David

San Mateo info is coming on Sunday.

Susan

Not crazy if you consider the cost (after tax) of private school. You're talking a minimum of $8,000/year (for some Catholic grade schools) to $20,000+ for some private grade schools.

You have 2 kids, and you're paying $96,000-$240,000 JUST FOR GRADE SCHOOL. And this is not tax deductible. It is completely rational to pay $300,000 in additional mortgage & property tax costs to buy into better public schools, especially once you start moving into middle & high schools, where it's next to impossible to pay less than $18,000/year/child for private school.

Additionally, your $300,000 in mortgage costs is likely fixed, where tuition goes up 7-10%/year on average.

I wonder if anyone has ever done a study to figure out the correlation between API and home prices. My rough estimate from the prices in San Mateo is that the home prices go up about 200-300K per 100 points in API. Pretty crazy! Are you going to post the scores from cities farther north (San Mateo, Burlingame, Millbrae)?

If I am not mistaken, Redwood City is one of the few Mid-Pen towns where all schools are magnets. when my children were in elementary school, they went to Orion, which was a parent participation school and pulled kids from all over the city. They switched to the magnet school program during the 1990s, so that no matter where you live in RWC, you can choose to go to a different schoo, based on topic (science, spanish immersion, performing arts) or on scholastic achievement. You don't always get your first pick, however.

North Star is a magnet school that requires the kids to apply and pass some IQ tests, so I don't think it matters to buy a house right next to it. The kid has to be smart to get in.