It pays to study school district geography

You can buy a home in one community and benefit... — You can buy a home in one community and benefit from schools in another.

By DINA SANTORELLIDecember 10, 2009

In 2002, Chris Muldoon, 37, an account manager in the market data group at the New York Stock Exchange, and his wife, Denise, bought their Massapequa Park home, which, despite its proximity to a local elementary school, is considered part of the Farmingdale school district.

The Farmingdale school district line cuts through the top half of Massapequa Park, making it so that homes north of the line go to Farmingdale schools while those south of it go to Massapequa schools. Similarly, there is a section of eastern Massapequa that is zoned for Amityville schools, and part of North Massapequa goes to the Plainedge school district.

"The delineation cracks me up in terms of how they made the call," says Muldoon, who has two sons, Timothy, 6, and Conor, 2, with wife, Denise Muldoon, 37, a teacher at The Hagedorn Little Village School in Seaford. "It looks like they said, 'OK, right here will be the Farmingdale school district. No, wait ... we have too much, we have to stop back here.' It doesn't make sense, especially when there are logical, natural borders, like the Preserve, to separate school district from school district."

>>MORE: EdLI, Newsday's education blog

Indeed, many Long Island school district lines, some of which were drawn hundreds of years ago, seem haphazard, separating large chunks or tiny segments of towns and directing families in those towns to neighboring districts.

Liz Wallace, broker-owner of Century 21 Sherlock Homes in Rockville Centre, says the setup is a geographical oddity not easily understood by potential home buyers, particularly those coming to Long Island from other states or New York City.

"A lot of times people from the city will say, 'I hear Rockville Centre is a great town, with pretty houses, and I want to buy here,'" says Wallace, "and we'll ask if they're open to different school districts, and they say, 'What does that mean?'"

Well, what does it mean? In addition to children simply going to a different school district, depending upon what that school district is, homeowners may be paying lower school taxes - or more - and their property values may be higher or lower. Seth Forman, chief planner for the Long Island Regional Planning Board, says, "Some studies have shown that as much as 25 percent of [the value of] a house is caused by the school district it is in."

Evaluating a district

Sometimes the "perception" of a school district is substantiated by data; perhaps one school district has a much higher rate of graduation than another. Other times, although opinions can vary greatly when comparing school districts, the statistics may not differ much.

"Pay careful attention," says Lawrence Levy, executive director of Hofstra University's National Center for Suburban Studies. "District lines are often irrational and don't reflect traditional community boundaries, and the differences between the school districts can be profound. But be sure you research the district line and don't buy into stereotypes about the quality of the districts. Do your homework on what the districts truly offer."

Wallace says home buyers should be sure they know what school district their home is part of and contact that district directly if they have any questions. "There are questions that can always be answered by people in the school districts - what kinds of programs are available, how many students go to four-year colleges, etc.," she says.

Prospective home buyers can also examine the New York State School Report Card ratings for each district, which are available on the Department of Education's Web site.

Anne-Marie Lepore and her husband, Louis, will close on a house in Seaford, priced close to $500,000, after an exhaustive home search that lasted a few years. The house is in the Levittown school district.

>>MORE: EdLI, Newsday's education blog

Lepore says she did her homework, narrowing down the school districts that she knew she wanted for her 2-year-old daughter, Samantha, and creating spreadsheets based on statistics she pulled from various sources, including Web sites like greatschools.net, which gives information for public, private and charter schools nationwide.

"We had an idea of what locations we wanted, and then I tried to narrow the location by looking up information about the school districts," says Lepore, 37, a neuropsychologist whose husband, Louis, 41, is a product manager in the financial industry. "From there, we narrowed our search based on the towns that had the school districts we wanted. If we found we had a house we liked in a town with a different school district from the town, I would look at my spreadsheet to see if it was good based on the various criteria I was interested in."

Reality check

Joe Mugnai of Farmingdale has three children who have gone through the Half Hollow School District; his oldest two are in college, and his youngest is a seventh-grader. Mugnai, 47, who is in advertising sales, says that when he and his wife, Mary, 44, a therapeutic horseback riding instructor, purchased their current home, "We were aware of the school district and originally perceived it to be a big advantage. The school district was a major factor in our decision and a reason why we did not consider moving to some other towns on Long Island."

Now, having lived the Farmingdale/Half Hollow Hills experience since 1998 and, before that, living for 12 years in Wantagh, where his kids attended Levittown schools, Mugnai says, "Depending on your school district, you could be paying higher taxes than a neighbor across the street in a different school district. I am not sure the level of school taxes has a direct correlation to the quality of the school district." He advises home buyers to make sure they choose districts that offer the programs important to them.

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Sports, in particular, was something that had been worrisome to Jeannemarie Goldberg, who bought her Massapequa Park home in 1996 with husband, Michael, 37, chief financial officer for Kliger-Weiss Infosystems in Port Washington. Goldberg, like Muldoon, is part of the Farmingdale School District.

"We didn't know which town's sports activities to sign our kids up for," says Goldberg, 37, a graduate student studying education at Molloy College. "Will they have friends if we sign them up in Farmingdale or in Massapequa? We just recently put our son Ryan in Farmingdale sports, and now that he's going into the Farmingdale middle school in September, it's great because he'll know all the kids who are coming from the other elementary schools in the district."

When it came to sports, Muldoon says he straddled the fence, so to speak. He signed up his son Timothy to play T-ball and soccer in Massapequa and football in Farmingdale. However, because he receives only Farmingdale-related information through his son's school, it was only when he saw a banner at the Massapequa railroad station that he found out about Massapequa's T-ball registration.

It's these kinds of quirks that characterize living in one town, but going to the schools of another: You vote for elected officials in a school building your children don't attend; local papers may not cover school-related events your children participate in; or you may have privileges at libraries that are farther away than those of your municipality.

>>DATA: A numbers breakdown of Long Island's schools

"They make school districts out to be such a big thing in keeping up with the Joneses, even the idea of what number you go to - oh, that's school district 22, that's 23," Muldoon adds. "If your kid is going to be smart, it's based more on how much the parents put into it."

Why lines don't align

Why are school district lines and municipal lines so erratic across Long Island? Seth Forman, chief planner for the Long Island Regional Planning Board, says the haphazardness is actually the result of two different mapping strategies. Forman says many of the townships - the state's primary municipal organization - were formed during the Colonial period and basically geographic entities, meaning "the area of a town would be related to the amount of time it might take to ride a horse in one day to get to town hall," he says. "Therefore, towns were based on geography, rather than population, in order to deliver basic services to everyone."

On the other hand, Forman says, districts were population-driven, rather than geographically driven, and as more people migrated to Long Island, they took shape based on where population settled. "For most schools on Long Island, the main thing was they wanted independence, the power to organize themselves," Forman says. "They wanted home rule. Many people who settled on Long Island came from the city, where there was a centralized school system under the mayor, and they wanted more local control and the ability to fund school systems." - DINA SANTORELLI

Looking at both sides

What do you gain or lose by living in one town and in the school district of another?

POSSIBLE PROS

Lower school taxes

Higher property values

Perceived "better" school district

Gaining the benefit of school district's libraries

Feeling like you're part of two neighborhoods

The chance to be involved with both communities' sports teams

POSSIBLE CONS

Higher school taxes

Lower property values