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Another place to check out is Montclair NJ, which is a sophisticated, multi-cultural, economically diverse suburb about an hour from Midtown by train or bus. The schools are strong, the parents active, and the town has a high level of amenities and many entertainment options. It's liberal and leafy, full of media types, and sometimes described as "The Upper West Side with Lawns." It very much has a big city vibe in a suburban setting. Also lots of homes and condos in your price range, as well as rentals for a lot less than you'd pay in Manhattan. I'd give it a hard look. You could do a lot worse.
The thing with Montclair is that all the schools after elementary school sucks and some of the elementary schools depending on where you live in Montclair aren't great either. The junior high is rated 6/10 which is on par with not so great neighborhoods in NYC. I always wondered how that could be when there are many decent houses there and the property tax is somewhat high and was told by someone with school aged kids who extensively researched the area and decided to take a pass that all the upper middle class and up in Montclair put their kids in private schools there. So unless you have some family ties to the area or get a really awesome deal on a house I would take a pass. I guess there's a reason why you can still get a 3/4 bedroom single family detached there for 300k. In general the real estate market surrounding NYC is efficient and fair and there are no such things as great deals that others don't know about so everything is priced accordingly. The key is finding an area with the right trade offs that fit you. Other than that it's just a real estate bet on the area improving when you go low budget. For the OP with an 800k budget requiring great schools I would definitely take a pass. On the other hand if her budget is less than half that or if she is interested in betting on real estate and going way below her budget while her children goes to less than stellar schools then Montclair should be considered.
Last edited by bumblebyz; 08-31-2016 at 08:19 AM..
I've been to quite a few Indian owned McMansions they only look astounding on the outside. Inside it's quite plain unlike most Americans that chose to furnish their homes with endless amenities and luxury goods. Indian homes are reflection of their culture. I have an Indian friend that owns a big home in Queens, he doesn't even have his own PC. He uses his work provided PC for everything. His most expensive item at home is probably his iPhone.
I would hesitate to stereotype this much. Indians (and Indian-Americans) like other groups in the USA have a lot of diversity within their own group. I've been to a couple Indian physicians' homes in the Chicago suburbs that not only looked majestic from the outside, but had incredible amenities and furnishings inside the home as well. Indians have also been making heavy gains in the upper echelons of business (we have Indian-American CEO's), politics, and even Hollywood recently. At the same time, the majority of Indians are just everyday middle class & upper middle class folks like a lot of us. And of course there are Indians scraping to survive as well, hustling super hard as taxi drivers & gas station attendants. There's nothing wrong with any of of that.
The thing with Montclair is that all the schools after elementary school sucks and some of the elementary schools depending on where you live in Montclair aren't great either.The junior high is rated 6/10 which is on par with not so great neighborhoods in NYC. I always wondered how that could be when there are many decent houses there and the property tax is somewhat high and was told by someone with school aged kids who extensively researched the area and decided to take a pass that all the upper middle class and up in Montclair put their kids in private schools there. So unless you have some family ties to the area or get a really awesome deal on a house I would take a pass. I guess there's a reason why you can still get a 3/4 bedroom single family detached there for 300k. In general the real estate market surrounding NYC is efficient and fair and there are no such things as great deals that others don't know about so everything is priced accordingly. The key is finding an area with the right trade offs that fit you. Other than that it's just a real estate bet on the area improving when you go low budget. For the OP with an 800k budget requiring great schools I would definitely take a pass. On the other hand if her budget is less than half that or if she is interested in betting on real estate and going way below her budget while her children goes to less than stellar schools then Montclair should be considered.
This is just pure hogwash.
I actually lived in Montclair for a few years and know many, many parents who were thrilled with the schools there (as were we, though one of ours was only enrolled for early primary years before returning to the city), and the outcomes at the middle and high school levels are decidedly above -average, with many high schoolers taking multiple AP courses and attending top colleges. The GreatSchools ratings, BTW, are extremely crude, measuring only the outcomes on standardized tests and little that actually affects learning and school quality, such as teacher turnover, curriculum strength, attitude of the administrators, flexibility, school resources, etc. All the kids I've met who have left Montclair High were really happy, academically prepared, and doing well after graduation.
And if you think a run-of-the-mill middle school in NYC and Montclair NJ are comparable in any way you just haven't gotten out enough.
Sure there are some parents who do private school there. But that's less a function of poor public schools than a need for a better fit for a particular kid, or just the prestige factor. In any of the affluent areas OP mentioned, like Manhattan, Park Slope, Great Neck, etc, there is always a cohort of parents who will go private.
