Moving to the Area and Want to Find the Best Schools.

The Kent School District is great and a close enough commute to Seattle. Also, I grew up in Gig Harbor and the schools are great there as well. That is a beuatiful community and where I will eventually move to when we have jobs that allow that.

I would suggest that you narrow your search to a few towns/cities and look at the data available for the respective school districts. WA OSPI publishes a report card for Washington's School Districts that includes test scores, graduation rates, demographics and other data. You can even look up individual schools.
Generally most better schools in the Seattle Metro Area are north (with more affluent neighborhoods and of course steeper housing prices) and east (of Lake Washington). Though there are exceptions to the rule...
Where we live in West Seattle I would not send my daughter to public school, so we will be moving before she hits school age.
Good luck!

Good Morning,

Don't have much time to "shoot out" for our schools, however, the Northshore school district is AWESOME! We are at the far east end of the district and love our schools out here.

Come check us out.

M.
Woodinville, WA

The Tahoma school district in Maple Valley is rated well and a short commute to Kent.

If your husband is in Kent then I'd say the best areas would be Issaquah, Maple Valley, and Bellevue.

Hi K.,

GreatSchools.net is a good source for information on local schools. Personally I'd reccommend looking at where your husband is going to be working, draw a line of commute time out from there, and then research the school districts in the area. A good realator should also be able to assist you with this information if you're buying a house when you get here.

Good luck!

Seattle is a bit spotty, that's true. But there are very good schools and teachers in the city. Pretty much any north end (in Seattle) school will be fine. Just a heads up, there have been several mentions that Bellevue schools make the top 100 in the country. The only thing that list measures is the number of students who take AP classes-it doesn't even count if they pass the test. It's a good measure, but not the only thing that matters.

West Seattle, very good commute, 10-15 min to down-town, Lafayette - very academic focused school. Good luck!

Bellevue School District has the best elementary schools. Plus at least 3 of their high schools are ranked high in the best 100 in the nation.

I've heard wonderful things about the Eastside districts, Bellevue, Lake Washington, Mercer Island and Northshore all have very positive reputations. I know several Bellevue high schools end up on one of those lists, but I always take those with a grain of salt.

The bummer is that in WA state funding for education is about to get deeply cut so class sizes will go up and funding for gifted/highly capable kids is going to be nil. I have several friends who are pulling their highly capable kids out of the public system and putting them in private programs next year.

I'd avoid Seattle Public Schools, even though I'm a resident-- they have had terrible administration for far too long. They are spotty, and most of their schools' performance is split along socio-economic lines which causes strife in the community at large.

If you are on the Eastside and your husband is working in Kent, the commute is a "reverse" communte and the driving won't be too bad! My husband did a Seattle to Tacoma commute and it sometimes took him less time to get home than my 11 mile seattle to Eastside commute!

We live in the Northeast cluster, and the schools are wonderful. I'm sure there are other schools that are great too, I am just not familiar with them.