The ideal Sacramento suburb (Davis, Folsom: school districts, community college, salaries)

[Chimérique]

Davis is a definitely a suburb of Sacramento, the same way Berkeley is a suburb of San Francisco.

Berkeley is separated from the city of San Francisco by SF Bay, and Davis is separated from the cities of Sacramento & West Sacramento by the Yolo Bypass which is a piece of the California Delta. During an average winter and spring the Yolo Bypass looks like a large lake with a long causeway connecting Sacramento with Davis.

Although "suburbs", both Davis and Berkeley have very large University of California campuses that have huge student populations and UC employees. Also, there are a of lot small companies with bio tech, medical, engineering, and energy-related jobs in Davis and Berkeley.

Plenty of folks live in Davis but work in Sacramento, and vice versus, folks live in Sacramento but work in Davis.
One of the largest employers in Sacramento is the University of California Davis Med Center, located in Sacramento not Davis.

[OUgrad09]

Yes, it seems very appropriate for Davis and Woodland to be considered in a conversation about suburbs for people interested in the Greater Sacramento area.

I guess my question was more about whether there are any significant advantages to buying outside of Sacramento County (taxes, utilities, power reliability, etc.), or if it doesn't really matter.

[wburg]

Originally Posted by OUgrad09

Yes, it seems very appropriate for Davis and Woodland to be considered in a conversation about suburbs for people interested in the Greater Sacramento area.

I guess my question was more about whether there are any significant advantages to buying outside of Sacramento County (taxes, utilities, power reliability, etc.), or if it doesn't really matter.

Re utilities/power reliability, you're better off buying in Sacramento County; SMUD has a much better track record than PG&E, with lower rates, fewer outages, and no track record of accidentally blowing up neighborhoods/starting deadly firestorms. Taxes, as mentioned elsewhere, are pretty much the same--if you're moving into a new neighborhood it's probably going to have Mello-Roos taxes to pay for schools, if you move into an older neighborhood without Mello-Roos taxes, schools probably aren't going to be very good because they don't have Mello-Roos taxes to pay for them. That works out pretty much the same whether you're in Sacramento County or not.

[Racer46]

Originally Posted by wburg

The "open land" between Sacramento and Davis/Woodland is a weir that floods regularly, so it's not as though at some point that land will be built out (unless we figure out another way to get the water from the mountains to the delta without passing through the valley.) So, it isn't really open land so much as open water, and the cities of Yolo County are suburbs of Sacramento in the same way that the cities of Marin, Alameda etc. Counties are suburbs of San Francisco, connected by bridges over those waterways.

Yep, rivers and related areas do not count or Sacramento would not be built on both sides of two rivers as a single city. Open farm/ranch type land is different and it is basically all built on.

[wburg]

Originally Posted by Racer46

Yep, rivers and related areas do not count or Sacramento would not be built on both sides of two rivers as a single city. Open farm/ranch type land is different and it is basically all built on.

Sacramento isn't built on both sides of two rivers as a single city. The western bank of the Sacramento River is a different city and county.

[Chimérique]

Sacramento was founded on two rivers, the Sacramento and the American. Currently, Sacramento is located on BOTH sides of the AMERICAN RIVER, and on the eastern side of the SACRAMENTO River.

It does not matter that the western side of the incorporated AREA is the City of West Sacramento, or in Yolo County it is a CONTIGUOUS incorporated urban space linked and connected by bridges and public transportation.

Similarly, to the way countless other urban areas in the USA are connected like the cities of Cambridge and Boston, and St. Paul and Minneapolis,

[norcalsocal]

Originally Posted by wburg

if you move into an older neighborhood without Mello-Roos taxes, schools probably aren't going to be very good because they don't have Mello-Roos taxes to pay for them. That works out pretty much the same whether you're in Sacramento County or not.

Not true in general.

[sacguy71]

@norcalsocal- correct in fact Del Dayo and Sierra Oaks are two expensive wealthy suburbs that don't have Mello Roos and older homes with ok schools.

I grew up in Sacramento and always liked areas closer to the American river bike trails and close to shopping and freeways for convenience sake.

[shelato]

In the public schools and in most of the private schools in the Sacramento region, most of the teachers are going to be from Sac State (and other CSU's), followed by National University and some from UC Davis. There really isn't that much of a difference in teaching quality between the schools.

What does happen is that in the nicer places, its easier to stay being a teacher because the kids are more motivated, so teachers tend to stay longer instead of quitting teaching to start another career doing something else.

How you make a high performing public school is by pulling together the smartest and most motivated students. The wealthy areas tend to have some of the highest concentrations of smart students because their parents tend to have the highest levels of educational attainment and intelligence is heavily inherited. In the new wealthy areas, you have the highest concentrations of school age children and its mostly their children filling the local schools. In more established areas, often people keep living in their homes after their own kids finish school because they like the neighborhood, and as a consequence these schools then have declining enrollments, which create space in these schools for kids from outside the attendance area to attend those schools. As the local schools become filled with students from outside the local schools attendance area, the school test scores drop as the number of kids receiving free lunches increase. But that can also vary when these older residents either move out of the area or just die and that creates space for younger families with school age kids who then push up test scores.

The other way to create a strong public school is set up a program that screens out the kids who aren't strong students. You need to test into the West Campus in the Sacramento School District and the same is true for the IB program at Mira Loma in the SJUSD. At both of these schools, these kids are highly motivated (because the kids who aren't motivated didn't pass the test) and they will outperform kids and schools with better demographics.

Neither spending nor class size have been to shown to have much impact on test scores which is why the unions have been pushing to get rid of standardized school testing. But parents like small classes and public school unions like to increase educational spending.

[loggie1983]

Go to Placer county as it's the best in the Sac area and not even close. Less crime, less homeless people, kids in school 5 days a week but we aren't overwhelming conservative like the old days. Biden won the last election up here. It's nice mix of people - culturally and politically speaking. Check it out. Granite Bay is the best place to live to us though Rocklin and Lincoln are nice for cheaper areas. Granite Bay is basically part of Roseville which is where the nice mall is. Loomis nice if you want more rural. Up here you can get a solid home for $500k and a large home with a pool for a million. Plus schools are excellent. 8's in Roseville and 10's in Granite Bay.