Saturday, November 1, 2014

Encinitas edges out Yucca Valley for 44th place on list of best So Cal cities for young families

... according to NerdWallet.

The poor rating is largely due to high housing costs and only OK schools. GreatSchools.org rates Encinitas schools an 8, which is above average, but below what should be expected for a community of highly educated professionals and very high property values. Carlsbad crushes us at #19 thanks largely to a better school ranking.

While automated internet rankings like Nerdwallet's should obviously be taken with a huge grain of salt, it's undeniably true that the cost of living here puts Encinitas way out of reach for many middle-class young families.

30 comments:

  1. So So Schools? Who has better schools in San Diego than Encinitas, Vista? Oceanside? SD Unified? Whoa we got beat out by Carlsbad, shudder.....

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    1. http://www.greatschools.org/california/solana-beach/

      http://www.greatschools.org/california/del-mar/

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    2. Del Mar is 1.8 Square Miles, Solana Beach 3.6m, Encinitas 20. Our schools are fine here. You want crappy schools, check out LA Unified or some of the surrounding communities.

      I'd do a victory dance if I had 3 kids, a house and the public schools in this community.

      -MGJ

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    3. Encinitas school are a sham. When was the last time you heard of a student going to an elite university?? Oxford, Princeton, Stanford?? Oh the Enc schools are great at getting kids into Mira Costa and yet, 80% of MC students never finish. But SDA has a theater for the performing arts.....Woopee.

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    4. I'm sure they have Ivy League graduates from Encinitas, as well as Stanford and Cal.

      At some point, the parents and the student have to take responsibility. My friend's kid is at San Dieguito right now, and that kid will be a Phi Betta Kappa...

      http://patch.com/california/encinitas/3-encinitas-high-school-seniors-headed-to-college-with-don-diego-scholarship

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    5. Graduates from SDA last year went to Ivy Leagues, Stanford, Michigan, Duke, etc. MANY also went to the upper ranks of California's public universities, Berkeley, UCSD, UCLA, Cal Poly. Public schools in Encinitas are excellent and boost most of our property values.

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  2. Carlsbad's schools score was a 9, Encinitas 8. That's pretty inconquesequential. Looks like the difference is the median home price which is 80-90k higher down here, no doubt due to the smaller inventories of condos.

    It's expensive to live here, this is a rich guy town now, doctors and lawyers, ceo's and the rest of us beach bums.

    -MGJ

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    1. MGJ,

      Public schools made up 40% of the score.

      Median home values were 15% of the score.

      8 vs 9 is not inconsequential on a 10-point scale.

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    2. WC,

      I finally found the methodology. What we know remains the same, this isn't a town for your average young family just starting out. You either inherit a lot of money, or you have a good job as a CEO, or you're an older set of parents having kids late. The days of the sleepy beach town are over...

      MGJ

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    3. And we don't need any more bums...it took 5 paramedics/ff and 3 sheriffs to deal with 1 drunk bum yesterday. Bums add NO value to a community.

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    4. Young families starting out, not yet into their prime earning years

      =

      Drunk bums

      ?

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    5. Yeah, no more drunken bum toddlers, get the candy away from them!

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  3. ...and we don't want any less expensive houses here for people who can't afford to live here the way it is. Live inland!
    No Stack and Pack and no housing update with increased densities.

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    1. I was hoping for tent cities and hoovervilles!

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    2. Speak for yourself.

      Some of us think a diverse populace is part of our community character worthy of preservation, to a point.

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    3. " A diverse populace" like a drunken bum that used extreme amounts of emergency personal to be taken to the hospital only to be release upon sobering up ?? Is that the type of populace you want ?? Pretty sure it is ....

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    4. One guy gets taken for a hospital ride and all of a sudden it's a crisis?

      Man, we have some trolls on this board....

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    5. 5:38,

      Pretty ugly of you to suggest that wealth and morality are correlated.

      A few months ago, we had a drunk guy fire a pistol at his neighbor's house, and then get in a standoff with police (later found to be a pellet gun). A helicopter orbited his house for hours while many police secured a several block area around the home.

      Turns out that guy is a stock broker.

      http://m.utsandiego.com/news/2014/jul/13/Encinitas-pellet-gun-man-arrested/

      http://www.heritagewestfutures.com/about-us/our-team

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    6. 6:54,

      Not sure that guy is rich just because he works at that company.

