Best elementary School in Austin and suburbs (Round Rock, Leander: how much, home)

[Tweeto]

Hi all,

We will be shifting to Austin in 4 months. I have to enroll my kid to an elementary school. I wanted to know :

1) Please give me three best Elementary schools in Austin and Suburbs.
2) Please also give me the name of the best Elementary school nearby the Arboretum area. My husband will be working there so It would be good if we can stay nearby.


Thanks in advance for the info

[hoffdano]

Your question can't be answered. There is no "best three" elementary schools. A great school for one chiles might not be so good for yours.

There are many very good elementary schools in the Austin area. You need to think about what makes a good school for your child (or children). Maybe you want a smaller campus. Or more/less diversity. Etc.

[mark311]

As hoffdano stated, there are many factors that you want to consider, however, one of those factors can be Texas Education Agency (TEA) Accountability Ratings (standardized test scores). You can follow the link below. You can search by District Name and enter each individual one to see all the schools in that district. Be sure to enter Eanes, Lake Travis, Austin, Leander, and Round Rock. Any of those districts could have an acceptable commute to the Arboretum area depending on what your husband considers an acceptable commute and what your price range for housing is.

2011 Accountability: List by District

[Austin97]

Originally Posted by Tweeto

Hi all,

We will be shifting to Austin in 4 months. I have to enroll my kid to an elementary school. I wanted to know :

1) Please give me three best Elementary schools in Austin and Suburbs.
2) Please also give me the name of the best Elementary school nearby the Arboretum area. My husband will be working there so It would be good if we can stay nearby.


Thanks in advance for the info

Laurel mountain elementary is one of the best and it is by the arboretum

[Tweeto]

Hey,

Thats true that every parent has different points to choose the school for their kids. But i wanted to know your choices and Why did you choose those schools.

If knowing my criteria helps then, I dont want a very big campus or very big school where the kid feels lost. I want a school where the teachers put equal emphasis on learning and co-curricular activities. My kid is little shy and soft by nature so i want a school where teachers give attention to each kid so that he does not get scared and put him self in a corner. Because as coming from France, It will be a very big change for him....so I want him to be very much at ease...

Thanks for the links and responses above....

[Idlewile]

The closest elementary schools are Caraway, Laurel Mountain in RRISD and Davis and Hill in AISD. You can look up reviews, ratings and specs for each school at greatschools.org, just enter in zip 78759.


If it were me, I would choose Laurel Mountain or Caraway (it's smaller) first, Hill next, then Davis. All are good and rated above average or excellent.

[TexasHorseLady]

As said above, the best school for your child depends a great deal more on your child than on the schools. As an example, the school that was great for my son would have been a disaster for his sister, and vice versa. This in the same family, same raising, same genetics - they're just two very different people with very different needs. Imagine, then, how much what suit's someone else's child from an entirely different family and being an entirely different kind of person from yours (or even the ratings that are based on test scores) might not suit yours at all! Sometimes a school with a lesser rating is a better fit and will do a better job of educating your child simply because the educational approach at that school works better for your child.

One resource that you might try, though, is GreatSchools, not so much for the ratings, though they have them along with other info, but for the comments by parents who do the ratings. Those give you an idea of why the parents rated a particular school the way they did which can be very useful in determining, from afar, the kinds of things you'll be looking for, or want to avoid, in a school.

What do you mean by "nearby", by the way? Round Rock and Leander and Austin ISD's all have schools that are quite good that could be considered "nearby" depending on what that means to you.

Sorry I can't give you a list of schools and say "any of these would work wonderfully for your child", but if there's anything that I've learned raising two kids, choosing a school is a lot more complicated than it would seem on the face of it!

[suit-n-tie white guy]

Doss Elementary. I like Bryker Woods as well. Know peopel who send their kids there and it's an upscale urban neighborhood that it's nestled in.

[Tweeto]

Thanks everyone.....
Are there any other parents whose kids did not speak english perfectly and sent their kids to PreK to brush up their english.

How did your kids react with this big change.
which preK you chose
What did you do to minimize the moving shock

[austinnerd]

I would not decide on a place to live purely based on what elementary school it feeds into. As mentioned, there are many ostensibly good schools near the Arboretum, but what if that "good" school doesn't work out for you? Plus just because your hubby works by the Arboretum doesn't mean you have to choose a home in that area. For instance, you could live a bit further south, say off of 35th and send your kid to Casis (a very highly regarded elementary school) and your husband would generally be going opposite of the traffic flow (more so in the morning than the afternoon). Alternatively, you could move a bit further north and live near Spicewood Elementary (another highly regarded elementary but in the Round Rock ISD). In both cases your husband could be within 10 minutes of work.

The amount of attention he gets probably depends more on the teacher than the school or necessarily the size of the classroom (since they'll all be roughly the same size with regards to the number of students). I know that Davis has a lot of Korean kids who speak very little English upon arrival (mainly Samsung folk) so they're used to dealing with non-native speakers.

If you're coming from France and you aren't adverse to private schools, then you might want to take a look at the Austin International School. They are currently located off of 183 and Oak Knoll but are planning on moving to Parmer and Adelphi this summer. This may ease the transition for your son.