Cheap Today, Cheaper Tomorrow?
“There is a great opportunity to purchase real estate today,” Wendy Silverstein, the executive vice president of capital markets at Vornado Realty Trust, said at the conference. “Unfortunately, if you buy property today, it will probably be cheaper tomorrow.” – TRD
the whole schools thing is not so easy to unravel. i have been touring schools and they are so many more options than i thought. miss muffett, there are schools where i live in williamsburg that are probably not on your radar, but are terrific. look at 17, 132 and 84. also, st. nicholas is very reasonable and is doing a great job. our middle school is excellent as well. also, if you are close to the city, there are schools like the earth school or the community school in the east village. also, all of the gifted and talented programs. just branch out. we did, and we got the place we wanted – i mean really everything we wanted for the price – and we have great neighbors and couldn’t be happier with our current school or our future choices.
beyond the superficial, think about your actual needs, and try looking at something different maybe. good luck.
Good luck with your house-hunting!
I wish all these young families speed getting settled, not having a nervous breakdown doing it, and most importantly: Happiness!
Re: my school research – I did do tons of research already (I visited more than a dozen schools and read/discussed many more) but admittedly I limited it somewhat since there were other reasons I wanted to stay in District 15 beyond just school zone. One school I visited outside District 15 was the Community Roots Charter School, which is amazing. Anyway, I have indeed been hearing good things about PS11, I know PS9 has been getting better, etc. etc. and I certainly agree that there are a lot of up and coming schools that parents can get involved in to make even better. I did not in any way mean to pass judgment on other hoods, simply to say that, at the time we started our search, we limited it for various reasons, including school, and now that one child is already in public school, we don’t want to live incredibly far away especially since we want our other child to either attend same school or one nearby. To the person who says I can better afford private school by renting, we very deliberately are seeking to keep our mortgage in line with our rental costs (we are lucky to have trade up cash in hand to do so) so this comment makes no sense. And besides, private school tuition is too expensive for us no matter what, but even if we could afford it, I believe in the principle of public school and am glad to be an active member of my community by being very involved in my local school. Anyway, enough about schools – we can stick to real estate.
gwk-the majority of the parents that i know take great inconvenient lengths to take their children to great public & private schools. i mean commuting all over the city. so i greatly disagree with you.
As long as we’ve got 50% thinking the sun goes round the earth and 50% knowing the earth goes round the sun, we’ve broken even.
The truth is, parents will tell you they’re happy with the school pretty much everywhere because they don’t want to think they’re sending their child to a mediocre school and often the local school is so convenient they don’t do much research and just send their kids there because it’s easy. Goes along with the study that most parents think their children’s schools are good, even while most americans are horribly educated.
Heather, I don’t think these considerations are applicable below 5th grade or so, not least becuase teachers are able to control the class.
I can’t comment on the fabled ps321. However, our experience was parents physcially assaulting teachers at parents’ evenings (twice, separate people) in a city school which we pulled our daughter from two years back. We were fortunate enough to find another school where the teachers and the parents weren’t on opposite sides.
And while I’ll agree with you that its easy to make incorrect or convenient assumptions about the values of parents, when it comes to students “larking around” it is pretty clear cut as to what a student should and should not be doing at school.
okay. gotcha – of course you have to look at other factors. and it seems to me that snark’s example suggests that, indeed, kids can and do take advantage of what’s offered to them in some lesser-known schools. my (and other posters too, it seems) point is that there seem to be a lot of mistaken assumptions about the “values” and “larking around” of kids/families in schools that are not the much-praised ps 321.