Fort Collins / Loveland, CO?

Carrie,

Hi, I hope I can help some. We homeschool, so this is mostly heresay.

We lived on the edge of Windsor for 4 years and now live in Fort Collins. Our old house was actually in the Loveland school district, but families could choose to go to Windsor if space was available. Most of the families opted out of Loveland schools and drove their kids to Windsor schools instead. When we sold our house last year, we had someone who was from Fort Collins back out of their contract (and lose every penny of their $5000. earnest money ) because she did not realize we were in the Loveland district, and she said there was no way she would take her kids out of Fort collins schools and put them in Loveland schools. That is a lot of money to lose!

We are now in Fort Collins and all of the neighbors are very happy with the school. Our local elementary school is Johnson Elementary. I have a friend from the local AP mother's group who is moving to another part of CO and she is very sad to be leaving the Fort Collins Schools (Poudre Schoool District). Here is the website: http://www.psd.k12.co.us/

You can look at their standards online. I went through them when we first moved here and they look pretty good. (I taught for 6 years before we had kids, so I was just curious.)

Let me go back to my AP group's e mails as someone just asked about good realtors and I will get you some names to try.

Hope that helps some! Feel free to ask me more specific questions.

...ok ... I have to pipe in ...

Here's one vote for Loveland over Fort Collins. Fort Collins is ugly. Loveland is a little less ugly. (although I LOVE old town FtC) Either town is ok. ..there are cool houses/apartments in both towns. The schools are ok in both. The people are awesome in both.

The schools in Loveland (Thompson Valley School District) are fine. They aren't the best and they aren't the worst. Some of the schools are better than others, just like anywhere else. The way we look at it is that it's our job and our kids' jobs to get an appropriate education ... the school gives the framework, but the work is up to us.

Elementary schools: I highly recommend the Big Thompson Elementary, west of town. Excellent and small. The Core Knowledge charter school someone else mentioned is about a block from my house and I really don't think I'd ever send my kids there. I've talked to parents who have kids there...some love it, some hate it. It's the first year for the school, so they're still getting kinks worked out.

Middle schools: My kids go to Walt Clark. We like it. It's a big school. There are nice kids and mean kids and moral kids and immoral kids...kinda like real life. ;-) Of the middle schools here in town, I would recommend Walt Clark over the others. Conrad Ball is definitely a rougher school and lower-quality academically (we live in the Con Ball area, but have our kids waived into Walt Clark ... which is a nice thing you can do here).

High schools: Thompson Valley High School. It's old, it's not pretty, but it ranks in the top 1000 high schools in the United States.

Living in Loveland: Depends on what you want. They're building these cool new flats over in the old part of town. There are tons of new and older homes for sale at decent prices. If you want the mountains, look west of town on Pole Hill Road or up the Highway 34 canyon toward Estes Park. If you live up Pole Hill, by Pinewood Reservoir, you are only 20 minutes from the center of town (Hwy 34 and Hwy 287), but it feels like a world away -- it's really quite beautiful and removed.

Hope this helps.
Carrie

Quote:
kidwraps,

Hope I did not attack Loveland too much. ;- ) I do have friends who go to Thompson Valley Schools and are happy with it. And your perspective is right on. It is the parents' and kids' job to get an appropriate eduction.

Many of my friends live in Loveland. We are actually hoping to move to Berthoud next year because we lived there about 5 years ago and loved it.

I think you need to investigate, iluvmyfamily, and decide what you think is the best fit for your family.