All the schools in RRISD are generally good but every neighborhood is different.
Like anywhere there's working class neighborhood schools with limited funding and middle/upper class neighborhood schools with all the funding. It just depends on your home budget and how active you are in your child(s) school.
We try to be as active as possible. We all know teachers don't get paid well, so we help out how we can either volunteering, helping pay for supplies/activities or whatnot.
If there's a particular neighborhood you are interested in, check with their respective Facebook/NextDoor/social media group to see what people think of their schools.
Thank you! Our kiddos are under 3 but my husband and I are former public school teachers so we know how tough it is and plan to be as active as we can in schools.
Checking out the Facebook groups is a good idea, I'll start looking there too.
For what it's worth, we have loved Blackland Prairie school, and the Lake Forest neighborhood. Great neighbors, lots of activities, active swim team for the kids (Go Fast Frogs!), teachers have been great.
Sometimes the best high schools don't translate into best chances for college or college scholarships. My son had a 3.89 GPA and was in the top 23% at Cedar Ridge, which due to being in top 25% was good enough for a huge academic scholarship but had he been at another RR school, he would have been outside the top 25% and not gotten it. Conversely, if he want to a lower ranked school, he might have been able to get top x% and automatic admission to UT Austin.
UT is a very tough top 6% at any school, and auto admit unfortunately doesn't really mean much. Most top students pursue degrees in programs other than liberal arts which is the only thing auto-admit gets you.
The scholarship thing is real though. These schools are competitive!
“We have a realtor…” if your realtor can’t give great school recommendations, you need to find a new realtor.
I say this because everybody on Reddit thinks their place is the best. And it might be true for them. But a great realtor knows your needs and wants and how that translates to neighborhoods and school.
I second this. Anyone can be a realtor. But not everybody can be an outstanding realtor. If your realtor cannot give you basic information, you need to drop them immediately and find a great realtor. Any high school dropout can become a realtor, but it takes an outstanding person with abundant knowledge to become an outstanding realtor.
Top RRISD HS academically is Westwood, so look to it and its feeders if that is your priority. That said pretty sure RRHS qualifies as "very good" at least.
In the last few years, Round Rock High School has surpassed Westwood in many academic areas Though I am a little biased, when you consider academics and extra-curriculars RRHS has the most to offer. The Dragon Marching Band is one of the best in the country. (They're in London right now for an invitation only showcase!) The theater department's presentation of Sweeney Todd won the Best Musical at the Heller Awards for Young Artists this year. Our design/print shop makes signs and t-shirts for local businesses and the district. We have programs for every interest; law, medicine, finance, automotive repair, and of course athletics. I teach math there. My son has gone through K-12 in the district. DM me if you have questions.
Yes! My three graduated from RRHS. It has its issues, as every school does, but I couldn't have asked for anything more. They all went out of state for college, and the common theme was how prepared they were vs. other students. Thank you for teaching and positively impacting all these student's lives!
I am in Brushy Creek and we absolutely love it. We are zoned to Great Oaks Elementary, Cedar Valley MS, and RRHS. All great schools.
RRISD bought a HUGE plot of land on Pearson Ranch and is planning to build the sixth high school there. This should pull from some pretty nice areas and the new school will likely cause a dramatic increase in demand in Brushy Creek and Avery Ranch. Try to get in before then!
High school #6 was defeated by voters in the 2017 bond. It's not happening. Or at least, there's not been any plans made since.
https://bond.roundrockisd.org/2017-bond/
I'm in 78681, but kids in my neighborhood go to Georgetown ISD schools. Some parents post about school things to our neighborhood Facebook group, and they really like the schools there. I really like the neighborhood though.
Just be very wary if you end up finding a house directly off O'Connor. People rip through there and it is a very noisy street if you're directly off it. Other than that, I loved living in Brushy Creek!
We are in the Cat Hollow, Stone Canyon, Oaklands, Oak Brook, Brushy Creek area. So west of 35 and North of 620 is what I am most familiar with. I would recommend all of the neighborhoods above as well as their schools for being great. Round Rock West neighborhood is also nice.
