Des Moines Nesties
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We are looking at a house in Ankeny and a house in Altoona. We will likely put an offer on one of them tonight. Do you know if there is a place to find comparisons of school districts in the metro? Any advice you can offer on either school districts would be very helpful. We live in Bondurant currently and I am originally from the Des Moines area, so I am familiar with the area, but I'm not sure of any big differences. TIA!

BFP 7/25/09, M/C 8/21/09;
BFP #2 10/13/09, Derek Joseph born 06/30/10;
BFP #3 7/21/12, Andrew Chase born 12/27/10 at 26 weeks 4 days
Re: Ankeny vs Altoona
We just moved to Ankeny in Nov and LOVE it! I used this site: http://www.ankeny.k12.ia.us/ click "About Ankeny Schools" and it will give you details. One of the reasons that we picked Ankeny was for the school system. If you have any specific questions about the area, you can email me kalamoore @ hotmail . com GL! That's exciting!!
I have heard great things about both school districts. Because Ankeny has been growing so rapidly, many of their facilities are new and outfitted with the latest technology and designed on newer research based design. The schools are also "wealthier" than SEP, as a whole because of property values.
Truly, test results show very little about the overall education a child receives.
www.greatschools.org is a great researching tool. You can look up any school, test results, teacher:student ratio, spending, demographics, spending per pupil, and parent reviews. You can also compare two elementaries together and directly see how they are different.
The house is on the east side of I-35 and north on Four Mile Creek. (I'm really bad with my directions, but I'm pretty sure I said that right). We live in Bondurant right now and really like it, but aren't finding what we like. I am leaning towards Ankeny, but my DH is leaning towards Altoona because of their tax abatement on new homes.
We live over in that area that you are describing in Ankeny. Is the house north of Oralabor? We have a few houses for sale in our neighborhood and then on the west side of the road there are some new construction houses for sale.
***Edited for privacy reasons
EDIT: I deleted what I responded and sent you a PM instead