Possibly Moving to Tucson Area

I live in the Rita Ranch area and the Vail schools around here are great. My son goes to Mesquite Elementary and it has been a good experience so far. We moved here in 2002 as my husband got transfered with IBM. anyhow, I hope you find what you arwe looking for. When we moved here from CA, I was able to stay at home with my kids and I love it.

Newsweek magazine named the best school in America BASIS Tucson, a free-to-the public charter school, 5th to 12th grade. It is located in mid-town with 2 campuses, one for middle school, one for high school. My friend teaches there, and I can attest to the fact that these kids are awesomely motivated, very smart, politically savvy, creative, hard-working and high achieving. If I had school-age children, I would try to get them into BASIS. Check their web site, www.basistucson.org -- a good reason to move to Tucson, which is a wonderful city, very progressive, very warm, lots of desert and beautiful mountains surrounding it. The weather in winter is gorgeous -- the weather in summer is hot and during monsoon season, very wet sometimes -- daily thunderstorms, spectacular lightning. A large Hispanic population, lots of culture, lots of fun events going on, a world-class university and many fine restaurants add to the ambiance of the place. I love it here.

Check out Civano neighborhood. Its in the Vale school district and is definitely set up for community. Their is a web page for the neighborhood- I am sure u will find it if you google it.

I highly recommend moving to the Vail school district, perhaps to the Rita Ranch area if you are looking to be in neighborhoods. If you can at all help it, avoid TUSD (Tucson Unified School District), which covers most of Tucson. The Foothills district is good, but it tends to get pretty pricey.
I myself live in Rita Ranch, and I love it! My children are much younger than yours, but the playgroup they are in has older siblings around your children's age and their mothers are very happy with the school system. There are plenty of community sports for children their ages as well. It is far away from the center of town, but also fairly well removed from crime. Large neighborhoods, but quiet.
B. S

I'm sure you'll get a lot of advice. here's my two cents: my husband is a teacher and teaches both in vail (just SE of Tucson) and sahuarita (south of tucson). if you're interested in either of those areas he would suggest sahuarita. vail's schools are considered some of the best, they are technologically the most advanced, and test high. but be aware that they "teach to the test" and some teachers are getting fed up with it. if you have a kid with a more "out of the box" learning style, they may have difficulty. he has been very impressed with sahuarita's school district.
if you are looking specifically in tucson, i can speak for my area, which is on the east side of tucson. we are in the tucson unified s.d.(tusd), which in general has a lot of problems, but it's huge, so you just have to find the right schools, there are some great ones. we live in an older community with a golf course called rolling hills. the houses are very affordable, especially for a golf community, and it's a very community oriented area, there is a park, and every evening people are always out jogging, walking, playing tennis, walking dogs, etc. the elementary school is a great one, one of the best in tusd. once you hit jr. high, things change, and it hard to find a good one anywhere in tusd. one other thing about schools here is that there are a lot of charter schools, some are scary, but some are college prep and out perform the public schools. they are free, since they are charter, also most of the montessori schools are charter, but they are hard to get into. some charter schools i would suggest are tucson country day school and academy of tucson. another very good school district is flowing wells school district, although some of the neighborhoods can be a bit scary, so you need to be careful.
the area you really want to avoid is south tucson.
if you have any specific questions about areas, feel free to email me.

Hi A.!
I've lived in Tucson since I was 9 years old. It's a really great place to live, work and go to school. The Tucson climate and terrain is very diverse - varying from desert, to the waterfalls at Sabino canyon, to Patagonia lake, to the snow on the mountain in the winter.

I live in Rita Ranch and grocery stores, banks, schools and doctors, dentists, shopping, etc is within walking distance.

The BEST school district is the Vail school district. It is for students living in the Civano, Rita Ranch, Mesquite, and Vail areas. You can check their site for exact boundaries:
http://vail.k12.az.us/
They have received A+ Excelling recognition awards. They have inclusive classrooms so that those with disabilities are blended with their peers. This has been aweseome for our son with autism. It's a year-round school (starts in July) and they have breaks throughout the year to = the typical summer time off. This keeps them learning and retaining info all the time.

Here are some Tucson links:
http://www.visittucson.org/
http://downtowntucson.org/
http://www.tucsonaz.gov/index.php

Here are some of my neighborhood links:
http://www.ritaranch.org
http://www.civanoneighbors.com/

Best of luck!
C.

