Relocating: Teachers with 2 elementary-age daughters seeking city/suburb suggestions (Portland: health insurance, homes)
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Thanks for all the recommendations. We definitely plan to spend time in all the major cities/areas - Portland, Salem, Eugene, Corvallis, and Medford. If anyone has any specific suburb recommendations for these cities that would be of the greatest help. We don't plan to live in a city, but rather on the outskirts.
If you know any nice communities that fit the bill, please me know! Thanks!
Please read the warnings about Medford, which have already been posted. Stick to the Northwest section of the state. Also you might not be able to choose exactly where to live. As others have posted, both of you getting jobs in the same place, might be difficult. You should probably just move wherever you can both get jobs.
The reason it is "arguable" is that I think you are wrong. Southern Oregon is pretty much a microcosm of Oregon politics - the cities tend left-of-center, the rural areas tend right-of-center. Jackson County, as a whole, voted for Trump over Clinton, 48% to 41% and the highest percentage 3rd party votes went to the Libertarian candidate. But Jackson County's population is split into pretty much two halves - the two largest cities, Medford (85,000), Ashland (25,000) and then another 110,000+ in very small cities and rural areas. If you look at the precinct results, Medford and Ashland tend to vote to the left, everyone else to the right (using broad categories and going by the 2016 election). Note that Grants Pass is in Josephine County and not included in those numbers.
A lot of the area, particularly out in, say, the Applegate, is what I would describe as out beyond conventional politics - out on the back side of the political spectrum, picking and choosing between what are generally thought of as "right" or "left" politics and putting them together in a sort of mish-mash. For instance, anti-gun (as in the Feds should step in and take away guns) and anti-vax (The Feds can't tell me I have to vaccinate my child).
The Medford airport serves about 10% fewer passengers than the Eugene airport (odd because the areas is at least 25% smaller than Eugene's service area, I guess they compete with PDX, probably why their prices are lower than ours), with direct flights to Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas and Denver. Anywhere else is going to be a connection.
Added: As far as the OP's question - finding 2 jobs in the schools here might be dicey, as this is a relatively small area and somewhat isolated. There are some schools which are either rated well (although I think the on-line ratings are of questionable value) or that parents I know are happy with.
The other thing I think the OP will be happy with are the farmers markets and CSAs throughout much of Western Oregon - good selection of fresh local produce mostly year-round.
People in Eugene also have the option of a two hour drive to Portland to have more flying options. People in Southern Oregon don't really have any choice but to fly out of Medford.
I have liberal friends who have lived in Southern Oregon for a long time. They hate the political situation there. Unfortunately they can't afford to move to Portland. I expect they will eventually end up in Eugene.
People who have not lived in the south have no idea what living in a "churchy" area is like. My wife and I spent a decade in Waco before returning to the Pacific Northwest. This is what we experienced.
At least half the people you meet socially through work and such ask you what church you attend. The operating assumption is that you have a church affiliation. And you are immediately categorized by your answer. Baptist, Methodist, or a big local unaffiliated megachurch are the mainstream answers. Lutheran means you might be a Yankee. Episcopal is the liberal answer. Catholic the "ethnic" answer. Anything else is a bit of a raised eyebrow answer.
At public jobs working for public institutions in education (me) and healthcare (my wife) you'll get endless invites for morning prayer meetings. You'll have colleagues stand up at meetings and lead "spontaneous" group prayers. And if you sit in on hiring committees you'll hear candidates compared on the basis of intangible "leadership qualities" which you won't really understand until it dawns on you that they are actually speaking in code about church membership and attendance. In the public school system I have seen candidates for administrative positions (principals and assistant principals) rejected or approved based on "leadership qualities" when what they really meant was that one candidate was active leader in the "right" church and the other candidate was not. My wife noticed the same thing when it came to hiring doctors at a PUBLIC clinic.
In public schools you'll see the youth groups of the big megachurches all wear matching color-coded t-shirts on certain days so everyone at school knows who belongs to which church and those kids who don't?....well we know who they are also. Your kids will be constantly invited to all kinds of big church social events like overnight "lock-ins" where you drop them off with their friends at a church on a Friday evening with a sleeping bag and they hang in a giant supervised slumber party to play games, watch movies, and get evangelized by the youth pastors until the next morning. My oldest daughter fit right in. My middle daughter found that all her best friends from elementary school started to peel away by intermediate and middle school because she wasn't in their church youth groups. It was a relief for her to find new friends here in the Northwest when we moved.
Professional networks completely overlap with church networks. If you want to sell insurance or real estate or do any kind of business that requires contacts you had better have a church network or you won't go far. We lived a couple of blocks away from a big Baptist megachurch. Every Sunday I would see my neighbor's insurance agency truck parked in the church parking lot right at the entrance where everyone would pass by. He owned a State Farm agency and his Ford F-150 was completely wrapped with his business signs and logos so it was a moving billboard for his business. You would see up to a dozen similar vehicles parked in the church lot every Sunday a.m. so the hundreds of people attending would know who to by their insurance from, who to call for an exterminator, who to call for plumbing or landscaping, etc. etc.
