Those pesky school district lines

Q. Here’s a doozy for you. I live in Rockville Centre, three blocks from the RVC high school, but I’m in the Baldwin School District (which drops the value of my home by at least $100,000, according to a real estate agent). I was told that if my property were even a couple of inches into the RVC district, my home could be considered part of it. I have my survey (done before the seat belt law), but wondered how I could have the property re-evaluated to confirm my school district status. If you could point me in the right direction and give me some go-to advice, I’d be grateful.

A. Your question isn’t such a doozy. You should ask your school district this question, because districts are decided by them. If your property lines are in question, a more detailed survey may help, but property descriptions don’t change by resurveying, unless the old survey was truly wrong, which I doubt.
I chuckled at your question, which reminded me of the early ’70s, when my parents had real estate licenses. The discussion around the dinner table sometimes drifted to problems with agents purposely “red-lining,” meaning trying to steer people of a certain ethnic background to areas where they could, as Archie Bunker put it, “be with their own kind.” Growing up in a mixed neighborhood in the Midwest, I saw a little more racial harmony than when I moved to the vastly more diverse New York, where so many more people from so many more origins accentuate the territoriality and competitiveness that seems to be a way of life here. People are even territorial entering an expressway or changing lanes. They speed up to let you know they own that lane.