Montclair public schools will provide a strong foundation at the primary level and can prepare their top students for top schools. But some folks-- like those in your example-- find that either hard to grasp or uncomfortable to deal with because the district is also ethnically and socio-economically diverse. Which is one big reason I think the OP might find it welcoming.
Last edited by citylove101; 08-31-2016 at 04:05 PM..
I actually lived in Montclair for a few years and know many, many parents who were thrilled with the schools there (as were we, though one of ours was only enrolled for early primary years before returning to the city), and the outcomes at the middle and high school levels are decidedly above -average, with many high schoolers taking multiple AP courses and attending top colleges. The GreatSchools ratings, BTW, are extremely crude, measuring only the outcomes on standardized tests and little that actually affects learning and school quality, such as teacher turnover, curriculum strength, attitude of the administrators, flexibility, school resources, etc. All the kids I've met who have left Montclair High were really happy, academically prepared, and doing well after graduation.
And if you think a run-of-the-mill middle school in NYC and Montclair NJ are comparable in any way you just haven't gotten out enough.
Sure there are some parents who do private school there. But that's less a function of poor public schools than a need for a better fit for a particular kid, or just the prestige factor. In any of the affluent areas OP mentioned, like Manhattan, Park Slope, Great Neck, etc, there is always a cohort of parents who will go private.
Montclair public schools will provide a strong foundation at the primary level and can prepare their top students for top schools. But some folks-- like those in your example-- find that either hard to grasp or uncomfortable to deal with because the district is also ethnically and socio-economically diverse. Which is one big reason I think the OP might find it welcoming.
Nothing you said refutes my recommendation to OP. When people have a large budget ~ 800k and want great schools it means that they want their kids to go to a school where the overwhelming majority of kids do well, as in greater than 80/90%. They're not interested in anecdotal evidence or stories of how the the top quartile does. The GreatSchools rating captures exactly this, it measures not only standardized tests, but the amount of APs taken by students and their outcome to measure college readiness. Otherwise everything becomes subjective and her being of Indian descent the colleges are not going to give her kids any breaks especially when she may be classified as upper middle class. In fact she needs to factor in minus 200-300 points off her kids' SAT scores.
You telling a story about how good the schools in Montclair is like me tell you how great a company Walmart is to work for by giving an example of their IT salaries being among the highest among all companies. Having grown up in NYC I can tell you stories of all the kids I knew that went to poorly rated schools that have taken a couple of AP classes as well and many of them went to top schools. Heck one of my Managing Director friends when to a crappy high school in NYC and a public school for college and is now banging over 500k and he's less than 40. But is that what someone asking for great schools with the budget to boot is looking for? Even my friend who went to a crappy high school himself wouldn't touch areas with soso rated schools so I don't think so. People that pay big bucks want to see measurable results and not some opinion about how great this or that is. Like I said if her budget is 300k-400k or has family ties to the area then she can look at Montclair.
And by the way in Great Neck with the exception of some religious folks almost everyone goes to the public schools because unlike Manhattan and Park Slope all the schools from k-12 are top rated. And funny thing is Great Neck also has 2bd coops for less than 300k which many people probably don't know about.
Last edited by bumblebyz; 08-31-2016 at 06:35 PM..
I guess we just have to disagree on this, and let the OP make what she will of Montclair.
To me, schools are just much, much more than test scores, which, let's face it, reflect family income more than anything else. Whether a school offers the right atmosphere and resources for a particular child is impossible to say from test scores, especially since the vibe of the community (both the school and locality) is a super important component of a kid's education.
Is it better to be in the top 10% of a school where students have a wider range of abilities, or stuck in the middle of the pack at some school where everyone tests above state or national averages? Some kids will thrive in one type of school, some in the other, some would flourish anywhere. Only the OP knows which is best for her five-year-old, and at only five, even she may not yet know. I just hope she doesn't pin the answer on as narrow a metric as test scores when so many other factors contribute to great schooling. As the saying goes, everything that's measured isn't important and everything that's important can't be measured.
You don't want some dangerous, dysfunctional, and dumb school district for sure. No argument there. But OTOH, anybody spending big bucks for a home and looking for "measurable results" from other kids to ensure their own kid's academic success is, frankly, an ass. Success for one's own kid can never be guaranteed. And anyone who has ever had kids can tell you that.
Last edited by citylove101; 08-31-2016 at 07:17 PM..
