looking for a safe, LGBT friendly area with good schools

[cyberous]

Originally Posted by mcmcl

I'm going to message you!

Here is the downtown/uptown area with single family homes, I didnt know how to send it in the DM . I did not include the waterfront, but you can see it on the map. Mainstreet is going to be the focus and starts at 4th plain blvd and goes all the way down to 5th street.

[texasdiver]

Originally Posted by cyberous

Where are you moving from?
What line of work or industry?
What else is important to you?

Downton Vancouver is very diverse and has quick access to Portland proper(perfect Tax benefits mix) Its exciting Waterfront project is attracting lots of attention to the area. The schools are excellent I've been told. The police presence is very noticeable and provides a sense of security.

The negative to the area is affordability. The good schools come with a lofty tax burden and a larger barrier to entry due to higher costs and lower inventory compared to other parts of Vancouver.

Hope this helps, send me a dm if you need any details or have specific questions.

Well, the schools around the downtown Vancouver area are somewhat struggling, mainly because the student population is amongst the poorest and most diverse in the Vancouver metro area. That area feeds into Fort Vancouver and Hudson's Bay High Schools which are the two lowest performing schools in the greater Vancouver area, mostly due to demographics, not necessarily because the schools are bad. You can look them up on Niche to find all the data.

If school quality is a primary driver and you want to avoid the more remote exurban areas that are more conservative then I would recommend searching primarily in the attendance zones of the following high schools. Which are also (not coincidentally) the more affluent parts of greater Vancouver.

Columbia River
Skyview
Mountain View
Union
Camas

I'm less familiar with the elementary and middle schools but they are going to roughly track the high schools because frankly, it's mostly demographics.

Here is a very rough map of boundary lines going more or less from memory. You can google up more precise ones as they are all online. Camas and Union extend way out to the rural areas in the NW corner of the map but you probably don't want to live way out there.



And here is a google map showing Niche HS letter ratings for all the greater Vancouver area high schools.



And another for the elementary schools, which vary less than the high schools. All those dark green A rated elementary schools are in Camas and Fisher's Landing which feeds into Mountain View in the Evergreen school district.

[cyberous]

Thanks for your info on the schools, I don't have kids. When comparing schools, would you say Vancouver schools are better than Portland schools? I have friends in West Linn that were raving about Vancouver schools. Other friends have kids here, https://arts.vansd.org/ and have nothing but positive things to say about it. What are your thoughts?

[texasdiver]

Originally Posted by cyberous

Thanks for your info on the schools, I don't have kids. When comparing schools, would you say Vancouver schools are better than Portland schools? I have friends in West Linn that were raving about Vancouver schools. Other friends have kids here, https://arts.vansd.org/ and have nothing but positive things to say about it. What are your thoughts?

Vancouver School of the Arts is an excellent magnet school with about 600 students that is highly rated. A lot of affluent parents in the downtown Vancouver area send their kids there rather than to Hudson's Bay which is the local comprehensive HS for that area, which tends to bleed off the best students from Hudson's Bay and make it lower performing. Evergreen school district in east Vancouver has Henrietta Lacks Health and Bioscience HS which is that district's equivalent magnet which is a similar size school located next door to Peace Health hospital and also an excellent school. But since Evergreen is a more affluent district on average, the presence of that magnet hasn't affected the other schools so much.

As to the question of Oregon vs Washington. I've taught high school in several different states and have been following school policy and education politics for decades. I would summarize things generally as follows:

1. School "quality" generally follows demographics. If you give me the average income for a zip code I could predict school ratings for that zip code with about 90% accuracy. That holds true for pretty much every state. There are, however, some caveats.

2. Some zip codes are so uber-wealthy that most families with school age kids send their children to exclusive prep schools and so the local public schools can atrophy when few local affluent families use them. That is more of an east coast thing where wealthy private prep schools are more common but you are starting to see it in places like Seattle.

3. inequality is far greater in some states than others, mainly due to state policies with respect to school funding. So, for example, the discrepancy between the rich and poor schools in Texas is going to be far far wider than in say Minnesota or Massachusetts.

