March 21, 2008

School Days

I didn’t think much about schools until I had a baby—now I’m obsessed with the condition of our local public offerings. My first question at an open house is often, “what elementary school district is this place in?” If the agent gives me an “I don’t know,” it usually means, “you don’t want to know.” But there are a couple of great public schools around my eastside neighborhood—one of the top being Ivanhoe elementary in Silver Lake. It’s so good it actually drives up home prices in the immediate area. Franklin Avenue Elementary has also been impressing parents recently, and gives Los Feliz tykes a good option for expanding their brain power.

Trying to figure out which school you’d be in? If you’re getting that blank stare from realtors when you ask, head to the LAUSD school finder site to figure it out. Just put in an address and up pops the school your kiddies will be heading to if you purchase the home. Click on the link for the school and you get all kinds of information, like a list of suspensions by the race of the rule-breaker (odd but true), or statistics on how long the average teacher sticks around.

But if you really want the dirt, check out Greatschools.net, which has reviews from parents whose kids attend, as well as test scores and its own rating system. And there is also PublicSchoolReview.com which will tell you about teacher-student ratios and lots of other information.