Let’s face it, most people consider school districts when they look for a home to buy or rent. A good elementary school and high school for your kids will guarantee acceptance to a great college, leading to a high-paying job, big house and enough money to pay for your nursing home, right? Even if a couple has no children, they’re thinking of resale value down the road to like-minded buyers who know it’s a good idea to stay on the right side of their progeny.
But what about specific schools? Maybe you want to move into a larger home but not have your children change schools. Maybe your cousin Eddie told you that High School East is better than High School West for whatever reason, and you want your offspring to have every possible advantage in life starting with ninth grade. What do you do?
School Boards with multiple elementary, middle and high schools put a lot of effort into determining the region served by each school. There are two major considerations: class size and transportation. Obviously, it makes sense for a school to serve homes on streets that are closest to it, but avoiding overcrowding is a major factor. That explains why Ashford and Brittany, two developments across the street from each other in Plainsboro, are served by different elementary, middle and high schools. Kingston in South Brunswick is even stranger—children there are bused to Cambridge School, which is farther away than both Constable and Monmouth Junction Schools.
So you’re concerned about where your kids will go to learn for the next few years. What can you do? Fortunately, the transportation departments of township school boards have detailed lists of what street is served by which schools, available on their websites buried beneath pet license applications and grass recycling calendars, only slightly harder to retrieve than Trump’s tax returns. There’s gotta be an easier way.
There is.
Navigate to this page on my website, and you’ll find sortable tables of streets and entire developments with corresponding elementary, middle and high schools for Princeton, West Windsor, Plainsboro and South Brunswick. Using these tables, you’ll be able to determine if your future dream home sits on a street served by the school you want, or which developments you should look in to make sure your child finishes high school in the same building where she started. The tables are available on a mobile phone as well—go to realramble.com and find “Search for Schools by Street” in the menu.
Hopefully this information will make your home search a bit easier. It’s the least I can do to promote exclusivity on the internets.