Religion is utterly pervasive if you want to move in middle class or upper middle class circles.
Here in the Pacific Northwest? NONE of that ever happens. Ever. At least we don't ever encounter it in our daily professional or personal lives and neither do our kids.
I'm from Texas, and grew up Episcopal. This is precisely true. Baptists didn't think we believed in sin.
There are churchy people in the PNW and they are highly networked, but it's not nearly as pervasive. You have to search them out. In general, church does not define people like it does back there.
Last edited by redguard57; 01-23-2018 at 09:34 AM..
People who have not lived in the south have no idea what living in a "churchy" area is like. My wife and I spent a decade in Waco before returning to the Pacific Northwest. This is what we experienced.
At least half the people you meet socially through work and such ask you what church you attend. The operating assumption is that you have a church affiliation. And you are immediately categorized by your answer. Baptist, Methodist, or a big local unaffiliated megachurch are the mainstream answers. Lutheran means you might be a Yankee. Episcopal is the liberal answer. Catholic the "ethnic" answer. Anything else is a bit of a raised eyebrow answer.
At public jobs working for public institutions in education (me) and healthcare (my wife) you'll get endless invites for morning prayer meetings. You'll have colleagues stand up at meetings and lead "spontaneous" group prayers. And if you sit in on hiring committees you'll hear candidates compared on the basis of intangible "leadership qualities" which you won't really understand until it dawns on you that they are actually speaking in code about church membership and attendance. In the public school system I have seen candidates for administrative positions (principals and assistant principals) rejected or approved based on "leadership qualities" when what they really meant was that one candidate was active leader in the "right" church and the other candidate was not. My wife noticed the same thing when it came to hiring doctors at a PUBLIC clinic.
In public schools you'll see the youth groups of the big megachurches all wear matching color-coded t-shirts on certain days so everyone at school knows who belongs to which church and those kids who don't?....well we know who they are also. Your kids will be constantly invited to all kinds of big church social events like overnight "lock-ins" where you drop them off with their friends at a church on a Friday evening with a sleeping bag and they hang in a giant supervised slumber party to play games, watch movies, and get evangelized by the youth pastors until the next morning. My oldest daughter fit right in. My middle daughter found that all her best friends from elementary school started to peel away by intermediate and middle school because she wasn't in their church youth groups. It was a relief for her to find new friends here in the Northwest when we moved.
Professional networks completely overlap with church networks. If you want to sell insurance or real estate or do any kind of business that requires contacts you had better have a church network or you won't go far. We lived a couple of blocks away from a big Baptist megachurch. Every Sunday I would see my neighbor's insurance agency truck parked in the church parking lot right at the entrance where everyone would pass by. He owned a State Farm agency and his Ford F-150 was completely wrapped with his business signs and logos so it was a moving billboard for his business. You would see up to a dozen similar vehicles parked in the church lot every Sunday a.m. so the hundreds of people attending would know who to by their insurance from, who to call for an exterminator, who to call for plumbing or landscaping, etc. etc.
Religion is utterly pervasive if you want to move in middle class or upper middle class circles.
Here in the Pacific Northwest? NONE of that ever happens. Ever. At least we don't ever encounter it in our daily professional or personal lives and neither do our kids.
This is one of the most insightful posts I've ever read on C-D. Thanks for posting it, texasdiver. It would be interesting to see if anyone disputes your assertions.
Please read the warnings about Medford, which have already been posted. Stick to the Northwest section of the state. Also you might not be able to choose exactly where to live. As others have posted, both of you getting jobs in the same place, might be difficult. You should probably just move wherever you can both get jobs.
Don't throw Medford under the bus...if they can get jobs there, housing is less expensive. Just stay in the nicer areas...
This is probably true, but it still wouldn't hurt for them to put their resumes out there. I wonder if experienced teachers wouldn't have a better chance of getting jobs, then recent graduates.
The way it's been for decades and decades is that teachers in the Eugene area end up being forced to take jobs in far flung rural areas like say Roseburg or Oakridge and often spend years doing long commutes until they can finally land a job in Eugene or Springfield. I had a relative who commuted from Eugene to teach in Elkton for years until finally finding a closer job in Springfield. So there is always a big pool of local teachers waiting and ready to pounce on any opening. The school population in Eugene has actually been declining for decades. I think it peaked around 1970. So there really isn't any growth to create new positions. To the contrary, funding cutbacks and increases in class sizes means that there are probably less teaching jobs in Eugene today then there were decades ago.
Eugene also attracts a lot of "lifestyle migrants." Young teachers from other areas or states who move there thinking that their teaching credentials are portable and who wind up finding there aren't jobs. It's the same situation in other similar towns like Boulder.
I grew up in Eugene. My dad was a teacher in Springfield. I have an uncle who was a principal in Eugene. I have two cousins who teach in Eugene and one who is a an assistant principal in the Eugene area. So I've lived and breathed the teaching profession in Eugene for decades at every family event and have heard every story.
