Anyone know about schools/neighborhoods in Tucson?

[mrst2]

Long shot, but does anyone know anything about the schools/neighborhoods in Tucson, AZ?

[magpie]

I do. Anything in particular that you are interested in?

[mrst2]

What is the best area to buy a house and raise a family? We have friends that recently bought a house in Oro Valley and it looks nice, but we were wondering if it's really necessary to live that far north of the city. We currently live in Texas and we don't get a lot of say in where we end up, but we are either going for Tucson or Phoenix. We're also trying to decide if Tucson would make us happy or if we'd should wait it out for Phoenix.

[magpie]

It depends on what you are looking for. A lot of people, especially with older kids, prefer the foothills neighborhoods (north of the city, but not quite as far as Oro Valley) and Oro Valley. Centrally, the Sam Hughes neighborhood is probably the most family friendly if you are looking to be closer to downtown and the university area. I think Catalina Vista and Blenman Elm are pretty nice too. I absolutely love Sam Hughes. It's very walkable and there are a lot of young families around. The elementary school is one of the better ones in the city (although there are some good charter schools too), but I don't think the middle/high schools are very good. I think the private and charter schools, as well as the foothills districts are better for those stages and I think a lot of people move out to those neighborhoods when their kids get older and they want a bigger house and more school options. We don't have kids (yet), but we definitely envision sending our future children to the preschool and elementary school in Sam Hughes if we are still in Tucson and we much prefer living it the central, historic neighborhoods than the suburbs, at least in this stage. I'm not sure if that'll change.

I love Tucson though, much more than I was expecting to. I think you have to visit and get a feel because it is definitely not without it's quirks. Is a weird little city...very different than Phoenix.

[mrst2]

We would be looking for a house that we could stay in forever so schools would need to be good all the way through high school. DH's office would be near downtown ( I think it's actually across the freeway from downtown). I think we'd want to stay around the $300k mark for a house.

We've been to Tucson quite a few times and we like it a lot too. It's been a while since we've spent much time there, but years ago I thought Sabino Canyon was an ok area? Or any of the areas off of River Road (are those the foothills neighborhoods?)? Is traffic terrible around there since there's not freeway running through the city? Do people find the commute from Oro Valley to downtown ok?

Do you travel to Phx or cities in California very often? We really love spending time in San Diego and would love to be able to spend a few weekends a year there.

[hlke]

I'm a big city person, and I used to live in Sam Hughes. I LOVED it. It's a walkable neighborhood by Tucson standards and very centrally located. The elementry school is good, and I'm not sure what I'd do for middle school, but one of the very best charter high schools in the country is a mile east of Sam Huges. (BASIS Tucson) University High School is a magnet school in TUSD that is also a good high school. So you'd have high school options. BASIS Tucson also operates a middle school, and there are other charter middle schools as well.

Lots of people buy in the Catalina Foothills school district, which is the area north of River Rd. XH bought a house near Sabino Canyon that is a 4 br with a pool for $300k. You definitely have to deal with more traffic because there is no east/west freeway if you live far East or North. But you can definitely get a very nice/large place in a good school district there. Oro Valley is too far away for my taste, but I know people who were happy living there.

When I lived there, we went to San Diego 2 or 3 times a year, and Phoenix once or twice a year. It's about six hours to San Diego and a pretty easy trip. LA and Palm Springs are also driving distance, and Rocky Point in Mexico is only 3 hours away, although I don't know what the security situation is like on the border right now.

[magpie]

I am from California, so I visit both the Los Angeles area and San Francisco often to see family and friends. The drive to LA is about 8-9 hours. We fly when we go to SF, which is about twice a year. San Diego is only about 6 hours drive and is great for a weekend away. The only time I ever go to Phoenix seems to be to visit Ikea

Driving around Tucson is slow without the freeways. I know someone who commutes from Oro Valley to the university and she doesn't mind it, but I guess it all depends on the individual. My H has a 5 minute bike ride to work and I'm a 12 minute drive, so we are spoiled. Sabino Canyon is an awesome area, but it is pretty far east, which would be a lot of driving on heavily used streets to get downtown. It wouldn't be that bad if you could avoid rush hour though. You might want to look up just north of the River/Campbell area to be a little closer west.

