Posted by Parent, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on May 24, 2007 at 9:58 am

Good luck in your move and househunting.

I am sure the realtors in the area will let you know how wonderful all our schools are and which ones are in your neighborhood when you are looking at any particular home. However, there are some things you should know which you won't get told.

Our schools are suffering from great increases in enrollments at present and when you are actually ready to enroll, you will be allocated space in whichever school has space. We have two high schools, the one further away from the downtown area (Gunn) always fills up by about June and the only space is at the other school (Paly) which is also excellent school. There are three middle schools, Terman is smaller than the other two JLS and Jordan, and Jordan is the one nearer downtown. You should be able to get into whichever of these without too much trouble. The elementary schools nearer the downtown area are what we call the north cluster and they are all bigger than the others and have to overflow students into what we call the west cluster which are nearer Terman and Gunn. There are two elementary schools near the Stanford campus, where you should have no problems of getting a place.

At present the school district is trying to work out options for what to do with our increasing numbers. We have quite a bit of new housing being developed in the city and also any housing that comes onto the market is being snatched up quickly with people wanting to move into the area for the schools.

Hopefully, this will not frighten you, I just wanted to give you the lowdown so that you would not have any surprises. There are many good things about Palo Alto schools and I have just given you what you may not find out elsewhere. One of the other things that you may not be told is that generally the schools are packed with great families who get involved in volunteering in the schools and they do have a great community feel.

Hope to meet you in the future.

Posted by Newcomer, a resident of the Old Palo Alto neighborhood, on May 24, 2007 at 7:38 pm

We found the Neighborhoods booklet the Palo Alto Weekly publishes every year to be very helpful. It describes every neighborhood and the neighborhood school and has a map for each area. I don't know if there is an online version of it or not. Perhaps someone from the Weekly can answer that. Good luck!

Posted by Mom, a resident of the Palo Verde neighborhood, on May 24, 2007 at 8:57 pm

More of an answer for your question ..

Go to greatschools.net to look up the PA schools. The site has a lot of great information in addition to the scores ....