Hello A.! I am L. Lummus, 40, married with two beautiful girls, 7 and 11. I've lived in Tucson most of my life and never paid attention to the different school zones until I had my kids. We live in the Northwest part of Tucson in the Marana Unified School District. The schools are all A+, Excelling schools and I have found them to be excellent. My children attend Quail Run Elementary and have had every opportunity given to them to excel.

An FYI about Tucson Unified School District (in the heart of the city) - they are currently millions in debt and have threatened shutting down schools all over town. After a city-wide upheaval, they've now turned to firing new teachers, librarians, counselors and maintenance professionals all in an effort to balance their budget.

Oro Valley in the far North side of Tucson is a beautiful community with excellent schools as well. Copper Creek Elementary is a stand-out school as well as Wilson K-8. I hope my advice helps you with your decision. Let me know! Thanks, L. Lummus

Rancho Sahuarita has excellent schools and has a ton of family activities, parks, community pools, etc. Also, the Vail school district is good as well, and there are plenty of new communities in the Vail district as well. It depends on where your job is and how far you are willing to travel for work.

Hi A.. I'm a Tucson native, been here 34 years now, and I'm a teacher. I've taught 3rd, 5th, 6th, and pre-K. I hear that Vail is wonderful, but depending where your hubby gets a job it can be a far drive. Your other good options are Wilson K-8, Paited Sky, and Copper Creek. These are all in the Amphitheater School District. Anything in District 16, Catalina Foothills, is also great, although it is a pricey area for housing. We live in Oro Valley, we bought our house here so our kids could go to Wilson. The prices range in this area from mid-to-high, so just shop around. The market has crashed and there are many deals to be found, so it's a great time to move here!

One of the best things to do is to go on the Arizona Department of Education website, http://www.ade.az.gov/. You can find school report cards there.

Another really great site is the daily Star, one of our local papers. Here is the address you should put in: http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/education/. You will find public and charter school information there.

Also really important to know what housing looks like and costs in these various areas. The place to go is www.tarmls.com, type in "public search". You can type all kinds of search parameters including specific schools, parts of town etc.

The Vail School district is in SE or XS(extreme south). It's a great community and tends to be a lot of newer homes. It is experiencing a lot of growth.

The Catalina Foothills School District is mostly in N(North Tucson) and also Rates Well. You will find a combination of newer and older homes here, on various sized lots, as well as lots of condos. There is also great shopping and resturants here.

The Tanque Verde School District is all in 85749, and is NE. It's in the beautiful Tanque Verde Valley and has much more rural feeling, but with a very involved community. It tends to have a lot of older homes on larger lots many between 1-3 acres. You will find a lot of horse property here.

Marana will be in NW, and has a lot of newer homes, and lots of activities.

Oro Valley with amphitheater school district, is a little higher in elevation and on the NW and possibly XNW side

In recent years there has been a lot of commercial development on the NW side of town, so shopping and resturants are plentiful.

Sahuarita is a brand new area in XS. It has a great development called Rancho Sahuarita, that even has a water park.

As many have mentioned TUSD or Tucson Unified School District is in a lot of trouble. They are huge covering pretty much all geographic areas of town, but also all of central tucson. There are some good schools here but the management of the district is in a great deal of trouble and flux. See the Daily Star for more information.

These are just some of the districts and parts of town. But it's a good starting point. You can find more information online. When searching the multiple listing site, you can better search when you put in area of town or school district.

When searching for a school, once you have narrowed it down a little, go and visit. Meet with the principal and ask questions. Test scores and other parents comments are a good starting point but nothing beats getting a feel for it yourself. Also be advised that class size varies widely between school districts and grades, as does the number of classroom helpers and availability of classes such as music, art, spanish, and PE. Also keep in mind that the newer areas of town, are also growing quickly, which means that schools are in a lot of flux, as they are strive to keep up with a quickly growing student population. You need to weigh this with, community feel, activities, housing type and of course cost. Also if considering a move to Vail school district, be aware that they are on a different school year than the rest of Tucson. Their school has more vacations throughout the year and less time in the summer. School will start up for them in July sometime. The rest of Tucson gets out this week and goes back early to mid August.

Hope this helps. Let me know if there is anything more I can do for you!

J.

A.,

Vail School District is your best bet. Also lots of area (safe) to walk, especially in the Rita Ranch area. My daughter goes to Cottonwood Elementary, and we're very happy with it.

~D.