

It's generally a good place to raise a family, and certainly safe enough. There are areas of town that are rough (like almost anywhere else), but not necessarily any need to constantly keep your head on a swivel even in those areas. The main problem is there's not much around town for kids to do once they hit their preteen years, more or less. Thankfully though, that's about to change to some degree, with Memorial Pool getting remodeled and "resurrected."

WW schools are good, although probably not as highly ranked within WA as the one in Corvallis you mentioned--and certainly nowhere near as liberal. There are some liberal pockets in WW, largely connected with Whitman College one way or another, but for the most part it's your standard conservative-run town with agriculture all around.

Walla Walla is by no means diverse--pretty much just white and Hispanic (largely Mexican) folks. But certainly tolerant and not racist or closed-off culturally.

Overall, I guess you could say in terms of livability, I'd recommend Walla Walla over the Tri-Cities. The Tri-Cities tends to have a "cookie-cutter" feel to it, and the surrounding views aren't nearly as great as they are in WW.

Nothing wrong with TC at all, but I truly believe you'd find WW more to your liking, especially if your husband's vehicle gets good gas mileage since he'd be making that 45-50 minute commute. You'd have little to lose.

I had a friend in middle school/HS whose dad commuted to Target in Kennewick five days a week, and I couldn't fathom such a thing at the time. But now...I live in Vancouver WA and commute to SE Portland. My *average* time from work to home in the late afternoon is 45 minutes in largely stop-and-go traffic. Now, when I see folks making a commute from WW to TC, I become jealous of them.

Hope that helps!

[atchn]

We moved from Corvallis to Tri-Cities about 6 years ago and if you do move up here, I think living in Walla Walla over the TC is a good decision. A few comments:


1. In this specific instance, I would move to Walla Walla from Corvallis. I had a job offer in Corvallis a year or so ago. I liked living in Corvallis (and dislike the TC) but one reason I didn't take the job (there were other reasons I didn't take the job) is that the Cost of Living is so expensive there. It is nice having the extra money that would otherwise be going to an increased mortgage/rent and Walla Walla is nice town.


Walla Walla to Pasco is about 45 minutes, so that is 1.5 hours a day in the car. You and your husband will have to figure out whether losing 1.5 hours a day of family time is worth living in Walla Walla and a better job. Personally, I would drive 45 minutes one way to avoid living in the Tri-Cities.


In general, very few places in this country have low crime and great schools like Corvallis. If you will only move to place that has equally good schools and equally low crime, you will probably never leave Corvallis (which wouldn't be the worst thing in the world).


2. Hmmm, Corvallis is the least diverse place I have every lived. Racial diversity is mediocre at best and economic diversity is downright poor. Your kids will experience a wider range of people (from Professors' kids to the children of migrant laborers) in Walla Walla.


3. You can't always compare school rankings across state lines, since the rankings are generally based on state tests. In this case I am sure that Corvallis schools are higher "ranked", but that largely reflects the fact that most the students are middle to upper-middle class and many are children of professors. The high "rankings" do not necessarily reflect increase quality of instruction. Walla Walla high school has a strong college prep program and if you care about your kids education they will do fine.

[deezramblin]

I'm moving over from Seattle in about a month.

There's another Walla Walla thread if you do a search under 'Washington Forum" and some of the contributors there did a fantastic job helping me map out the better areas of town to live from the not-so-great. There's a lot of good info on that post.

[cc0813]

Thanks for the input! I appreciate it. I totally agree that the cost of living in Corvallis is ridiculous. There's actually a lot of economic and racial diversity in the schools. Partly because they take transfer students and partly because if you're willing to live in a tiny house or apartment, low income people can still buy something in south Corvallis. Yes, there's no real economic diversity in north Corvallis. We live in Philomath actually and send our son to Corvallis because they have dual immersion schools there. His school, for instance, has 60% of students on free or reduced lunches, there are kids of hispanic origin, arabic, indian, white and more there. They've really made an effort to change things in the last few years.

My husband is not sure he wants to make the commute from Walla Walla and I'm not sure I want to live in the tri cities so we're kind of at an impasse.

Anyway, where are the best places in Walla Walla to live with kids? What schools do you recommend?

Thanks!

[MarciaMarshaMarcia]

Just a quick comment...we recently took a trip to Walla Walla...really a nice place...but real estate was much pricier than I would have expected it to be. However, some of the small, close-by towns like Dayton & Waitsburg seemed to have an inventory of older, cute homes on city lots for extremely reasonable prices. I know nothing of these areas, just my traveler observations.

[cc0813]

Thanks, for the suggestions. I don't know about Waitsburg but my husband and I moved to Dayton years ago and didn't really like it. People kind of stared at us and treated us like outsiders. I think it was because the town in so small. It's one of those communities where everybody knows everybody else and so when someone new moves in it's a curiosity. I got the feeling that rural communities in eastern WA were kind of more reserved and less welcoming. Not that they necessarily dislike you. They just may not be especially welcoming. We ended up moving to Walla Walla and liked it there much better. This was all many years ago though. Things may have changed.

[mistyriver]

Ive not lived in Walla Walla but my daughter just finished her junior year at Whitman College and it's consistently ranked as one of the top colleges/universities in the country. The profs have pretty illustrious educational backgrounds and many of them have children that I know of. Hard to imagine there aren't any good schools there.

I also know parents of pony clubbers from my daughters younger days, one is a neurosurgeon from Boston. He loves Walla Walla and chose to raise his daughter there in the public schools. She's now a med student.

Anecdotal, but maybe a little helpful.
I love Walla Walla and wouldn't hesitate to move there myself if I still had young kids.

[mistyriver]

Also wanted to add: we moved out kids from a great private school in Phoenix to a small town school district in northern Idaho. Most of the kids there don't go to college, it's economically depressed, not enough text books to give one to each kid, etc., etc. Idaho is dead last in school funding in the US. Not even close to as good as Walla Walla schools.

And yet my kids did great and went on to great colleges and my oldest is a CPA and forensic accountant and extremely successful and the youngest sits for her LSATs this fall.
I truly think it's more about the parents and the attitude toward learning and education.

If the move would be a good one for your family, I personally wouldn't let the schools hold you back.

[leastprime]

I'm slightly dyslexic, I read it as " move to Walla Walla need onions, please"
Sweeeet.
GL