Cohousing-L Mailing List: "Good" schools and urban cohousing.

[John Richmond (johnrichmond50]

Hi everyone - last night in a land search committee meeting we had something of 
a side discussion on what we think of the importance of "good" public schools 
in the zone where we finally select our site. Our conventional wisdom has been 
that "good" public schools are essential to our goal of a multigenerational 
community. They are seen as the only way to attract and keep families who have 
children of various ages.

One of our members pointed out a well-founded belief that few families will 
uproot their kids from their existing schools to live in cohousing, no matter 
how "good" the schools where we build are. Her thought is that we will mostly 
attract homeschoolers, private school kids l, and refugees from "bad" public 
schools.

The struggles of urban and some rural schools in the US are well-noted -

How have the surrounding school districts or school zones influenced the number 
of kids you have in your communities over time?

(As a teacher I've come to believe that "good" schools are mostly defined by 
easily measurable metrics of varying objectivity, including test scores, 
graduation rates, percent of teachers with advanced degrees, suspension rates, 
etc. This ignores the idea that some schools that do poorly on these measures 
may actually be doing more with the kids that come in their doors than the 
"good" schools are.)

John Richmond
Richmond Cohousing VA



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