My experience is that the best places to find teaching jobs in any state are in: (1) inner cities of big urban areas like Houston, (2) fast growing suburban areas around big cities like Beaverton or Vancouver where schools are expanding, and (3) very remote rural areas like Eastern Oregon. Eugene doesn't fit any of those 3 criteria. It's the worst of all possible worlds. A highly popular place to live with a stagnant student population.
Last edited by texasdiver; 01-23-2018 at 11:07 AM..
Don't throw Medford under the bus...if they can get jobs there, housing is less expensive. Just stay in the nicer areas...
The OP's #1 reason for wanting to move is to be near a progressive population. Jackson County voted 49% for Trump. Josephine County voted 60% for him, and Klamath County 66%. I'm sorry but Southern Oregon is not progressive. Again I know liberals who live in Medford, and they are not happy there.
The way it's been for decades and decades is that teachers in the Eugene area end up being forced to take jobs in far flung rural areas like say Roseburg or Oakridge and often spend years doing long commutes until they can finally land a job in Eugene or Springfield. I had a relative who commuted from Eugene to teach in Elkton for years until finally finding a closer job in Springfield. So there is always a big pool of local teachers waiting and ready to pounce on any opening. The school population in Eugene has actually been declining for decades. I think it peaked around 1970. So there really isn't any growth to create new positions. To the contrary, funding cutbacks and increases in class sizes means that there are probably less teaching jobs in Eugene today then there were decades ago.
Eugene also attracts a lot of "lifestyle migrants." Young teachers from other areas or states who move there thinking that their teaching credentials are portable and who wind up finding there aren't jobs. It's the same situation in other similar towns like Boulder.
I grew up in Eugene. My dad was a teacher in Springfield. I have an uncle who was a principal in Eugene. I have two cousins who teach in Eugene and one who is a an assistant principal in the Eugene area. So I've lived and breathed the teaching profession in Eugene for decades at every family event and have heard every story.
My experience is that the best places to find teaching jobs in any state are in: (1) inner cities of big urban areas like Houston, (2) fast growing suburban areas around big cities like Beaverton or Vancouver where schools are expanding, and (3) very remote rural areas like Eastern Oregon. Eugene doesn't fit any of those 3 criteria. It's the worst of all possible worlds. A highly popular place to live with a stagnant student population.
Wow! I would say you know more about Eugene teachers than anybody around. Thank you for this info and I will pass it along.
More information on enrollment in Eugene Public Schools. You would think that with a metro population doubling in size in the past decades that the student population would have increased too. But no, it has actually declined for decades after having peaked in 1969 and has only recently experienced a small blip upwards.
Compare that to say Beaverton School District or Evergreen School District in Vancouver which have probably quadrupled or more in student population over the same time period. It's just easier to find jobs in growing districts than shrinking ones where teachers cling to jobs until they finally retire.
Last edited by texasdiver; 01-23-2018 at 03:40 PM..
The way it's been for decades and decades is that teachers in the Eugene area end up being forced to take jobs in far flung rural areas like say Roseburg or Oakridge and often spend years doing long commutes until they can finally land a job in Eugene or Springfield. I had a relative who commuted from Eugene to teach in Elkton for years until finally finding a closer job in Springfield. So there is always a big pool of local teachers waiting and ready to pounce on any opening. The school population in Eugene has actually been declining for decades. I think it peaked around 1970. So there really isn't any growth to create new positions. To the contrary, funding cutbacks and increases in class sizes means that there are probably less teaching jobs in Eugene today then there were decades ago.
Eugene also attracts a lot of "lifestyle migrants." Young teachers from other areas or states who move there thinking that their teaching credentials are portable and who wind up finding there aren't jobs. It's the same situation in other similar towns like Boulder.
I grew up in Eugene. My dad was a teacher in Springfield. I have an uncle who was a principal in Eugene. I have two cousins who teach in Eugene and one who is a an assistant principal in the Eugene area. So I've lived and breathed the teaching profession in Eugene for decades at every family event and have heard every story.
My experience is that the best places to find teaching jobs in any state are in: (1) inner cities of big urban areas like Houston, (2) fast growing suburban areas around big cities like Beaverton or Vancouver where schools are expanding, and (3) very remote rural areas like Eastern Oregon. Eugene doesn't fit any of those 3 criteria. It's the worst of all possible worlds. A highly popular place to live with a stagnant student population.
It's the same way in Bend. Newer teachers will start in places like Madras or Prineville, then try to "move up" to the Bend-LaPine district after a few years of experience. They often try for a decade or more before accomplishing it. At least Bend and Redmond are growing which will create more positions. Redmond built a new high school a few years ago and Bend just passed a bond to build a new high school and a new elementary. I expect a new middle school & at least one more elementary sooner rather than later. The downside is that every outdoor recreation enthusiast in the West with a teaching certification applies for those jobs when they come up.
Completely agree with your ranking of where teaching jobs can be found.
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