how does school placement work? (klein ISD question) (Houston, Tomball: buying a house, transfer)

[shihku7]

Hello,

My girlfriend is considering buying a house in the Tomball area (NW Houston). But I think that's too far out and would like to keep it below Beltway 8, around the 249/Breen area. She wants to be in the Tomball or Klein school district.

I noticed that there's a chunk of the Klein ISD border that includes the 249/Breen area. It's just a small chunk.

If we had a house within that Klein district, how is it determined where a kid of ours might go to school? Is it just proximity based? Does a child get automatically placed in the nearest school?

Because the schools in that 249/Breen area don't have high scores, but other schools in the Klein district are much higher rated, so it'd be great if our kid could go to a better rated school, even if it was farther away than a closer school.

[crone]

No to the nearest school. We are closer to Klein High school, but are zoned to Klein Forest. Go to the districts website. Just google Klein ISD. You can find the attendance zones and maps there.

Good luck with getting into a school you are not zoned too. You'd have better luck living in HISD and using a friends KISD address to go to Klein. Many do.

[trbstang]

Every district has their own way to distribute the attendance, and looking up possible addresses on their website, or looking at attendance boundary maps is the only way to determine which schools a particular address is zoned to. Now some schools do allow a certain number of transfers within the district, but then you will have to provide transportation if you are lucky to be accepted. But generally the better schools have few if any open transfer spots.

For an example, in Cy-Fair there are some areas where the schools across the street are not the schools for that neighborhood. They go to a school further away. It just happens that the closest school is located at the edge of the boundary instead of being in the middle like you would think, due to the population distribution.

I know when we lived in Inwood North, right near Breen and 249, we were zoned to a Klein elementary school on W. Mt. Houston. It was not the best school in the district for sure, according to our neighbors. It was a rough elementary school. Things could have changed in the past 15 years, but who knows. I would certainly prefer further out 249 if possible.

Good luck!