[mrst2]

I'm really happy to hear that getting to California is pretty easy. That's a huge plus for us.
I know Dh would like a 20-25 minute commute. Right now he drives 15-20 minutes and he just can't imagine driving much longer than that.

[mrst2]

I have one last question for now.

Do you know what specific schools are the best and which ones we should avoid in the Foothills/Oro Valley area?

Should we avoid the Marana area?

If/when we do get sent to Tucson we have a pretty short amount of time to move which is why we're trying to do so much research ahead of time.

[magpie]

What grades would you be looking at? I think it depends a lot on there are a lot of options and I definitely recommend looking at the charter schools too to see if any are a good fit. You can look up school rankings online to get a better idea.

I don't know very much about Marana, sorry. I've pretty much only driven through it.

[limey]

Another vote for Sam Hughes. I used to own a home there. It's very quick to get downtown, just a straight shot on Broadway/Congress or 6th Street/St Mary's.

I think Oro Valley is better than Marana. Some parts of Marana are a little rough and older. It's easy to drive and determine which areas these are, though.

[hlke]

Everyone I know in the Catalina Foothills district just sends their kids to their "neighborhood" school. It's a good suburban district and all the schools are considered good. I think the case is the same in Oro Valley.

If you're interested in the foothills and a short commute, I think just north of Campbell/River is a good suggestion. It's a little pricier than further east, but it's a nice area.

[explorer2001]

Hold out for Phoenix. Phoenix metro has soooo much more to offer. I can't stand Tucson. It's too small, no airport, traffic sucks do to the freeway restrictions. Phoenix metro has good schools, developing public transit, theater, arts, sports, and so much more that Tucson can't begin to offer.

[hlke]

Jan 11, 2013 19:00:09 GMT -5 explorer2001 said:

Hold out for Phoenix. Phoenix metro has soooo much more to offer. I can't stand Tucson. It's too small, no airport, traffic sucks do to the freeway restrictions. Phoenix metro has good schools, developing public transit, theater, arts, sports, and so much more that Tucson can't begin to offer.

Um...Tucson has an airport and one of the best high schools in the country, and Phoenix traffic sucks too. Tucson has fully functional public transit and I lived car free in Tucson for six months.

Some of it depends on what you want to do in your free time. Tucson is a small city, no doubt about it. But I biked and hiked a ton, went to plenty of museums and art galleries, and met cool people.

Edited to add I lived in Tucson for four years. 6 months of that was car free.

[limey]

I don't hate Phoenix, but Tucson isn't the rural shithole that Explorer paints it to be.

The metro area is almost 1M people.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucson,_Arizona

The 2010 United States Census puts the city's population at 520,116,[2] while the 2011 estimated population of the entire Tucson metropolitan area was 989,569

And WTF to "there is no airport". Uh, yeah, there is.

[mrst2]

Thank you for the input. This helps a lot.
I think the Catalina Foothills sound really perfect for us. Sounds like a nice area and keeps us closer to town than Oro Valley would.
Like I said before we've spent time in Tucson and we always liked it, but of course it's different now that we care about schools, family friendly neighborhoods, and finding a house we can stay in for the rest of our lives. We really have no desire to buy and sell again once we get to Arizona.
We've actually flown out of the Tucson airport at least 4 times and we've always had good experiences. The parking lot in the front is so close to the airport.

[Deleted]

i don't have anything to specifically but the forums on www.city-data.com/forum are really helpful when relocating

[hlke]

Jan 12, 2013 10:56:13 GMT -5 sunny said:

Also - and again I'm sorry I don't mean to overgeneralize, but PHX is an area that like Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Tucson is verrrrrrry different personality-wise.

Not an overgeneralization. PHX is pretty different politically from Tucson, and it shows. Tucson is pretty purple politically, although by Arizona standards it's thought of as crazy liberal.