NJNewbie2015

We are a family from the UK moving to Summit, NJ in December. We visited the area last week and found a house that we really liked and looked around Franklin Elem which was the nearest school. My children were really happy with the house and were excited about going to the new school which was great. We had agreed a house lease and received copies of the lease for us to sign yesterday. We had a message from the realtor this morning to advise that the home owner is pulling out and has decided to sell the house rather than lease it.

My husband and I are really disappointed but our relocation agent has suggested another house (which is slightly more expensive) that would hopefully still meet our family's needs. This house is served by Washington Elem.

Please would you offer advice about Washington school? I am apprehensive about sending my children to a school that we haven't visited but we have returned to England so there isn't much I can do about it. I'm not looking forward to telling my kids that the house has fallen through. Would welcome any opinions from anyone about the relative good/bad points for Washington Elementary.

Many thanks.

Pulaski

Try looking at city-data.com, it has both neighborhood and school report resources, and also has active city/local forums.

markcst

Have you looked on Trulia, Zillow and Realtor in the school area you like? You can search by school district in most of those apps/web sites.
We picked the schools first, and then got our realtor to concentrate only on that catchment area. Basically by doing the leg work on Trulia/Realtor and understanding odd compromises can be made whilst you look online, your agent isn't trying to find perfection.
In our case we ended up with a cheaper house, which had one compromise from our list of "needs", when our first house fell through.

NJNewbie2015

Thanks for the advice-already posted on city data forum.

We've signed a lease on a new house so one of my children will definitely be going to Washington Elem. Would still be great to hear from anyone who has any experience of this school please.

Thank you

StrangelyBrown

Hi, we've been living in Summit for the last 6 years and have 2 boys who went through Franklin which is a wonderful school. The boys however have many friends who go or went to Washington as all the sports teams are Summit wide and so are a mix of all 4 elementary schools and so we know it well. It's a great school with very high standards, small class sizes (relatively),all our friends who send their children there love it. It's got good sports facilities as it is next to the high school football, track, lacrosse and soccer fields. They all feed into the same middle school. I would have been very happy if the boys had gone there. Feel free to PM me or ask here with any questions about the school or Summit.