we used to live in the bay area (all the bad parts) salinas, ca and two other towns in bay area that were , well, not desirable when you have kids.
it was horrible to the point where i had to take my kid out of school and homeschool him(bullying, fighting, gangs, teachers not caring at all, police every other day there for some reason, weekly emails about bombthreats, kids being jumped in front of the school,kids smoking/selling weed on schoolgrounds,- 7th grade? hello? kids being threatened, money stolen and i could go on and on )
the schools would not allow a transfer out of the school district/ the other schools did not want a transfer in etc..
at that time we had no money for private schools.
what broke the camels back for me was, he was attacked (he looked scrawny, but he was already working out like crazy at that time , i did not know that stuff was going on for a while) by 2 other kids in school, and got in trouble for
= wait for it= defending himself, knocking one of the kids teeth out, mind you those two are always in the office, sherrif called on them, gangrelated, always harrasing kids etc
other kids where texting my child afterwards saying how awesome someone stood up to them...
so the school has a no tolerance motto or some such nonsense(that alone is laughable) and told me that he is expelled for 3 days, whereto i say you punish him for defending himself against two known thugs? yes, its our policy, and are you calling someone on those other two kids? well they will be expelled too? thats the punishment .. to which is said and my no tolerance policy is that i am not putting up with this any longer and take my kid out of school/ i had no idea what i was doing, no plan whatsoever...
i had no clue (before i came to the states) that you have to buy a house in a good school district so your
kids can get a good education/and can actually go to school without fear/distraction!!!
That alone is ridiculous to me.
now we live in an award winning school district , not in california anymore, we got a joboffer in another state and took it.
kids are doing exceptionally well (second one was just ready to start school when we moved)...
i put my finger on the map (well greatschols.net map) and figured where the good schools are and thats where we bought.
please learn from my mistakes, and dont send your kids to a bad school..if i can only prevent one child to go through that
it is worth something.
we were young, stupid and did not have money then, i was fresh off the mayflower , so i really had no clue what the deal was.
I would never ever buy in a bad district again, NEVER (as long as i have kids going to school, after that all is fair game)
i do not like living in the city either (thats where all the good schools are here) but i suck it up
for another 10 years , cause i know what the alternative is.
i do miss the weather terribly though, i have to give california that at least.