4. Some states just do a far better job of supporting public education than others which more or less lifts all boats. So again, zip codes in MN, MA, CT, etc. will have much better public schools than zip codes with comparable wealth in AL, LA, MS, etc.

What does that mean for the Pacific Northwest? My observation is that public schools in Washington are generally better funded and supported than public schools in Oregon. This is across the board. Consequently, if you take two districts with comparable levels of wealth in OR and WA (say Happy Valley OR, and Camas WA) you will find that the schools in WA tend to have more resources, have lower class sizes, and tend to be higher rated. But that is only if you are comparing apples to apples. Obviously Lake Oswego is going to have better resourced schools than say Washougal because the place is dripping with wealth and has far higher property values (more tax revenues per student).

Let's explore this comparison further. According to the 2020 census, Happy Valley has a population of 25,600, a median household income of $124,000 and according to Zillow, a median home price of $737,350. Camas has a population of 27,000, a median household income of $116,000 and according to Zillow, a median home price of $751,800. So pretty comparable cities with Happy Valley being a bit more affluent than Camas on average. Yet if you look up the school ratings on Niche you find that Camas HS is higher rated than Clackamas HS on pretty much every metric. Smaller class sizes (22 to 1 vs 29 to 1). Higher proficiency on standardized testing. And better funding for things like music, sports, arts, etc. That is largely difference between the funding and support for schools in WA compared to OR. I can't link directly to the school profile pages on Niche (violates this site's rules) but you can google them up easy enough.

Also, within a state there can be a lot of difference between districts. Camas, for example, has been able to continually pass all of its school tax levies and so has kept ahead of population growth by building new schools. You will see very few portable classrooms in Camas and mostly at the HS. Ridgefield, by contrast, has had 5 or so levies fail by narrow margins in the past few years. So they are falling farther and farther behind and all their schools are a sea of overcrowding and portable classrooms. They are reportedly doing things like using the cafeteria for classes, using the theater, and every other bit of open space. Plus hot swapping classrooms so teachers are kicked out of their classrooms during prep periods for other teachers to come in. Trust me, it is a lot harder to teach something like Biology with classes of 35 students in an English classroom (with no lab space or equipment) than it is to teach Biology with classes sizes of 25 students in an actual fully stocked modern science classroom with lots of lab space and equipment. And the experience is going to be a lot more engaging and meaningful for the students. Ridgefield was "supposed" to be the "next Camas" but lately I'm not so sure. They have dug themselves enough of a hole through bond failures that it is going to take a generation to catch back up with Camas on school facilities and funding. If you have kids you care about schools today, not what they might be in 2040.

So, bottom line? A home in Vancouver at a given price (say $600,000) is likely to have higher rated schools than a house in Portland for the same price. But that is also very dependent on neighborhoods. The inner city neighborhoods tend to have lower performing schools everywhere because the bulk of affluent people living in those neighborhoods tend to be childless and the bulk of children are poorer kids pulling from surrounding apartment complexes and rentals. In Portland the bulk of affluent families with school age children are going to live in the west hills, places like Eastmoreland, and suburbs like Lake Oswego, Clackamas, West Linn, Beaverton, Wilsonville, Tigard, etc. Which are more or less comparable to Felida, Salmon Creek, East Vancouver, and Camas in the Vancouver metro.

My advice to someone with school age kids who is concerned about school quality is frankly to move to the most affluent close-in suburbs in the Portland metro area. Honestly, school politics in Portland Public Schools is rather toxic and going to be a recipe for frustration. There are some very good schools there but the politics are completely dysfunctional. Move instead to Camas or East Vancouver, or places like Lake Oswego, West Linn, Tualatin, Tigard, or the nicer parts of Beaverton if you just want consistently good schools and not have to constantly worry about toxic school politics.

Of course if you are affluent and have the time and inclination to spend a lot of time engaging in your kid's education then they are going to be just fine no matter what schools you land in. But you may have to put in more effort in some school districts than others.