Help! New parents vs south King county school districts (Seattle: rentals, daycare)

[agaace]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to this forum. We're currently renting a house in the sweet Greenlake area and expecting our first child. All great but we're being priced out of the neighborhood, so considering moving out. Considering home ownership (in the up to $450k range) which would most likely put us down south (Renton, Tukwila, SeaTac, Burien etc.). I would love Shoreline but it's hard to get anything within our budget in that neighborhood anymore. I would really love Auburn but I will need to commute to Seattle to work (South Lake Union) and would like to keep the commute below 1h, especially with the baby, so I get to at least spend some time with her during week days before she goes to sleep. Issaquah and Bellevue, on the other hand are completely out of our price range.

So we found some pretty nice, semi-affordable properties in the SeaTac/Burien area, and we like the neighborhood in general and all is perfect, but my concern is schools. The Highline school district has some seriously bad reputation. Being new to this whole world of parenting and school districts, I'm at a total loss and overwhelmed. There's just not enough information out there and we don't know any parents in that neighborhood to ask their opinions.

Any parents out here who know more first hand about school districts down south? Highline, Renton, Tukwila, Federal Way etc. Is it really that bad? Would you consider sending your child there? Is poverty and violence in those schools really such a problem? Is there a solid chance my child will be prepared for college? Are there decent AP programs out there? We are both engineers, college educated in STEM, so STEM education in particular is key for us and college education is a must. We can definitely help our child where school or teachers are lacking (I think I can still handle high school math lol) but I just don't want to send her to a school where there's violence issues or where she'd feel unsafe, or where her progress would be inhibited by incapable teachers or too many problem kids that take away teacher's energy and attention. It seems like the school environment is vastly different from what I grew up in.. so it scares me.. maybe unnecessarily?

Obviously, we have a few years before she even starts school so I feel silly doing all this research already, but at the same time, if we go the home ownership route, we'd like to settle down and make it our forever home, and not have to move in 5 years in a desperate search of better schools that we most likely will still be outpriced of even more so than today.

Any and all advice and/or additional resources from parents very appreciated! Thank you!

[tobester]

At the risk of prying, with two engineer's salaries, it seems you could stay in your current neighborhood (or find something in Shoreline) that you enjoy.

[flyingsaucermom]

Originally Posted by tobester

At the risk of prying, with two engineer's salaries, it seems you could stay in your current neighborhood (or find something in Shoreline) that you enjoy.

that's what my first thought was!

We're saving 70% of a single engineer's take home pay.

There has to be more to the story here...

[misscross]

the OP only mentioned one commute so even if both parents are STEM educated one might be staying home with the baby. That is not an uncommon occurrence in this area.

[Gabbythecat]

Maple Valley isn't a bad commute. And the schools are in the Tahoma School District, which is highly rated. The homes are generally quite affordable, especially if you look around the Hobart area.

[TheSchrund]

With both of us working, daycare will be required and is around $2500/mo in Seattle for an infant if you can get a spot with the wait lists. Her commute is downtown and is pretty stable there, I can transfer to a different campus to adjust my commute time. Add a dog to this and rentals become very sparse and generally expensive. When looking 2 years ago rent was $2500 and up and ours will be going up again where we are at. With houses in school districts that have school ratings higher than 2/10 starting around our limit, for "fixers," we would prefer to not be house (or rent) poor so that we can actually save and be able to cover the unexpected expenses in life.

It seems like reasonable price (not house poor), decent or better schools, and a commute less than an hour in heavy traffic is a very rare thing right now. Seems like you can only pick 2.

[Gabbythecat]

Have you thought about Snohomish County? You could get to Seattle in about 1 1/2 hour and we have terrific housing prices in my neighborhood. About $400,000 for a nice house on 5+ acres in a *nice* community. I wonder if your wife could telecommute part of the time to save on commuting time? A lot of engineers do that...

[TheSchrund]

Does anyone have a suggested eastern location where the average commute to/from south lake union would be less than 45 minutes? I know there will be those days when its well over an hour but barring that, how far out can you get living east?

[TheSchrund]

Unfortunately, the telecommuting option is not available for the current position. If it wasn't for the commute, we would love to be in that area. So expanding on my previous post, how far can you realistically live north or north east and have your average commute to be 45 min or less? I have been using google with their estimates but wondering if reality is similar.

[CrazyDonkey]

agaave and The Shrund: Are you the "we" of the initial post, or two separate people? The initial post (by agaave) seems to be asking about a one-parent commute, while following posts (by TheShrund) seem to be asking about a dual-parent commute. Please clarify.