Help with deciding between school choices

[ashbeeigh]

Originally Posted by radvij

Thankyou, am I understanding this right that Clayton's boundaries may stay the same and impact may be for Kiker mainly ?

Depends on the plans they choose. If you read over any recent news in Austin you'll see our tops three stories are Rodney Reed, homelessness and school change. There's a lot of emotions attached to all these topics and there's lots of people who want to postpone any vote on these changes. I, in all honesty, wouldn't doubt if the vote for this boundary change gets tabled in the larger scheme of things. (even though this school change thing has been a thing since at least 2015 when I moved here).

[Austin97]

Id take laurel mountain/canyon vista over the circle C schools. Plus if you are in tech great hills gives you much easier access to more company locations than circle C which requires you to cross the river. Commute times from laurel mountain feeders will be bad unless you are along yaupon. Round rock pays no recapture where AISD sends about 50% of its taxes to recapture.

We used to feed into laurel mountain but moved into AISD (Doss->Anderson Track) and am sending kids to private school.

[ashbeeigh]

Originally Posted by Austin97

Id take laurel mountain/canyon vista over the circle C schools. Plus if you are in tech great hills gives you much easier access to more company locations than circle C which requires you to cross the river. Commute times from laurel mountain feeders will be bad unless you are along yaupon. Round rock pays no recapture where AISD sends about 50% of its taxes to recapture.

We used to feed into laurel mountain but moved into AISD (Doss->Anderson Track) and am sending kids to private school.

Incorrect on recapture.

Straight from their website:

District Impact
Round Rock ISD must make a recapture payment to the state of $32.3 million in 2018-19. For 2019-20, the recapture payment is estimated to be $58.2 million.

Taxpayers may be writing a larger check to Round Rock ISD for taxes, but the District does not get to keep all of it. The system is designed to put a greater financial burden on taxpayers for funding schools while the state’s contribution decreases.

https://roundrockisd.org/departments...budget-basics/

[AMJ27]

Originally Posted by radvij

Thankyou, am I understanding this right that Clayton's boundaries may stay the same and impact may be for Kiker mainly ?

My kids are out of elementary so I'm not following this super closely, but my understanding is that there are no changes to the Clayton boundaries. Park West shouldn't be impacted. The controversial area of the boundary changes are in the area east of Escarpment and north of 45 around South Bay. There is a pocket that they are talking about rezoning to the new elementary school in Avana. The issue is that those kids are within walking/biking distance to Kiker and will now be bused across 45 to school instead.

I don't think there is enough difference between Clayton and Kiker to get overly analytical about. If it's between those two, I'd go with whatever house you prefer/which part of the neighborhood you prefer (since you are renting and might consider buying down the road). Even with that, I would think if your child was happy at Clayton and you purchased a house zoned to Kiker that it would be easier to get a transfer to stay at Clayton since it doesn't have the capacity issues that Kiker has.

Looking at commute times right now at 8:30am on a Monday morning between the two areas (Circle C vs. Laurel Mountain Elementary), the commute times look pretty similar. My husband who commutes downtown generally budgets 30-40 minutes to get there.

I think that there are pros and cons to AISD vs. RRISD. Both areas you are looking at have very good schools for elementary through high school.

[Austin97]

Originally Posted by ashbeeigh

Incorrect on recapture.

Straight from their website:

information might be out of date. I was working from this article from september

https://communityimpact.com/austin/n...ool-districts/

Ahead of state lawmakers convening in downtown Austin last spring, Round Rock ISD documents show the district estimated it was likely on the hook to pay more than $58 million back to the state in property taxes in the 2019-20 school year under Texas’ public education funding formula—otherwise known as recapture.

After Gov. Greg Abbott signed House Bill 3 into law June 11, though, the school district has since budgeted its recapture payments at a much lower sum: zero dollars. RRISD now states it will not have to send recapture funds back to the state until at least when the Texas Legislature reconvenes in 2021.

Regardless AISD has the highest recapture in the state which means a substantial portion of your property taxes fund poor districts. For me AISD is over half of my tax bill and half of that is sent to recapture. RRISD has a little higher rate, but almost 100% goes to the district.

[ananthalakshmigouthu]

better to choose houses like house" c" its my suggestion