Imagine this: Your boss calls you into her office to tell you the company headquarters are moving to a new city. You have three months to make the move — or find another job. You love your work, but moving to a new city? How will you find a home that’s right for you? Even more importantly, how will you find the right school for your kids?
If this story sounds familiar, you’re not alone. According to the U.S. census, 15 million families moved in 2019 — almost 10% of all Americans! And occupational relocation or corporate relocation was responsible for 45% of these moves. With so many families on the move, a common question is how to find an affordable home in a prime school district.
When relocating with children, a question at the forefront of your mind is likely “how do I find the right school?” You may have never lived in the area you are moving to. You may have never even been to the area you are moving to.
Human Resources
Human resources is there to help you with your corporate relocation journey, but their role encompasses so much more than just the home and school search that you aren’t likely to get much assistance on school selection from your employee. Modern day Human Resources departments are focusing on their mission: finding a strategic approach to advance relations between the company and the employee.
Often human resources departments will engage a relocation company to aid in employee relocation, and part of that company’s responsibilities is destination services. The destination services department of a relocation company (or often a subcontractor) is responsible for a seamless integration into the new environment, and if kids are involved, school selection is part of the bargain.
But destination services companies are ill equipped to provide actionable advice, and they end up relying on realtor partners to handle school selection, after all they are the local experts. But realtors are not able to comment on the quality of a school, and they end up referring candidates to GreatSchools.com.
In the end, employees who are asked to move are all in the same boat whether a relocation company is involved or not: the employee has to uncover resources to help make the school selection decision. These resources are typically word of mouth and school ranking websites, the biggest of which is GreatSchools.com, but the ranking system used by GreatSchools is deeply flawed because parent income is not taken into account in their rankings, and the inadvertent result is their rankings favor privileged neighborhoods and discount schools in diverse neighborhoods.
In turn, word of mouth usually mirrors highly rated schools on sites like GreatSchools, but also it’s a myopic view of all your options. Your circle of friends and coworkers all know of the same 4 or 5 “good” schools. With such a critical choice, it’s important to find the right resources to help you make an educated decision
School Search
That’s where SchoolSparrow comes in. Our unique school ranking system allows human resource departments and employees themselves to better uncover the right school for their family during the corporate relocation process. Once a shortlist of schools has been identified, SchoolSparrow will show you available homes in the school’s attendance boundaries and recommend a real estate agent with expertise in the area.
SchoolSparrow integrates the school and home search by combining our groundbreaking school ranking system with our acclaimed Top 30 School search. After entering in your property requirements, we display the Top 30 Schools that have matching homes for sale right now, and the schools are ranked by our system that illuminates socioeconomically diverse schools that are outperforming their peers. Our system very efficiently provides an unbiased list of schools, some of which you never would have heard of through word-of-mouth or would have overlooked on school ranking websites.
The “good” schools you will see on GreatSchools and other popular school ranking platforms are usually in the most expensive neighborhoods, with long commutes to jobs in the city, eating up valuable family time. They often favor privileged, homogeneous, usually white schools with little cultural, ethnic, or socioeconomic diversity. Using GreatSchools and other sites that utilize unadjusted test scores to rank schools can make the relocation process more difficult by pushing you to the most expensive neighborhoods, and/or sacrificing a reasonable commute, all in the name of finding the “best” schools for your kids.
SchoolSparrow’s unique ranking system will identify quality schools that you would have overlooked, increasing the chances tremendously that you’ll find not only an amazing school for your children, but also a dream home well within your budget. Don’t fall prey to other ranking systems that make you think you have to venture beyond your budget to be close to a top tier school, and/or deal with an awful commute. Allow SchoolSparrow to show you schools and homes to fit your unique needs.
Early on, SchoolSparrow can identify the best 30 schools that have homes for sale right now that fit your requirements, and once you’ve identified your target schools, we will connect you with highly recommended real estate agents who are experts in the area/schools in which you’re interested. Our integrated home and school search automatically relieves that stress of having to research schools individually. Combined with listings of available homes in your preferred school district, SchoolSparrow effectively streamlines the relocation process. Best of all? None of it will cost you anything.
Moving is an incredibly stressful process for anyone, let alone a corporate relocation for an entire family. But with the right resources, an effective search tool, and expert guidance, you can stress less about school selection and focus on a seamless move for your family.
