Here's a piece of conventional wisdom I want to push back on: the idea that school ratings should be your primary filter when choosing a suburb.
Don't get me wrong—schools matter. Obviously. If you have kids, the quality of their education matters a lot. I'm not arguing otherwise.
What I'm arguing is that school ratings tell you about yesterday, while capital budgets tell you about tomorrow. And if you're making a $500K+ decision with a 10-year time horizon, you should probably weight the forward-looking signal more heavily than most people do.
The Problem With School Ratings
School ratings are backward-looking by design. They measure:
- •Test scores from the previous year
- •Graduation rates from students who started high school four years ago
- •Performance metrics that reflect decisions made 5-10 years ago
This isn't a criticism of the ratings themselves. They're measuring what they're designed to measure. But what they're designed to measure is the past.
A school rated 9 today might be dealing with:
- •Enrollment pressure from rapid population growth
- •Budget cuts that haven't hit yet
- •Demographic shifts that will change the student body
- •Teacher turnover that won't show up in metrics for years
- •Facility constraints from deferred maintenance
None of this appears in the rating. It all appears in the trajectory.
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Take the quizWhat Capital Budgets Actually Tell You
When a city or school district approves a bond package or capital improvement plan, they're telling you something important:
What they think matters. Is the money going to schools? Roads? Parks? Flood mitigation? The allocation reveals priorities.
Where they're betting their future. Is the investment spread evenly, or concentrated in specific corridors? The geographic distribution reveals strategy.
How much they're willing to invest. A $650M bond package signals different intent than a $50M package.
What timeline they're working on. Five-year plans versus ten-year plans versus emergency patches tell you about both urgency and planning sophistication.
This is forward-looking information. It's not perfect—plans change, execution varies—but it's predictive in ways that ratings aren't.
Three Examples That Make This Concrete
Richardson.
School ratings: good, not great. Depending on the zone, you'll see 7s and 8s, not 9s and 10s. This is one reason Richardson trades at a discount to Plano.
Capital story: aggressive reinvestment in infrastructure, two Silver Line stations creating transit access, CityLine development maturing, targeted redevelopment in specific corridors.
If you only look at school ratings, Richardson is a "fine" suburb. If you look at capital flows, Richardson is a suburb actively betting on its future—while charging prices that don't fully reflect that bet.
Plano.
School ratings: strong across most zones.
Capital story: roughly $650M reinvestment bond, focused on road rehabilitation, public safety, and infrastructure maintenance. This is a city in protection mode—actively spending to maintain what exists.
The school ratings tell you Plano is good. The capital story tells you Plano is betting on stability, not growth. These are different signals for different buyer profiles.
Celina.
School ratings: barely exist yet. The schools are too new to have track records.
Capital story: $2.3B in school bonds, massive infrastructure investment, tollway extension arriving.
If you only look at school ratings, Celina is a question mark. If you look at capital flows, Celina is a suburb making a very specific bet on building ahead of population. Whether that bet pays off is uncertain, but the intent is clear.
How to Actually Use This
Step 1: Find the documents.
Capital improvement plans and bond packages are public records. They're usually on the city's website, sometimes buried in the finance or public works department. School district bond information is typically on the district's site.
Step 2: Look at where the money is going.
- •Roads and transportation
- •Schools and facilities
- •Parks and amenities
- •Utilities and infrastructure
- •Redevelopment and special projects
Step 3: Ask what the spending implies.
Is this a city in growth mode (building new infrastructure for new population) or protection mode (maintaining and upgrading existing infrastructure)?
Is the investment targeted (specific corridors, specific catalysts) or broad (spread evenly across the city)?
Is the focus short-term (immediate needs) or long-term (building for the next decade)?
Step 4: Compare to current prices.
Is the market pricing in the capital story, or not yet? If a suburb is spending aggressively on reinvestment but still trading at a discount because of perception lag, that's potentially interesting.
The Blind Spots
I want to be honest about limitations:
Plans can change. A bond package approved today might get delayed, scaled back, or redirected. Political turnover matters.
Execution matters. Capital plans are only as good as the implementation. Some cities execute well; others don't.
External factors. Recessions, interest rates, migration patterns—things beyond city control can derail the best-laid plans.
Timing is uncertain. "Complete by 2028" might mean 2030 or 2032. Building ahead of schedule is rare.
Capital budgets aren't perfect predictors. But they're better than ratings alone because they show intent backed by actual money.
The Bottom Line
School ratings tell you about yesterday. Capital budgets tell you about tomorrow.
Smart buyers look at both. Most buyers only look at ratings, because ratings are easy to find and easy to understand.
The edge—if there is one—comes from reading the documents that most people don't read. Capital improvement plans aren't exciting. But they're often more useful than another GreatSchools comparison.
The information is public. The question is whether you're willing to do the work.