Said neighbors lived across the street and had all three of their children in the best public school within a 10 mile radius of our respective homes, the kids did not live in the school district of the school they attended, and I’m uncertain if, at the time it was legal; today it is not and parents receive big fines and kids are removed. The summer before their youngest was about to start school, the family received a letter telling them that as they did not live in the district, their children would no longer be able to attend the schools. The family, desperate to keep the kids in this best school, hurriedly sold their house, at a sizeable loss, and moved into a rented apartment in the best school district. Their kids all went through the district, graduated and went on the college; are now all gainfully employed around the country, and their parents are still living in the temporary rented apartment that they sacrificed the home they owned for, in order to give their children a better education.
I often wonder if they ever regretted selling the home to live in a rental that they could then never get out of.
That used to happen around here all the time. Only the parents would rent an apartment in the district, have all mail sent there, but the family would not live there. They would stay in their primary home but use the apartment (which was empty) as their primary address.
Well today I helped my daughter out with senior shootout/nerf wars, with the help of a neighbor who warned us there was a trap laid outside our house (she remembered it from when her three kids played!). Had some fun taking pictures of them on the security camera and having my daughter text them the pics. So now they know we have cameras and probably will go after easier targets.
We see that in a lot of surrounding school districts, living in close proximity to Philly. The Philly school system is atrocious and unless you get lucky in the lottery for a good charter school, you can have really poor choices. So parents rent in surrounding areas if they can.
A few years back there was a kid who was known to not live in the district attending the elementary school. He was in a very tough family situation, local school was just dismal and his mother just wanted the best for him. No one said a word.
There was an incident around here a year or so ago where the parents enrolled their kid in a school for his sport. They didn’t rent an apartment or something to keep it all above board and his team ended up getting penalized -forfeited their conference championships and state title I believe.
In Dallas the good school district just outside the Dallas public schools had that issue all the time. They would actually go check the rented apartments to ensure that the student and parents actually lived there. You couldn’t just rent it.
I pulled my kid from our excellent public school district and put him in a private high school because our public school was just not a good fit for him.
When his PSAT came back with a truly dreadful score (1000 iirc) we hired a private tutor. He went 2 x week. I think I paid $50/hr - so $200/wk. He saw her for about six months. His SAT score went up a lot (don’t recall the exact number) but we found he did better on the ACT - where his 1st score was 28, but went up to 32.
His sport (sailing) he learned over 8 years at sleepaway camp. We don’t own a home on a lake or a sail boat so if we hadn’t sent him to camp he wouid not have learned to sail. It was a big factor in the schools where he chose to apply - though he never was recruited. He ended up at a school with only club sailing, but raced all 4 years.
TBS, except for the private SAT/ACT tutoring we were completely hands off while he was in high school. Didn’t interfere in what courses he took and did not ask even him if he had done his homework or studied for his tests. After having to be all over him for that kind of stuff in his public middle school - we left all that up to him, his teachers and his guidance counselors.
He was a changed kid in new school and it all worked out perfectly.
Would school districts actually care about this kind of thing only if they were getting to the point of enrollment reaching capacity? A school district that is under capacity may have incentive to look the other way when the extra students who really live out of district bring extra funding from the state or whatever.
Not in NJ, where the funding is mostly from local property taxes. Your local district doesn’t want to “carry” any extra students who shouldn’t be there. In NYC there is lots of this address playing. Kids who “live” with relatives who are in a better school district. This has been true for years (even when I was a kid 50 years ago), because local schools can vary significantly in what they offer their students and their reputation.
We lived in the “wrong” school district and stayed when we could have afforded to move.
They had friends and were happy there.
I really don’t get all this maneuvering for the “best.”
And they did fine in college admissions. As I keep saying, schools accept the kid, not the school system. My thinking is that if they needed maneuvering from us to get into those colleges, they really didn’t need to be in them.
I accept that this, especially these days, is a minority opinion.
I sent my kids to various private schools until 5th and 7th grade. When we moved (multiple factors contributed to thoughts of moving, only one being schools), we did consider whether it was a better “investment” to pay for a mortgage or continue to send them to private school for HS. We chose to move, and we are happy with our choice. The public schools in our rea are excellent.
I have known people who lived out of district and lied to keep their kids in “better” schools. I never turned anyone in, but I wasn’t happy with them. At least one family claimed their daycare would as in the better district. (Mom stayed at home and they didn’t use daycare).
We paid for private independent K-12 school for our kids. More for their development as people than the academic boost. And French tutoring for a couple years in HS - they were just awful at it, it helped them squeak out Bs.
We sent our kids to public school k-8 but for HS, we let our kids apply, interview and choose the private HS they wanted. S was accepted at both of our state’s best HSs. He did very well there. D was accepted at the HS S attended and waitlisted at the other HS. She made lifelong friends there.
Both kids did the extracurriculars they wanted and had the energy for. S was a nmf, never took any prep courses. D took a prep course and it helped increase her SAT score substantially, since they taught her the math she hadn’t yet covered in HS.
Both handled their apps on their own — I paid the app fees.
In my area, people are craftier. They rent an apt with a few other families and split the rent. Sincethey don’t live there. It doesn’t matter how many.
We are fortunate to live in the best school district in our state…the public schools in my neighborhood area are better than the privates. It’s a good thing I didn’t have to spend money on privates because that free Georgia education never happened and I had to add $'s to merit money out of state. However, if we did not have good schools, I would not hesitate to pay for private, within reason.
@doschicos --a quality education of one’s mind growing up is an important thing. I’m just not convinced that that comes mostly from the school one is at.