School District Transfers (Garland: real estate, houses, to buy)

[Berrie143]

My husband and I are seriously considering moving to the DFW area- we are basically just waiting to hear from the recruiter from his company to see if his job can transfer out there. We have found areas with very good schools but the houses are often out of our price range and we want our children to attend the best (as in, scored 8 or above) schools as possible.

How hard is it to go about school district transfers? What is required? For example, if a house we purchase has 4 elementary schools around it and the one assigned to it is only a 5 but at least 1 or more of the other options are scored much higher, what would we have to do in order to get our children enrolled in those schools? We currently live in CA and we're required to go through a ton of hoops to do transfers, it's very frustrating. We're hoping that TX will be slightly easier

Any information would be helpful, TIA!

[LauraLama]

Intra district transfer or interdistrict? Our district doesn't accept interdistrict transfers unless you are an employee of the district and intra district transfers happen but quite difficult for sort after schools.

[Berrie143]

We would do intra-district. We're finding that the homes we're looking at will usually have 3-5 schools associated with them and we're only interested in sending our children to the ones that scored higher.

[TurtleCreek80]

Originally Posted by Berrie143

We would do intra-district. We're finding that the homes we're looking at will usually have 3-5 schools assigned to them and we're only interested in sending our children to the ones that scored higher.

What district are you looking in where homes have 3-5 schools assigned to them? I can't think of ANY local district that operates that way except Garland (school of choice district).

If you're looking at Zillow's list of schools closest to the house, that list has nothing to do with the schools actually assigned to the address. Always confirm the school zoning on each ISD's website. Most have an "address Finder" page where you enter the address and it tells you which elem, middle, and high school the home is zoned to.

[Berrie143]

I'm looking at Redfin and most of the homes that I look at have 3-5 "nearby" elementary schools- one (and every so often 2) will be assigned to the property and then the other ones are within a few miles of it. I shouldn't have used the word "assigned" for all of the schools, that was confusing, sorry about that. I'll change the wording to "associated".

[TurtleCreek80]

Originally Posted by Berrie143

I'm looking at Redfin and most of the homes that I look at have 3-5 "nearby" elementary schools- one (and every so often 2) will be assigned to the property and then the other ones are within a few miles of it. I shouldn't have used the word "assigned" for all of the schools, that was confusing, sorry about that. I'll change the wording to "associated".

I would not count on a transfer. Many of the top schools are overcrowded because of the large % of homes with school aged kids in the zone- no room for tranfers! And some of those nearby schools may not even be in the same ISD if the home is close to the border of two districts. Some of the nearby schools may also be private schools, again why you really can't count on reliable school info from the national real estate sites.

Usually you can only request a transfer if your school is rated really low by the TEA, not on great schools scoring system. These are usually poor urban schools, not suburban schools.

[nothermom]

sounds like its tough to buy a house in this market. that said, I wouldn't worry about additional things that could go wrong. wait for recruiter to confirm move. find a school you like, find a house in an area that zones in to the school. maybe it will work out that way. maybe it won't. but don't worry about the issues until they happen.

[Allison81]

TurtleCreek80 is right. You'll need to go the the school district website and look at their attendance zone map. You can usually type in the address to find out which school the house is zoned to.

Zillow and other websites like that only list nearby schools...which means nothing really, until you know the exact zoning from the school district site

[mSooner]

There may be a few opportunities intra-district if they are dealing with shifting population issues, but that is pretty rare. I wouldn't count on being able to move. Most of the time, you go where you are assigned, especially in the good school districts.

[J800]

So pretty much, the only people that can do an intra-district transfer are the children of employees in a district?