I'm not in CA, but have a friend who worked as a teacher in CA several years ago - fwiw, one of the things I'd want to ask about is teacher-student ratio - when my friend's school district was faced with large budget cuts several years ago one of the measures to deal with it was increasing class size and it was increased significantly larger than I've heard of anywhere else in the US. Please know I don't know if this happened elsewhere in CA, but it's definitely something I'd ask about!
And fwiw, I've lived in CA. For all the troubles with schools and all the 8 million other things people might tell you about the challenges or frustrations of living there - I would move back in a heartbeat! I loved it
The schools might not be great where you are moving to, but the things you can do as a family, the places you can easily visit, the outside-of-school everything - I put a lot of weight into family life too... I think it's every bit as beneficial to our HG/EG/PG kids to have a wealth of simply being with family and having experiences as a family. OTOH, CA is expensive (cost of living) and commutes can be long.
Good luck with your school investigations -
polarbear
