Elk Grove or Natomas? Specially from School District Perspective! (San Jose: for sale, real estate)

[Autism_Dad]

Hi there,

I currently live in San Jose and have two kids 7 and 3 years old.
My older one has Autism and due to high bayarea cost, I want to move to either Elk Grove or Natomas. Why? because I can afford a house easily and still pay for my son's out of pocket therapies. Is Elk Grove really that dangerous? or Natomas? Out of the two? which one is better as far as school district is concerned and "quality of people" ? in terms of a safe area? I travel for work and of course want to make sure that my family will remain safe. Again, my main concern is schools and safety. Any advise would be highly appreciated. Thanks, Ed

[CityGirl72]

On school distrcit alone I'd pick Elk Grove

My some has Asperger's Syndrome (on the Autism spectrum) and I'm liking the San Juan Sschool District for his special needs

[zen_klown]

A couple of suggestions. Among the districts, there can be a lot of variance as to the availability of resources they have available for different types of disabilitilies. First you might want to contact the resources center at the UC Davis Mind institute. They can refer you to some of the support groups and the members of those support groups can give you feedback as which districts are best for a specific disability. You will find them here.

Resource Center

My hunch is that the bigger the district the more likely they will have the most resources, but that is just my hunch, I would talk to the people in one of the support groups in the Mind Center.

Once you have some feedback as to which district is best for your kids disability, then I would look for schools in that district with the highest test scores

2007 Base API County List of Schools - Sacramento County

You might find these sites helpful.

This is a map of schools by test score. You will have to click on it a few times to find the data for Sacramento.

California School Performance Maps

This is the craigslist housing listings in a map form.

HousingMaps

This is the mls in map form.

HotPads - Map Search for Real Estate, Apartments & Houses for Rent, Foreclosures and Homes for Sale

Together what all of these sites allow you to do is figure out, what it costs to buy into a school with a specific test score.

The one data out lier is the Sacramento City Unified School District. In the City district, the high scoring schools are magnet schools. That could be good or bad. The good is that it may allow you to buy into a cheaper school and send your child to the better school.

In San Juan, they have an open enrollment policy. What that means is that if there is space in a school after all of the families who live in the attendance area for the neighborhood school have gotten into a specific school, then they open it up to anyone else who wants to attend that school who lives in the district. What that means is that if you want to send your kid to a high scoring, but school with low attendance levels, your probably can do it.

[Autism_Dad]

Thank you CityGirl and Zen_Klown for your input. I am leaning towards Elk Grove because I also read about "neverstreaming" concept by Elk Grove school district, where they encourage "mainstream" education for kids on the spectrum.

Regards,

Zains BAba