Public Schools Impact Everyone

The relationship between school districts and home values is an important and complicated one. Although you might want the house that is right next door to the local school you will find that having one nearby will be evaluable for your present or future family.

Whether you have children of school age or not you will find higher home values in districts that are known for the quality of their school districts. Good schools create demand and that increases district property taxes, which in turn increases the resources available to the school district.

Interestingly, poorer public school quality will tend to increase enrollment in private schools for those who can afford it. Again, this tends to feed back in the opposite direction and make the public schools even less appealing for that community.

How Close Is Too Close?

The issue with being too close to a school is that there will be issues with students milling around, possibly on your front lawn and parents parking and loitering to pick up and drop off their kids. As well as the disruption to your lifestyle this will negatively impact your home’s value, compared to the average real estate values in your neighborhood.

The Public Record Of Public Schools

The quality of education you can give your children is one of the most important factors in choosing an area in which to settle. There are volumes of data and statistics that disclose the innermost details of public school successes and failures. You owe it to your family to look into it very closely.

You can look at the age of the school building as an indicator of quality, as long as you also consider the condition. A historic building superbly kept may be at least as appealing as a brand new building. It is a balance between the building age and facility condition overall.

The ratio of students and teachers is critical as more teachers giving attention is vital to helping your child to learn. In districts with more students and less teachers you get larger class sizes and it comes down to the natural ability of your child to take in knowledge unassisted and in spite of the distractions that are ever-present.

Whatever else you might think of standardized test scores, the fact that they are published and give a fairly equitable comparison of results is a good indicator of school quality. Test results are a strong factor in determining whether or not a district is considered to have high quality schools.

A School District Makes A Community

While there are certainly other considerations in determining where you choose to purchase your next home the quality of the school district is a very important part of the process. Because of the benefits that good schools give to the community at large, make sure that you factor it into your search for a suitable property whether you presently have children or not.