Looking for info on District 300 schools and West Dundee (Dundee Highlands/Dundee Middle/Jacobs) (Chicago: HOA fees)

[jetdoc76]

Hi everyone. While I have read many threads in this forum, this is my first post. To get a bit of a picture about me, I am married with a 3 year old, and both my wife and I work at O'hare airport. I grew up in the Chicagoland area (Addison and Bloomingdale where I went to Army Trail in Addison up to the middle of 5th grade, DuJardin/Westfield Jr. High/2 years of Lake Park HS while in Bloomingdale, and 2 years of Addison Trail in Addison where I graduated in 1994). I then lived in Mt. Prospect for 20 years off of Busse and Algonquin (Crystal Towers Condos) from 1998-2018. We sold our condo on 08/2018 and have been house hunting since. It has been very frustrating to say the least, mostly due to the ridiculous property taxes we have to deal with here. We are currently staying by my mom's in Schaumburg.

Can I get any real info from people about these particular schools we would fall under in West Dundee? I know district 300 has it's issues with some schools, but there appear to be good schools in there. We would only buy a home that feeds into Dundee Highlands/Dundee Middle/Jacobs HS. I have read tons about the negatives of district 300, and most seem to revolve around Dundee Crown HS. What if we lived in an area that covered Dundee Highlands/Dundee Middle/Jacobs HS? Would I be generally satisfied with the opportunities offered for education there? Quality of education? Teachers? How is the funding at those particular schools? The ratings and reviews seem to suggest those schools are at least decent to pretty good (per great schools Dundee Highlands Elementary is rated a 7, Dundee Middle is rated a 7, Jacobs HS is rated an 8). Niche.com has district 300 rated as #73 of 408 in IL. Dundee Highland Elementary is rated #486 out of 2412 Elementary Schools in IL, Dundee Middle #281 out of 1329 Middle Schools in IL, and Jacobs as #111 out of 689 HS in IL, #93 out of 651 HS for college prep in IL, and for 2019 US News ranks Jacobs as the #1541 out of 17,245 High Schools in the US. Those are numbers and statistics which don't always tell the story...both good and bad...but that's all I could get when researching rankings to give me an idea. They don't seem bad at all. I would like to hear some real experiences because a ranking doesn't give you the real complex picture. If I could get some feed back from people in the know here it would help greatly.

The other part to this is that my daughter is also in pre-school with district 54 in Schaumburg and would be in the Delacey Family Education center. She had Early Intervention and moved on to the Early Learning Center at D54 at age 3, and would transfer to the Delacey Family Education Center. She was born premature and has some physical side effects, but thankfully no cogntivie/learning issues. She has physical and occupational therapy at D54 during preschool. I know Delacey offers this as well, but I'm just hoping someone here may have had an experience or knows of someone who had an experience with them to get an idea of how they are. D54 in Schaumburg has been excellent. They even have an aide assigned to our daughter, and I'm hoping Delacey is like this as well.

A little more about me and my thought process on looking out this way. My brother recently moved to the west side of Carpentersville (his home also feeds to Dundee Highland Elementary/Dundee Middle/Jacobs HS). I was pleasantly surprised with how nice it is, and pretty much every store you need for groceries or shopping is there. There's plenty of restaurants and downtown Dundee is just great. I'm very impressed with the area. Randall Rd. and 31 around Spring Hill Mall has just about everything you need as far as stores. There are parts of West Dundee that have the types of homes we would love, and they're actually well within our budget. While the drive in to work at O'hare is 30 miles, it only takes 30 minutes because I-90 is so close, so that's not an issue.

