Moving to DFW work in Grand Prairie. Looking for family oriented and safe areas (Dallas: rentals, houses)

[eastron]

Hello All,
My wife, three children and I are moving all the way from Michigan. New job is in Grand Prairie. All kids are elementry school age. There are so many suburbs and we are having a hard time. I like Burleson, crowley, Benbrook. Wife wants frisco but I know we cannot afford that. Looking for great elementary school and rent under $2000 Thank you!

[ChristieP]

Crowley schools aren’t very good.
Frisco would be an absolutely horrible commute. Collin County is just too far away from southern Dallas County.
Burleson and Benbrook are both nice, but they will be a fairly long commute to Grand Prairie.
I’d say look in Mansfield, Midlothian, or the southern part of Arlington. All of these have good schools and lots of shopping, etc. They are very popular places for families that work in the southern half of Dallas and Tarrant Counties.

[eastron]

Thank you for the reply! I forgot to mention that I will be on afternoon shift so I should be going against the traffic jams hopefully. We came down for a visit last July and we stayed in Lewisville and we werent super thrilled with the area. But we stayed by the highway near that music mall. Im sure like most we have champaign taste on a beer budget lol. A
Anyone have any experiance with LGI homes? They seem like they are cheaply built but are easy to get into. The plan that I think is best is to rent for a year or two until we can put down on a quality home like bloomfield or something. We have never moved out of state and are really overwhelmed with where to concentrate our search.
Thanks again!

[texasdiver]

What about Keller or Grapevine or Coppell?

All those districts north of DFW are pretty highly rated. More so than Mansfield, Midlothian, Burleson, and Arlington. And MUCH closer than Frisco. Obviously the really high end towns like Southlake and Colleyville will be out of your price range. But I suspect there must be some rentals up there you can afford somewhere.

You can find rentals in Keller for under $2K https://www.zillow.com/keller-tx/rent-houses/
Also Grapevine: https://www.zillow.com/grapevine-tx/rentals/
And Coppell: https://www.zillow.com/coppell-tx/rent-houses/

School ratings:

Keller ISD: https://www.niche.com/k12/d/keller-i...l-district-tx/
Grapevine-Colleyville ISD: https://www.niche.com/k12/d/grapevin...l-district-tx/
Coppell ISD: https://www.niche.com/k12/d/coppell-...l-district-tx/

[ChristieP]

Keller would be a long haul to Grand Prairie every day, even on an afternoon shift.
I doubt you’ll find rentals in Grapevine under $2k. I’ve been looking for a friend with that same price range, and I’ve not found one.

It makes much more sense to look south of I20. This would keep their commute short, and the rental prices are less expensive in that area.

[ChristieP]

Regarding school districts:
There are lots of school rating websites around, such as Niche, SchoolDigger, etc. These are all based on reviews by users, whcih are very subjective.

If you want an objective, fact-based review, use the Texas Education Agency's official accountability ratings site:
https://rptsvr1.tea.texas.gov/perfre...2019/srch.html
On this site, those districts' ratings are:
Mansfield ISD: A
Midlothian ISD: B
Arlington ISD: B
Keller ISD: B
Grapevine-Colleyville ISD: A
Coppell ISD: A
You also have the ability to read individual campuses' accountability reports on this site.

[eastron]

Thank you so much! Researching all of this new info!

[texasdiver]

Originally Posted by ChristieP

Keller would be a long haul to Grand Prairie every day, even on an afternoon shift.
I doubt you’ll find rentals in Grapevine under $2k. I’ve been looking for a friend with that same price range, and I’ve not found one.

It makes much more sense to look south of I20. This would keep their commute short, and the rental prices are less expensive in that area.

I guess it depends on what part of Grand Prairie. The city of Grand Prairie runs north past I-30 almost all the way to the southern edge of DFW.

[texasdiver]

Originally Posted by ChristieP

Regarding school districts:
There are lots of school rating websites around, such as Niche, SchoolDigger, etc. These are all based on reviews by users, whcih are very subjective.

If you want an objective, fact-based review, use the Texas Education Agency's official accountability ratings site:
https://rptsvr1.tea.texas.gov/perfre...2019/srch.html
On this site, those districts' ratings are:
Mansfield ISD: A
Midlothian ISD: B
Arlington ISD: B
Keller ISD: B
Grapevine-Colleyville ISD: A
Coppell ISD: A
You also have the ability to read individual campuses' accountability reports on this site.

As a former TX teacher I would say it is the opposite.

TEA's ratings are based ONLY on STAAR test scores and graduation rates. Nothing else. They fake up a bunch of other nonsense like "college, career, and military readiness" "closing the gaps" and "academic growth" but those are all just various different reports generated by the same exact STAAR test scores. So, for example, a district that has its average STAAR test scores go from 85 to 88 over time might get a higher rating than a district that is already at 90 but keeps its scores there without increasing them because the first district showed more "academic growth" Note, I'm just making up those numbers to make the point, STAAR test numbers are on different more obscure numeric scales but the principal is the same. And I promise you that districts with lower numbers spend a LOT more time teaching to the test than more affluent districts with higher numbers or less diversity.

And even graduation rates can be easily faked by districts.

Sites like Niche do have user reviews that can be instructive to read. But they also use all the other public data sets available such as average class size and length of teacher tenure, district spending per pupil, diversity, percentage of AP/IB courses, ACT/SAT scores, as well as the STAAR test scores.

You can quibble with the data sets they are using, and the rating algorithms they use (as you can with TEA) but it is data based, not based on user reviews.

And I would argue that TEA ratings are even less FACT-BASED than independent ratings such as Niche because they are using a LOT LESS facts upon which to base their ratings and they often use nonsensical metrics. There are also political agendas behind the TEA ratings. They are not just simple objective comparative ratings. But that is for another discussion.

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by eastron

Thank you for the reply! I forgot to mention that I will be on afternoon shift so I should be going against the traffic jams hopefully. We came down for a visit last July and we stayed in Lewisville and we werent super thrilled with the area. But we stayed by the highway near that music mall. Im sure like most we have champaign taste on a beer budget lol. A
Anyone have any experiance with LGI homes? They seem like they are cheaply built but are easy to get into. The plan that I think is best is to rent for a year or two until we can put down on a quality home like bloomfield or something. We have never moved out of state and are really overwhelmed with where to concentrate our search.
Thanks again!

1. You'd not want to drive, with or against traffic, from Frisco to GP regularly.
2. My info. here is a getting a little dated but one of my daughter's friends from her club volleyball days lived in Arlington. This young lady graduated Arlington Martin she and her parents were very pleased with AM and whatever her feeder route was. I don't want to say what the young lady studied in college but she killed it.
3. Others will know the schools closer to GP better than me.
4. Welcome to Texas!