I love living in the Rattan Creek area. The community is amazing and neighbors are always willing to help each other out. It’s a MUD so we are technically Austin but have RRISD schools. I have been really pleased with the schools from elementary to high school.
I'd say circle C wins when it comes to high schools,.but RR isd is close to Pflugerville, if it makes an easy transition . You'll be able to get Avery ranch / brushy Creek area for the same price as circle C. I'd say the spice wood area ( Westwood) is a bit more priced.
I'm also an SPHS grad and feel like I got a great education, albeit a decade ago, but my siblings did well in recent years too. 2/3 of us graduated from college and are teachers now🤷🏻♀️
I think I may have mixed up hernandez with Hopewell. Greatschools.org has Hopewell higher than hernandez but they all feed into stony point which is what concerns me.
Hopewell is decent but I would rank it on the lower end of all of round rock. My neighbor has a kid that goes there and not a fan, says there are fights, but it's just me going off reviews and a neighbors personal experience
Stony Point has awesome programs, from academics to extra curriculars. I do not doubt there are issues there, but that has more to do with the fact that not everyone parents their kids properly.
Dropping this copy pasta response of mine to a similar question about RRISD:
**tl;dr - When you're researching schools, I'd** ***HIGHLY*** **recommend researching the private or charter school options as these schools have completely tanked.**
We moved here specifically for the schools. And the since the 2019/2020 school year, it's been an absolute disaster. Laptops are used for virtually everything. Very little pencil/paper work at all. No spelling work. Math in particular suffered immensely.
Since choosing a charter school, all the fundamentals have SIGNIFICANTLY improved. And many are dipping out due to the free-falling quality. I speak to more and more people who are trying to rework their schedules so they can get their kids out.
For data beyond anecdotes, [here is the study recently commissioned by the school](https://go.boarddocs.com/tx/rrisd/Board.nsf/files/D3PRTS6F9587/$file/D2.Demographer%20Presentation%2003282024.pdf).
The **last slide** shows that the 2019/2020 enrollment count was about **51k** (not documented in that slide, but it had healthy growth up to that point). As you see, enrollment is continuing to decline to this very year. And as for projections even the best case scenario puts us at around **2020/2021** levels in **2033** (and every year, the pessimistic projection has been more accurate).
Also note on **slide 5** that the school age population, though marginally less, is basically the same as it was during the first year of the pandemic. Yet, RRISD continues to have a shrinking percentage of that population.
The board consistently hand-waves this away, pointing to TEA (Texas Education Agency) saying that other schools are experiencing the similar issues. This ignores the fact that more than one school can be affected by plummeting quality.
Instead of focusing on actual education, they have decided to focus on nonsense like psychological profiling kids through the year with opt-***out*** surveys.
**Run. Run as far from these schools as you can.**
This is bad information at best. It's extremely misleading. RRISD is still one of the best-performing districts in the state. It has a very high college enrollment rate as well as excellent vocational programs.
And I'm sorry, but school laptops are the future. The district is doing a great job at preparing our kids for an increasingly digital world. If the charters and privates aren't doing more of this, it's likely a cost-saving measure.
OP should look at all options for your children, but dismissing the amazing schools here is an incredibly bad take.
And there's the issue leading to the degradation: reframing screen time as "job prep".
As a software engineer, that is complete nonsense. There is a time and a place for technology, but RRISD has most definitely overdosed.
I certainly never said job prep. Just to qualify.....I'm not necessarily a fan, but it's reality. The world is online. Our kids live in a different world than we did. College will be completely digital. The SAT is only digital now. Like it or not, it is the norm now.
I'm sorry your experience in RRISD didn't work for your family. Kids are all over the map so I'm glad you found something that works for yours. However, your story is pretty anecdotal and OP should not outright dismiss their public school options, especially since they are in the position of choosing the school/feeder pattern that they can move to.
Its certainly my anecdote. But the numbers I reference in my original comment suggest that many others agree with this assessment.
When you consider how much effort it requires, the corollary is that there are likely many who notice this declining quality, but are unable to meet those high demands to choose another school for one reason or another.
> Its certainly my anecdote. But the numbers I reference in my original comment suggest that many others agree with this assessment.