We have been house hunting since we decided to list our condo, and while originally Schaumburg was our #1 choice, we are very open to Hoffman Estates, Elk Grove Village west of 355/53, Arlington Heights, Buffalo Grove, Mt. Prospect...pretty much the NW suburbs. It just seems harder and harder to make it work. I would love to get a home with a 3 car garage since I have 3 vehicles and dream of putting a lift in one garage bay. 4 bedrooms, 3 baths (master bath and common bath upstairs, 2 half baths on main floor and basement), finished basement or at least a basement available to finish, 2400-2700 sq ft, but stay in a range of $450,000. I would need to keep taxes at or below roughly $10k per year, and obviously schools are ultra important. The biggest difficulty has been tying everything together. I realize that in my initial preferred areas, what I want is not really possible. 3 car garage homes tend to be over 3,000 sq ft, prices usually over $500k, and property taxes $13k-$16k. I just have no interest in paying those kinds of taxes. So we drove around West Dundee and really like the area, it's very scenic in comparison to say Schaumburg/Mt. Prospect. I-90 is close making commutes to work or friends reasonable. We drove through a newer area right off Huntley Rd. just west of Sleepy Hollow Rd. and can't believe how easily we could find what we're looking for in our budget. The taxes are a bit killer, but home prices are easily in our range.

My apologies for such a long post but I would greatly appreciate some good feed back and wanted to give as much info as possible. Any feedback, in particular from people with recent experience or that have kids in those schools, is greatly appreciated. My feeling is I won't have issue with the area and that we would like it, the schools are where our concerns are.

[damba]

You won’t unfortunately be able to circumvent the property tax scenario with those preferences. I see the ‘floor’ around west dundee to be 11k/yr for much larger homes than what you are looking at. Some will also have HOA fees too.

Definitely contact any particular school directly regarding special ed programs and services offerings that your child may need. Schaumburg may be a superior choice than Dundee. YMMV.

[BOBNCHI]

Look a few miles northwest in Crystal Lake, especially in the southwest area north of Miller, west of Golf Course, east of Swanson and south of Barlina. Many homes under 400k that should check most of the boxes, especially the school issue.

[jetdoc76]

Originally Posted by damba

You won’t unfortunately be able to circumvent the property tax scenario with those preferences. I see the ‘floor’ around west dundee to be 11k/yr for much larger homes than what you are looking at. Some will also have HOA fees too.

Definitely contact any particular school directly regarding special ed programs and services offerings that your child may need. Schaumburg may be a superior choice than Dundee. YMMV.

We would definitely get in touch with the schools to hear about what they offer. I was just hoping someone had actual experience to hear their perspective. I'm sure the school will say many or all of the right things, their website also has information, but it's always great to hear from people's experience if it's available.

Originally Posted by BOBNCHI

Look a few miles northwest in Crystal Lake, especially in the southwest area north of Miller, west of Golf Course, east of Swanson and south of Barlina. Many homes under 400k that should check most of the boxes, especially the school issue.

The West Dundee area is at the limit as to how far we want to go from work. Initially our goal was up to 20 miles away from work, being a little bit flexible beyond 20 miles as needed, with the goal to keep the commute at up to 30 minutes. We stretched it a bit to 30 miles with the West Dundee area since the commute is still roughly 30 minutes. That extra 8 miles or so to Crystal Lake adds 15 to 20 minutes to our commute. Plus our church and many of our socializing with friends tends to be in the suburbs around O'hare. Crystal Lake is a very nice area, and I know they have pretty good schools. We have friends out that way off of Golf Course and think it's a lovely area. I have co-workers that live there, and Lake in the Hills, and their commutes tend to be 50 minutes each way. It's just not convenient for us being that far off of I-90.


I know there are areas that have higher rated schools, where we are at in Schaumburg is a great area itself. I'm just trying to get info on Dundee Highlands Elementary, Dundee Middle, and Jacobs HS from people that have any kind of experience with those schools. Are they as good as say Crystal Lake or Schaumburg schools, and if not...why not? A co-worker from Sleepy Hollow who had his kids go to Dundee Middle told me it was a good school, he and his kids were happy with it, but I would love to hear from more. His kids went on to Dundee Crown HS and he told me you want to avoid any home feeding to them.

[BOBNCHI]

" His kids went on to Dundee Crown HS and he told me you want to avoid any home feeding to them."

This is true. Unfortunately outside influences make it so.