Buying a 40 year old house in 95123 (Los Angeles, San Jose: first time home buyer, neighborhood, best school districts)

[BayAreaHome]

Hi all,
We are first time home buyers eyeing a 40 year old house in 95123 (Santa Teresa/Edenvale..not sure how to call it).
Will be immesely helpful if you guys can throw some light on this area/school(sakamoto elementary).


Thanks
B-A-H

[Freezer41]

its a nice area that nestles up to the foothills, good school, close to oakridge mall but traffic on santa teresa is pretty calm compared to blossom hill

[SantaTeresaHills]

In 2002, we decided to move from our house in the 95136 (Branham and Pearl) to another house. Since we couldn't afford houses in the best school districts, I search high and low for areas in the South Bay and Peninsula that had good elementary, middle, and high schools. Note that I said good and not great. I can't afford great.

There area a lot of areas that have good elementary schools that funnel into not so good middle and high schools. I really liked Morgan Hill and the schools were good but not great. My wife eventually vetoed Morgan Hill because of the distance to San Jose. We eventually decided on the Oak Grove district and decided on any elementary school south of Santa Teresa.

After a vacation to Vegas and southeastern Utah and then to Los Angeles, it makes me appreciate the Santa Teresa area of San Jose even more. Of most of the areas of San Jose, the Santa Teresa area has some of the least amount of traffic. To drive through that area in the east west direction, you take 85. People north of the Santa Teresa area who want to go to Almaden Valley which is directly south over the hill, have to go west to Almaden Expressway. What this means is the only people that drive in the Santa Teresa area are the people that live, work, or shop in that area. Since there aren't a huge number of jobs there nor a lot of shopping, most of the people driving Santa Teresa live in that area.

If you are driving locally, you really get used to very little traffic on the weekends. Also since light rail goes through the area, you can use public transportation to get to work. I currently don't use light rail but I do use CalTrain because I work in Redwood City. I can get to the Tamien station relatively quickly by driving and not using the freeways.

As for Sakamoto, it used to have the highest test scores within the Oak Grove school district. Since they filled up the school from outside the local elementary school area, the test scores have dropped. Other close schools like Glider and Taylor are also pretty good. There are a lot more kids in our neighborhood compared to Branham and Pearl and most end up going to the local public schools. Almost all of our friends now are from the schools, church, or neighborhood. In many cases, we know them from 2 or even all 3 areas. We first met them through our kids going to the schools together, finding out they are our neighbors, and then finding out that we also go to the same church.

There is a lot of parent involvement at Sakamoto which is the most important thing for elementary schools. My wife started the Art Vista program at Sakamoto which goes from kindegarten (?) through 3rd. Oak Grove district has arts programs for the 4th through 8th grades. From 4th through 6th grades, there are different art activities within class plus local school choir, honors choir for the district, and then 6th graders can join a 6th grade band which practices at the middle school. Academics are pretty good. If your child can handle it and their teachers think they can handle it, 7th graders can take Algebra. Even a few 6th graders can take Algebra.

They could do more for PE. They do some. Both the district and Sakamoto have activities for Gate students which are for students that are doing really well academically.