moving to Sf bay area
 

forgive me if this has been asked before, but I cant find anything specific to my situation. I recently accepted a job offer at Stanford Hosp ital and Clinics in redwood city,ca. Im moving from Bakersfield, ca to the bay area and know nothing about the area. Im a sibgle parent and I have a highschool freshman and a middle school child, so I need good schools without breaking the bank. What are some good safe areas. my work schedule is 10pm to 930am, so I dont know what traffic will be like. I would love to have things to do not to far away, but we love to travel so not a deal breaker. ive been told Cupertino is a great area. I drove through a part of redwood city and it looked a little run down, plus the schools were average. Schools and safety are top priority..Can anyone give me ideas and a little info about the towns

r u renting or buying...budget?. Redwood city has some lovely areas and the weather is good. There must be a web site to check up on school ratings. Nice areas between RWC and san mateo(7 miles from RWC) (san Carlos, Belmont) driving from Cupertino at your times should not be a problem but would take over 30 minutes depending on where you are in Cupertino. santa Cruz is great for weekend travel, SF is my favorite place with Golden Gate Park and Muir woods not too far, good museums, 6 flags in Vallejo. Monterey with the aquarium is about 1.5 hours.....Hope this helps

It's a really expensive area to live. You need to research which areas you can afford. Then if you want to see how well schools do on standardized tests, look at greatschools.com. They have a rating system based on the CST results and comments from parents. As I am sure you know those CST results track pretty closely to the affluence of the neighborhood, and the affluence of the neighborhood will track pretty closely to the affordability of the housing. I would think that they key would be to find a highly rated high school with a large enough attendance area that you can find housing in the attendance area that is within your budget.

I was raised in this area and know it well.

Stanford Hospital is in Palo Alto, not Redwood City--the latter is north of Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, and Mountain View (the favorite of IT techies). The entire area is expensive; so setting a realistic budget will be key. I'd suggest getting in touch with a real-estate agent NOW to get some preliminary information.

Cupertino is a nice enclave, and you might get lucky in Menlo Park. Palo Alto and Menlo Park both have top schools (aside from east Palo Alto).

[There is an outpatient clinic in Redwood City. I am guessing the OP knows where she is going to work].