Schools in Golden Valley -- Hopkins or Robbinsdale District?

Hi Sara-
We live in Golden Valley and we are in the Hopkins School District and our son goes to the Hopkins Chinese Immersion School in our district and we have LOVED the experience so far! Our neighborhood school is Meadowbrook and it was a tough decision to have him go to the Chinese Immersion School (Xin Xing Academy). We have many friends whose kids go to Meadowbrook and they have loved their experience as well. We moved to Golden Valley 4 years ago and we love how centrally located it is and clean and safe it is! Good luck!

St Louis Park also has a Spanish Immersion Program and it is wonderful. We moved from St. Louis Park to the Golden Valley area and decided to keep our daughter in PSI (Park Spanish Immersion) as we were VERY happy with the school.

We also kept our son in the St. Louis Park school district but not before researching other options. We were ready to enroll him at Meadowbrook but decided to commit to the commute in order to keep him with his friends. From what we could find though, Meadowbrook has a wonderful program, the staff is extremely open and helpful and the gifted and talented program seemed solid (our son is in the SLP gifted and talented program so this was important to us).

Good luck with the home sale and the school transition -- whatever you choose to do.

Dear Sara,
My stepson was in the IB program through middle school (Sandburg) and high school (Cooper HS) in the Robbinsdale district.

He is not in his first year at the U of M in Duluth, so time will tell how he does, though he is a smart kid and the enrichment was good. Although he choose not to continue with the official IB program in HS, he still took the classes.

My husband, (also a Cooper HS graduate), indicated if it had not been for the IB program at Cooper, he would not have been in favor of having his son go to Cooper (we live in Bloomington, though it would be unlikely my stepson's mother would have approved moving him to Bloomington, but we would have more of a reason to consider a different school if IB not offered). My husband's decision also considers study body and the sport's program.

Cooper has its challenges of student (as I am sure all schools do), so having his son in IB helped to keep in with kids that were motivated and dedicated to doing school work.

My husband was very disappointed in the baseball program as well since the coach was not very effective in his evaluation of players (lazy) and pigeon-holed players in set positions (which is discouraged by college coaches), so needless to say my stepson did not have the best experience in baseball and originally indicated he was not going to try-out for the college team. He has since had second thoughts and we hope he will make an effort to try so he can continue to enjoy the sport (not that he has ambitions for professional level, we just want him to enjoy the sport for as long as possible).

My son had a lot of friends at Armstrong (though they only offer Advance placement courses)

We have friends from church in the Hopkins district and they seem happy.

I would highly encourage you to visit all schools (from elementary to HS, so you can make a good decision since you want to provide continuity and access to friends). If you end up communting, realize this commits you for a long duration as you want your child to be able to play with school friends and stay connected to the school community.

Hi Sara! Golden Valley is a great place to live. I lived in New Hope for several years, very close to Golden Valley. The schools are great! My daughter went to Sunny Hollow before it closed and now goes to Sonnesyn. My friend's kids go to Noble and Robbinsdale Middle school. Another friend has her son at the Spanish Immersion school. The district has many wonderful people involved in it. I don't know much about Meadowbrook. The enrichment programs available are great! I don't have personal experience but I know several kids who have been involved in the different programs and it is working wonderfully for them. Let me know if you would like to talk further.
M. S

Hey Sara,
I noticed you didn't mention St. Louis Park, which is in that same area. SLP has a top notch, highly awarded school district. And we have a Spanish Immersion school - our kids are in it and it's great. All the non-immersion schools are part of the IB (International Bacclaureate) program as well. SLP is one of the only western suburbs with it's own school district - which is fantastic because it's not as enormous as the others you mentioned.
We have a real small community feel with all the big community perks.

Here is a little blurb about our high school, which is highly awarded. "St. Louis Park High School is ranked as one of the top 1000 public high schools in America by Newsweek magazine at number 305 in the country; third in ranking of Minnesota high schools in the top 1000. St. Louis Park made "The List" last year as well, at number 567."

Here is a link to check out. http://www.slpschools.org/profile.html

Good luck!