The problem is you're trying to attribute a cause to those numbers when the report doesn't go into that at all.
During the presentation the demographer didn't really go over any of the causes. At the very least, he said the surrounding districts are seeing the same thing, so it's certainly not some "psychological profiling nonsense".
The most interesting anecdotes I took away from his presentation are that he said demographics are shifting due to millenials and beyond starting their families later in life, if at all, and that younger families are going into homeschool not because of ideological reasons but because they want the complete freedom to dictate their schedule on a year to year basis.
He had his theories. But he's also not trying to stir the pot for his paying client.
As I mentioned, referencing the surrounding areas having similar situations is not a rebuttal.
You have to assume that the criticism is unique to RRISD. Quite the contrary. The fact that all of this started happening with the closures and with the pivot to wider spread laptops shows that multiple school districts can be suffering the same issue.
You'd also have to ignore the expansion in charter and home schools during this same period. Each one represents a significant disapproval of the default school districts considering the high barriers to entry that must be overcome.
I left the recommendation off since the charter school we're going to is a mixed bag in its own right. But it's getting the basic job done.
In our case, we're going to Valor. The up side is that they use 0 screens. It's all notebooks so writing, including cursive have improved *drastically*. In fact, our kid was originally slated to be tested for dyslexia. But with just a few weeks of attending and practicing writing, any questions there were entirely resolved.
And Math, which was the subject that had been left out to dry the most at Blackland Prairie (the previous school) has also made a **massive** leap.
I should also note that while we were still trying to make RRISD work, we weren't the type to leave it all to the school. We spent significant time in off hours and summer attempting to fill the gap. But with full days 5 times a week essentially being wasted, it was difficult.
The STAAR scores came back and confirmed all this progress. I should also note that Valor puts almost 0 STAAR pressure on the kids. They basically just do the minimum that the state requires.
That said, the biggest deficiency is in the arts. There is almost 0 creativity that is encouraged. It attempts to model a boarding school, which means uniform and rigid rules. Many of these are nonsensical.
There's also something of a very conservative vibe to the place. Unfortunately, that means it's not exactly a crowd we have a lot in common with, but they have been very friendly. I'm just not exactly hanging out with the other parents in off time.
In any other situation, we'd actually have passed on it. But considering how badly RRISD has dropped the ball, the main priority is getting the basics up to speed. While I consider art and creativity some of those basics, it's significantly easier (and fun) for us to make up the gap in off time on that front than it is for math, reading, and science.
I should also note that the change was a hard one for our kid. There was a definite shock at having actual homework and being challenged. But seeing the grades and ultimately the STAAR test results, the light of understanding of why we made the choice we did finally clicked on, even if it's been very inconvenient for all of us.
That said, we're still got our ear open for other options if we find them. But this situation is significantly better than the disaster RRISD has been.
Any time. And good luck! Opting for something like this is not a small task, as I can attest to.
Whether RRISD or otherwise, here's hoping that you find the option that's a good fit for you and your kiddo(s)!
All the schools in RRISD are generally good but every neighborhood is different. Like anywhere there's working class neighborhood schools with limited funding and middle/upper class neighborhood schools with all the funding. It just depends on your home budget and how active you are in your child(s) school. We try to be as active as possible. We all know teachers don't get paid well, so we help out how we can either volunteering, helping pay for supplies/activities or whatnot. If there's a particular neighborhood you are interested in, check with their respective Facebook/NextDoor/social media group to see what people think of their schools.
This is a really thoughtful reply, thank you.
Thank you! Our kiddos are under 3 but my husband and I are former public school teachers so we know how tough it is and plan to be as active as we can in schools. Checking out the Facebook groups is a good idea, I'll start looking there too.
For what it's worth, we have loved Blackland Prairie school, and the Lake Forest neighborhood. Great neighbors, lots of activities, active swim team for the kids (Go Fast Frogs!), teachers have been great.
Thanks! I like active communities, and my daughter is into swim (whether she'll be competitive is another story lol)
Summer swim team ranges from super casual to super competitive. All are welcome!
