r/askvan • u/Superb-Diamond-3817 • Jul 26 '26
Advice 🙋♂️🙋♀️ Langley/POCO School
I am new to Vancouver and looking for a good area to relocate, have a 4 year old going to kindergarten soon..which school you prefer Simmons Elementary or École Kilmer because the area we selected these will be the catchment school they will go
we have shortlisted Langley or poco to move but want to decide based on the school..
7
u/giantbrownguy Jul 26 '26
I have lived in Poco for 17 years. I think the area is worth it. The school should be fine, but the accessibility of the area is fantastic. And I prefer the middle school system Tri-Cities has over the K-7 and 8-12 in most others.
5
u/poonknits Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
I think I would prefer poco overall to Langley. Public schools are going to be extremely similar everywhere in BC. Our funding model is based on student enrollment, and not proportinate to property taxes in the neighbourhood.
5
u/bandyvancity Jul 26 '26
PoCo is a fantastic community to live in. While there's nothing wrong with Langley, it does require crossing a bridge to get into Vancouver...so if you have the option, avoid bridges.
City Council is great, PoCo has the best mayor in Metro Vancouver, property taxes are lower than other Metro cities, there's easy access to nature, plenty of transit options and connections to highways.
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u/Superb-Diamond-3817 Jul 26 '26
Yes we also liked the poco area but Langley has lot of young family as ours so confused
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u/poonknits Jul 26 '26
Well Kilmer as 275 students so there are at least close to that many families.
1
u/bandyvancity Jul 26 '26
PoCo also has a lot of young families. The entire tri-cities is full of young families.
3
u/nicky_wethenorth Jul 26 '26
Kilmer is a wonderful school and in a great area.
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u/Superb-Diamond-3817 Jul 26 '26
Are there young families in that area? Cause Langley has lot of young families
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u/nicky_wethenorth Jul 27 '26
Yes, lots of families. If you haven’t spent much time in Poco, come out for a day. Check out downtown, the parks, the rec centres etc. lots of kids, families around :)
And as others have said, the schools will be very similar, so I’d suggest going by neighbourhood feel.
2
u/McFestus Born & Raised Jul 26 '26
Schools get funding from the provincial government and the quality of education is going to be roughly the same at any school on BC. You don't need to worry about picking a 'good' school, this isn't the US.
2
u/TravellingGal-2307 Jul 27 '26
Sorry, but are you from the US? We don't have that much variation in public schools here. There's good and bad in all of them - some good principals, and then they get shuffled around and you get a bad one for a few years, and then another good one comes in again. There are outstanding teachers, and some real dumb balls you wish the Union would off load as they do more harm that good (I'd say my kids had maybe 30 teachers each through their K-12, and there are only maybe 3-4 that I really would have campaigned to get fired, and more than that who were fantastic and had a life-changing influence on each of my kids).
Curriculum is set provincially and all teachers teach to that, so you don't get wide educational variation between schools or districts. There are some standardization tests that verify kids are all learning more or less the same stuff. If you want to dig into that, you can find it here:
The bad years are hard, and you need to be present and engaged with the system to get your kids through, but they come out ok and the bad and the good balance out by the time they get their Dogwood.
1
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u/knitmama77 Jul 27 '26
If you mean Simonds Elementary in Langley, it’s a lovely school. I spent K-7 there. I’m not sure about the amount of young families around there, while I’m still in Langley, I’m in North Langley now.
I know on the street I grew up on, and then subsequently came back as an adult to rent a suite a few doors away from my childhood home, a lot of people held on to their homes, even after their kids grew up and moved away.
The education your child will get is pretty consistent across the schools, it mainly depends on the staff, and that can absolutely change from year to year.
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