Help - Relocating to Denver (Aurora, Greenwood Village: rentals, homes, neighborhoods)

[dedesmith32]

Hi everyone,

I could use your help. We are probably looking to move to the Denver area before school starts in the Fall. We are trying to figure out where we want to live.

My son (10years) is high-functioning Autistic, and from what my research has shown - I can understand that maybe Colorado does not have great Special Ed programs (at least compared to Utah - where I am coming from) - but I think I want to go with the Cherry Hill School District. Any input here would be really great. I also have a 7-year-old daughter who is very smart and social - so I want a good school for both of them. I don't think we can afford a private school.

We are looking to rent for at least a year. I would love at least a 3 bedroom house. Can anyone tell me what the rent is like for a 3-bedroom in the Cherry Hill School District?

Anything else I ought to know? Thanks for your help.

[Dreaming of Hawaii]

You are confusing Cherry Creek School District with the town of Cherry Hills Village.

Look at the map of the Cherry Creek School District that you can find on their website. Then you can go to a program like padmapper.com and search for rentals in your price range. You may want to contact the school district directly and find out which elementary schools have the special ed programs that you are seeking, then look for homes in the areas that feed that school. There is a very wide diversity of housing in the CCSD.

BTW, the CCSD is basically on the south and southeast of the City of Denver. Do you know where jobs are going to be?

[vegaspilgrim]

CCSD overall is an excellent school district, however some schools are not as excellent as others. Not sure about the elementary schools, but I can tell you the weakest high school is definitely Overland (attendance area includes a lot of west central Aurora west of I-225 and the unincorporated Arapahoe County island between Denver and Aurora), which I've heard from many people who have attended there has some some "issues." 2nd lowest would probably be Eaglecrest (attendance area includes a lot of east/southeast Aurora). That doesn't necessarily mean that the elementary/middle schools that feed into those high schools are the weakest too, although there could be some correlation. Smoky Hill (located in the older, more western part of southeast Aurora) is an excellent, extremely diverse (in pretty much every sense of the word) high school with excellent programs, especially for its IB program and extracurricular programs, but its feeder schools are in a mix of lower income neighborhoods (by SE Aurora standards) and upper middle class areas, so it really needs to be judged on a school by school basis. Grandview and Cherokee Trail are newer high schools in far southeastern Aurora which draw from a lot of newer, middle class and upper middle class neighborhoods and have pretty good reputations. Cherry Creek High School (located in Greenwood Village, with a huge attendance area including much of Greenwood Village, Cherry Hills Village, Centennial, and a few isolated Arapahoe County county island pockets such as Glendale) is the biggest high school in the state and usually ranks among the very best in terms of ranking lists.

So to sum it up, rent in the CCSD could range dramatically depending on if you were living in say, a $5m home in Cherry Hills Village, versus a cheap $150k home in say, Pheasant Run (a lower income neighborhood by Smoky Hill & Chambers in Aurora)-- with pretty much everything in between.

FYI, the Cherry Creek School District is entirely in Arapahoe County, which includes a few unincorporated areas with a Denver mailing address (such as where I live near Iliff & Quebec). But if a home is in the Denver city/county limits (such as the "Cherry Creek North" neighborhood), it is in the Denver Public Schools, not Cherry Creek Schools. For example, there is a neighborhood right across Yosemite St. from Cherry Creek High School that is actually part of Denver, so even though it's walking distance away the schools are DPS (zoned for Thomas Jefferson High School). The City of Aurora, on the other hand, includes neighborhoods that are part of the "Aurora Public Schools" district and other neighborhoods that are part of "Cherry Creek Schools." Study the district boundary maps so there is no confusion on which district a potential rental home you are looking at is in.