[удалено]
If it weren't for ND, how would we ever know which dogs are running around loose today? Or who found a set of keys by the mailbox? LOL
Sometimes the best high schools don't translate into best chances for college or college scholarships. My son had a 3.89 GPA and was in the top 23% at Cedar Ridge, which due to being in top 25% was good enough for a huge academic scholarship but had he been at another RR school, he would have been outside the top 25% and not gotten it. Conversely, if he want to a lower ranked school, he might have been able to get top x% and automatic admission to UT Austin.
UT is a very tough top 6% at any school, and auto admit unfortunately doesn't really mean much. Most top students pursue degrees in programs other than liberal arts which is the only thing auto-admit gets you. The scholarship thing is real though. These schools are competitive!
I don’t know about that. Even at SPHS a 3.85 only gets you to about the top 10%. Those auto admit spots are competitive.
Probably not one in RRISD but maybe on in an urban or a rural district , perhaps in the RGV.
“We have a realtor…” if your realtor can’t give great school recommendations, you need to find a new realtor. I say this because everybody on Reddit thinks their place is the best. And it might be true for them. But a great realtor knows your needs and wants and how that translates to neighborhoods and school.
I second this. Anyone can be a realtor. But not everybody can be an outstanding realtor. If your realtor cannot give you basic information, you need to drop them immediately and find a great realtor. Any high school dropout can become a realtor, but it takes an outstanding person with abundant knowledge to become an outstanding realtor.
Top RRISD HS academically is Westwood, so look to it and its feeders if that is your priority. That said pretty sure RRHS qualifies as "very good" at least.
Thanks!
In the last few years, Round Rock High School has surpassed Westwood in many academic areas Though I am a little biased, when you consider academics and extra-curriculars RRHS has the most to offer. The Dragon Marching Band is one of the best in the country. (They're in London right now for an invitation only showcase!) The theater department's presentation of Sweeney Todd won the Best Musical at the Heller Awards for Young Artists this year. Our design/print shop makes signs and t-shirts for local businesses and the district. We have programs for every interest; law, medicine, finance, automotive repair, and of course athletics. I teach math there. My son has gone through K-12 in the district. DM me if you have questions.
Yes! My three graduated from RRHS. It has its issues, as every school does, but I couldn't have asked for anything more. They all went out of state for college, and the common theme was how prepared they were vs. other students. Thank you for teaching and positively impacting all these student's lives!
I am in Brushy Creek and we absolutely love it. We are zoned to Great Oaks Elementary, Cedar Valley MS, and RRHS. All great schools. RRISD bought a HUGE plot of land on Pearson Ranch and is planning to build the sixth high school there. This should pull from some pretty nice areas and the new school will likely cause a dramatic increase in demand in Brushy Creek and Avery Ranch. Try to get in before then!
I still wonder what they'll do with that massive plot RRISD bought off of AW Grimes near Old Settlers a while back
Oh thanks! Appreciate your insight
There's no current plan for a sixth high school. Please do not allow this to impact your decision making process.
High school #6 was defeated by voters in the 2017 bond. It's not happening. Or at least, there's not been any plans made since. https://bond.roundrockisd.org/2017-bond/
78681 FTW. Lot’s of inventory in brushy creek and the surrounding neighborhoods with great schools.
I'm in 78681, but kids in my neighborhood go to Georgetown ISD schools. Some parents post about school things to our neighborhood Facebook group, and they really like the schools there. I really like the neighborhood though.
Thanks, I've heard good things about Brushy Creek, will definitely check it out.
Brushy Creek here, Great Oaks and then Cedar Valley is a great combo.
Jags on the prowl
Just be very wary if you end up finding a house directly off O'Connor. People rip through there and it is a very noisy street if you're directly off it. Other than that, I loved living in Brushy Creek!
Thanks for that tip!
Taking a left off East Dorman onto O’Conner is a life or death decision.
Should’ve kept that stop sign. I didn’t realize they removed it and probably cut someone off…sorry dude.
I go out the other way now
I’m very happy with the schools my kids go to in the Brushy Creek area. RRISD has attracted a lot of talented teachers and administrators.
Thanks, good to know!