      Google "Sage Kelly" for a better example.

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    7. Wasn't that whole pellet gun deal a beef between warring neighbors? That whole thing reeks of some serious punking of the one neighbor with a call to the cops...

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  4. "I'd do a victory dance if I had 3 kids, a house and the public schools in this community."

    It's pretty obvious you don't. The public schools here are fair to middling at best.

    Prop 13 worked exactly as planned. Rentiers and parasites need an uneducated populace for the scam to continue, and they got what they wanted.

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  5. Then send your kids to a private school, your highness. Get out your big fat wallet and spend some bucks if the schools are so bad.

    Actually, Prop 13 is for rich people to keep underpaying their taxes and corporate property owners to keep sneaking it through by dubious property transfers. The biggest change to prop 13. should be the rules on commerical property. Talk about a loophole.

    I'm a renter and I'm not a parasite, not all of us can afford a million dollar home in this town...

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    1. Please re-read my post. I used the term rentiers, not renters.

      Rentiers exploit the scarcity value of capitol without adding value to an economy.



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    2. Pardon, du frommage!! But seriously, are the schools here that bad. I grew up under Prop 13, and saw all the good music and other programs go away, so I'm down, Charlie Brown.

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    3. As music and art were eliminated , management was increased. Schools receive more funding than ever. Vote no on all bonds, especially for schools.

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    4. @8:02 Yes, they are. My family lived in Southeastern PA when my kids were in early elementary school, I was laid off in 2007, and moved here in early 2008 for work (I rent too, 5:45) .

      In addition to being frozen out of the housing market by the ridiculously overblown prices, we immediately saw the difference in schools where people were willing to vote for taxes and bonds to support schools and a place where they are not. The Western end of the Main Line is socioeconomically fairly comparable to Encinitas, but the schools there are considerably better. Our elementary school was only slightly above average for the area (due to property values) but it was awash in advance degree holders and educational programs that would make EUSD parents weep with joy. In PA my kids had PE class taight by two masters level teachers, a Ph.D.librarian four language programs (MA and Ph.D.), music classes and band, and art classes. In EUSD, my kids PE "class" consists of the home room teacher standing in the shade while the kids play kickball, music is taught by parent volunteers and there is no librarian at all.

      So yeah, Prop 13 has an impact. I don't expect my kids to be taught about Keynesian economic theory in high school (like I was), and to only understand why Google and Facebook are rentiers if I teach them. I also understand that to even do the EUSD to SDA to Mira Costa to UC system path, I will have to pay a landlord for the privilege of coastal indoor living.

      I've lived in many states, and am truly saddened that CA is the best this country has to offer anymore.

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    5. And another key difference here is admittedly the large number of non-English students we have to teach. Not saying, right, wrong or anything else, but it has an impact on resources.

      So Southeastern PA, as in Suburban Philly, Lower Marion Township? Nice area, and the taxes and bonds are probably a lot higher. Again, not right or wrong, but something that contributes. Lower taxes is a religion in California, and especially in CA. Why do you think we practically burned to the ground twice in the last 10 years, because not paying for fire protection is our right! LA does much better during bad conditions, because they are prepared.

      It's been this way here for 35 years, starting in the late 70's. The schools in Encinitas are decent, when you talk Oceanside, Vista, San Marcos, it's diminishing returns. LA area, forget it.

      Sadly, we need to reform prop. 13, the tax base and all parts of the State financial system, but people don't have the stomach for it.

      Good luck to you and your kids, it's still a great place compared to Shreveport, LA....

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  6. More crap will it never end ,WC you should find a real job.

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    1. Well that all depends on Prop F now, doesn't it!

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  7. The schools here can and should do better. We need better teachers that really want to teach and not just earn a pay check.

    The lack of funding for music, arts, and physical education is nothing to be proud of. We have people that sit on school boards that have no business being there, but we keep electing the same idiots and keep coming up with the same lack of knowledge.

    It is sad when the schools can't even furnish the supplies needed for the kids to learn. The schools depend on the parents providing all the extra, when there are so many cases where families are strapped and can not afford those little extras.

    We need the schools to challenge the kids to do better academically. And yes, the parents need to be in there teaching their kids as well.

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