Nothing you said refutes my recommendation to OP. When people have a large budget ~ 800k and want great schools it means that they want their kids to go to a school where the overwhelming majority of kids do well, as in greater than 80/90%. They're not interested in anecdotal evidence or stories of how the the top quartile does. The GreatSchools rating captures exactly this, it measures not only standardized tests, but the amount of APs taken by students and their outcome to measure college readiness. Otherwise everything becomes subjective and her being of Indian descent the colleges are not going to give her kids any breaks especially when she may be classified as upper middle class. In fact she needs to factor in minus 200-300 points off her kids' SAT scores.
You telling a story about how good the schools in Montclair is like me tell you how great a company Walmart is to work for by giving an example of their IT salaries being among the highest among all companies. Having grown up in NYC I can tell you stories of all the kids I knew that went to poorly rated schools that have taken a couple of AP classes as well and many of them went to top schools. Heck one of my Managing Director friends when to a crappy high school in NYC and a public school for college and is now banging over 500k and he's less than 40. But is that what someone asking for great schools with the budget to boot is looking for? Even my friend who went to a crappy high school himself wouldn't touch areas with soso rated schools so I don't think so. People that pay big bucks want to see measurable results and not some opinion about how great this or that is. Like I said if her budget is 300k-400k or has family ties to the area then she can look at Montclair.
And by the way in Great Neck with the exception of some religious folks almost everyone goes to the public schools because unlike Manhattan and Park Slope all the schools from k-12 are top rated. And funny thing is Great Neck also has 2bd coops for less than 300k which many people probably don't know about.
Yes I did check coops in Great neck (2Bed 1Bath ones) within 400K. I put the address on GMaps and found them not very far from great neck station too! And just to make one point, my first priority is a coop/condo and not a single family home. What I feel in a coop where there is a body which takes care of most of the maintainence part is much convenient (eg snow clearing, heat, gas, outside wall/roof maintainence) vs single family homes where u have to do everything.
Montclair NJ is a pretty good town and I read it to be diverse too. But I want schools with better test scores ratings. I will check out private schools around that area if they are affordable.
My other question is :- How good or bad is to put your non-catholic child in a catholic school?? Will they face any bullying etc? Are the schools tolerant towards children who arent catholic?
Yes I did check coops in Great neck (2Bed 1Bath ones) within 400K. I put the address on GMaps and found them not very far from great neck station too! And just to make one point, my first priority is a coop/condo and not a single family home. What I feel in a coop where there is a body which takes care of most of the maintainence part is much convenient (eg snow clearing, heat, gas, outside wall/roof maintainence) vs single family homes where u have to do everything.
Montclair NJ is a pretty good town and I read it to be diverse too. But I want schools with better test scores ratings. I will check out private schools around that area if they are affordable.
My other question is :- How good or bad is to put your non-catholic child in a catholic school?? Will they face any bullying etc? Are the schools tolerant towards children who arent catholic?
I've never heard of this being an issue. Plenty of non-catholic people in this area send their kids to catholic schools. I'll tell you a little secret A lot of "Catholics" are not really all that catholic. If you get a few together with a drink or two many will tell you they don't believe in or agree with most of it.
I'm a non-Catholic who attended a Catholic elementary school on Long Island for a couple of years. I don't remember any bullying or anything but the school didn't really want me there and I had to transfer to a public school. This was over 20 years ago and things could be very different in NYC or other schools so take it for what it's worth.
And just an fyi, since you mentioned diversity, I believe areas like Great Neck and Scarsdale are not particularly diverse. Great Neck has a lot of Jewish and Asians, and I think Scarsdale is predominately white. Not bad things by any means and these are affluent, high-achieving areas but it may not have many black or Hispanic people (though double-check on this). Within NYC, there are magnet public high schools like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science that are considered exceptional schools but they are also not particularly diverse. I think Asians make up the majority, followed by whites. Just in case any of this matters. Again, I would double-check this information as I don't have direct experience but hear this from others.
I'd also add that the average school in a NYC suburb would probably be considered much better than the average school within NYC. So if you find that you can't afford the "excellent" school districts on Long Island (which are primarily located on the north shore), then your child can still get a very good education going to an "average" school district. Other school districts that may be worth checking out are Herricks, New Hyde Park, Floral Park. These are fairly close to Great Neck.
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A lot of "Catholics" are not really all that catholic. If you get a few together with a drink or two many will tell you they don't believe in or agree with most of it.