We are in the Cat Hollow, Stone Canyon, Oaklands, Oak Brook, Brushy Creek area. So west of 35 and North of 620 is what I am most familiar with. I would recommend all of the neighborhoods above as well as their schools for being great. Round Rock West neighborhood is also nice.
Thank you!
I've also heard that Forest Creek and Chandler Creek East of 35 are good but I haven't been over in that area nearly as much.
Thanks!
Brushy Creek is awesome. Great neighborhood, amazing schools.
I would move to the Cactus Ranch area. It feeds into Walsh and Round Rock High. All three are excellent schools.
I love living in the Rattan Creek area. The community is amazing and neighbors are always willing to help each other out. It’s a MUD so we are technically Austin but have RRISD schools. I have been really pleased with the schools from elementary to high school.
I'd say circle C wins when it comes to high schools,.but RR isd is close to Pflugerville, if it makes an easy transition . You'll be able to get Avery ranch / brushy Creek area for the same price as circle C. I'd say the spice wood area ( Westwood) is a bit more priced.
West side of 35 is typically better but all RRISD schools are good.
*laughs in cedar ridge*
?
Thanks! That's what I've heard too.
*laughs in stony point* from a stony point grad
I'm also an SPHS grad and feel like I got a great education, albeit a decade ago, but my siblings did well in recent years too. 2/3 of us graduated from college and are teachers now🤷🏻♀️
I hear Hopewell middle school is ghetto now and there's fights daily
You've heard wrong.
I think I may have mixed up hernandez with Hopewell. Greatschools.org has Hopewell higher than hernandez but they all feed into stony point which is what concerns me. Hopewell is decent but I would rank it on the lower end of all of round rock. My neighbor has a kid that goes there and not a fan, says there are fights, but it's just me going off reviews and a neighbors personal experience
Stony Point has awesome programs, from academics to extra curriculars. I do not doubt there are issues there, but that has more to do with the fact that not everyone parents their kids properly.
Dropping this copy pasta response of mine to a similar question about RRISD: **tl;dr - When you're researching schools, I'd** ***HIGHLY*** **recommend researching the private or charter school options as these schools have completely tanked.** We moved here specifically for the schools. And the since the 2019/2020 school year, it's been an absolute disaster. Laptops are used for virtually everything. Very little pencil/paper work at all. No spelling work. Math in particular suffered immensely. Since choosing a charter school, all the fundamentals have SIGNIFICANTLY improved. And many are dipping out due to the free-falling quality. I speak to more and more people who are trying to rework their schedules so they can get their kids out. For data beyond anecdotes, [here is the study recently commissioned by the school](https://go.boarddocs.com/tx/rrisd/Board.nsf/files/D3PRTS6F9587/$file/D2.Demographer%20Presentation%2003282024.pdf). The **last slide** shows that the 2019/2020 enrollment count was about **51k** (not documented in that slide, but it had healthy growth up to that point). As you see, enrollment is continuing to decline to this very year. And as for projections even the best case scenario puts us at around **2020/2021** levels in **2033** (and every year, the pessimistic projection has been more accurate). Also note on **slide 5** that the school age population, though marginally less, is basically the same as it was during the first year of the pandemic. Yet, RRISD continues to have a shrinking percentage of that population. The board consistently hand-waves this away, pointing to TEA (Texas Education Agency) saying that other schools are experiencing the similar issues. This ignores the fact that more than one school can be affected by plummeting quality. Instead of focusing on actual education, they have decided to focus on nonsense like psychological profiling kids through the year with opt-***out*** surveys. **Run. Run as far from these schools as you can.**
This is bad information at best. It's extremely misleading. RRISD is still one of the best-performing districts in the state. It has a very high college enrollment rate as well as excellent vocational programs. And I'm sorry, but school laptops are the future. The district is doing a great job at preparing our kids for an increasingly digital world. If the charters and privates aren't doing more of this, it's likely a cost-saving measure. OP should look at all options for your children, but dismissing the amazing schools here is an incredibly bad take.
And there's the issue leading to the degradation: reframing screen time as "job prep". As a software engineer, that is complete nonsense. There is a time and a place for technology, but RRISD has most definitely overdosed.
