Berkeley: Back To School In The Elmwood

Family life in Berkeley’s Elmwood neighborhood can be pretty nice.

Picture the scene: you’ve miraculously managed to snag an elegant, comfortable Craftsman home on one of the area’s leafy streets, a Bernard Maybeck, perhaps, like the one currently for sale on Derby Street (pictured right).

You do your local shopping and eating out, coffee drinking, manicures and haircuts on nearby College Avenue. And at the weekends you take the kids hiking up Claremont Canyon or for a swim at Willard pool, or if you’re in the money, at the Claremont Hotel .

How can you afford this I hear you ask? Well for starters, you have sent the offspring to one of the local public schools so at least you’re not watching your bank balance shrink every month because of school fees.

Your choices — as far as choice goes in a school system which prioritizes diversity over geographical proximity — are as follows:

At elementary level there is John Muir on Claremont Avenue and Emerson on Forest Avenue. Willard serves as the local middle school. After that your moody teenager will most likely head off with all his or her buddies to the highly regarded Berkeley High which was ranked 297th in Newsweek’s recently published league table of the country’s Top 1,300 public high schools.

Mapped: The Elmwood neighbohood. ……………………………………………….Berkeley High School

Details of test results, student/teacher ratios and special programs at these schools can be found at Berkeley Unified School District’s website. You may also want to compare the schools’ scores with the Cal State API scores by visiting the website of California’s Department of Education.

Once you’ve done the rounds of the local schools, peruse these three homes currently for sale in The Elmwood:

2617 Parker Street, 3/1.5 1905 Craftsman designed by Julia Morgan: $997,500

2601 Derby Street: 5/3.5 1900 Brown Shingle designed by Bernard Maybeck: $1,495,000

2843 Prince Street: 2/1 1914 Bungalow/Cabin: $869,000