need good schools/districts in SF or neighboring cities! HELP!

my family is relocating to california - possibly somewhere in SF or a neighboring city. i have a 14 year old and 3 year old - and so good schools are a PRIORITY! been doing some research on great schools but still am a bit confused. anyone out there know what the school system in CA is like, or which city has the best public school system?

Parent Answers to "need good schools/districts in SF or neighboring cities! HELP!"

View 3 answers: Newest-Oldest, Oldest-Newest
Display all answers

The schools in Lafayette(in the East bay area) are very sought after. Very high scores.

It makes a difference whether you're talking about San Francisco itself, or the surrounding area. Within San Francisco, it doesn't matter where you live, all the schools are on a lottery system. You could even live across the street from a school and not be assigned there. We had the same question when we were looking for an elementary school at the same time we were looking to buy our first house. The school district office told us it didn't matter where we lived. At first, we thought they were just trying to do good PR work and insist that all SF schools were good and it shouldn't matter which neighborhood we moved to. Then we found out, the place you live in has no bearing in which school you'll get assigned to.
For the 14 year old, I have knowledge of three high schools. The first is Lowell, which is a school that accepts kids based on grades. The second is School of the Arts (SOTA), that kids audition to get into, either through music, art, theatre, etc. The third is Balboa, where my oldest son goes. He's in 11th grade and when he first said he'd like to go to Balboa, I was adamant that he would not. It had a bad reputation for a while, but the year before he started there, it started turning around into being a school that was a more desirable place to go. High schools, too, are on the "lottery" system.

A good place to start is the San Francisco page here on GreatSchools.net:

www.greatschools.net/city/San_Francisco/CA

From here, you can check out how schools compare in SF and nearby cities. Hope this helps!

Any contributed content above is the subjective opinion of that member or external author, and not of GreatSchools. GreatSchools does not check for accuracy in community posts or verify the contributor’s identity. If you are searching for health-related advice we strongly suggest you seek professional medical support. View our Community Guidelines for more details.

Local Q&A

Top cities

Los Angeles	Phoenix
Houston	San Diego
Chicago	Dallas
San Jose	San Antonio
New York	Miami

Browse questions about

Local Q&A is brand new! What do you think? Give us your feedback in our feedback forum.