I certainly never said job prep. Just to qualify.....I'm not necessarily a fan, but it's reality. The world is online. Our kids live in a different world than we did. College will be completely digital. The SAT is only digital now. Like it or not, it is the norm now. I'm sorry your experience in RRISD didn't work for your family. Kids are all over the map so I'm glad you found something that works for yours. However, your story is pretty anecdotal and OP should not outright dismiss their public school options, especially since they are in the position of choosing the school/feeder pattern that they can move to.
Its certainly my anecdote. But the numbers I reference in my original comment suggest that many others agree with this assessment. When you consider how much effort it requires, the corollary is that there are likely many who notice this declining quality, but are unable to meet those high demands to choose another school for one reason or another.
> Its certainly my anecdote. But the numbers I reference in my original comment suggest that many others agree with this assessment. The problem is you're trying to attribute a cause to those numbers when the report doesn't go into that at all. During the presentation the demographer didn't really go over any of the causes. At the very least, he said the surrounding districts are seeing the same thing, so it's certainly not some "psychological profiling nonsense". The most interesting anecdotes I took away from his presentation are that he said demographics are shifting due to millenials and beyond starting their families later in life, if at all, and that younger families are going into homeschool not because of ideological reasons but because they want the complete freedom to dictate their schedule on a year to year basis.
He had his theories. But he's also not trying to stir the pot for his paying client. As I mentioned, referencing the surrounding areas having similar situations is not a rebuttal. You have to assume that the criticism is unique to RRISD. Quite the contrary. The fact that all of this started happening with the closures and with the pivot to wider spread laptops shows that multiple school districts can be suffering the same issue. You'd also have to ignore the expansion in charter and home schools during this same period. Each one represents a significant disapproval of the default school districts considering the high barriers to entry that must be overcome.
Oh thanks for this, are there any private/charter schools you can recommend? We're open to all options.
My boy went to Meridan at Mays and Old Settlers (between Mac Donald's and Harley) and we felt he got a good education. No football there, tho.
They are adding flag football for 2024-2025
Meridian is one I’ve heard good things about - it’s in round rock
I left the recommendation off since the charter school we're going to is a mixed bag in its own right. But it's getting the basic job done. In our case, we're going to Valor. The up side is that they use 0 screens. It's all notebooks so writing, including cursive have improved *drastically*. In fact, our kid was originally slated to be tested for dyslexia. But with just a few weeks of attending and practicing writing, any questions there were entirely resolved. And Math, which was the subject that had been left out to dry the most at Blackland Prairie (the previous school) has also made a **massive** leap. I should also note that while we were still trying to make RRISD work, we weren't the type to leave it all to the school. We spent significant time in off hours and summer attempting to fill the gap. But with full days 5 times a week essentially being wasted, it was difficult. The STAAR scores came back and confirmed all this progress. I should also note that Valor puts almost 0 STAAR pressure on the kids. They basically just do the minimum that the state requires. That said, the biggest deficiency is in the arts. There is almost 0 creativity that is encouraged. It attempts to model a boarding school, which means uniform and rigid rules. Many of these are nonsensical. There's also something of a very conservative vibe to the place. Unfortunately, that means it's not exactly a crowd we have a lot in common with, but they have been very friendly. I'm just not exactly hanging out with the other parents in off time. In any other situation, we'd actually have passed on it. But considering how badly RRISD has dropped the ball, the main priority is getting the basics up to speed. While I consider art and creativity some of those basics, it's significantly easier (and fun) for us to make up the gap in off time on that front than it is for math, reading, and science. I should also note that the change was a hard one for our kid. There was a definite shock at having actual homework and being challenged. But seeing the grades and ultimately the STAAR test results, the light of understanding of why we made the choice we did finally clicked on, even if it's been very inconvenient for all of us. That said, we're still got our ear open for other options if we find them. But this situation is significantly better than the disaster RRISD has been.
Thanks for the additional info, definitely something we'll look at.
Any time. And good luck! Opting for something like this is not a small task, as I can attest to. Whether RRISD or otherwise, here's hoping that you find the option that's a good fit for you and your kiddo(s)!
Appreciate it! We just want our kiddos to have the best resources and education as possible.