Low school attendance

[padwan 0]

Hi all,

 I have a large city of 75,000+, great school coverage and yet, only a dozen or so at every school. What am I doing wrong? I want my schools bustling with young sims!

Thanks

[erbush 8]

Your problem may lie in the lack of your young sims.. if they are all older the attendance will be down.

[Strategist01 0]

First of all, it sounds like your city might be old enough that your sims are well educated. If they are, check uder the education tab under the "views" panel. If your city shows up as green, then you have well educated sims, and don't need to worry as much about education. Second of all, make sure that your bus funding is covering those residential areas. if it's too small then not enough sims will be able to reach you schools! Hope that helped

[padwan 0]

@erbush: You're right, my sims are mostly 50+!! That begs the next question: How do I get my younger sims moving into established neighbourhoods and have some kids? (other than expanding ever outward into suburbia - as in real life). lol!

[jim 546 43]

Older sims will appear in areas where there is good health facilities. I think removing health facilities will lower the areas age, but I also believe that new buildings will produce younger sims (though I'm not sure about that). So by the second theory, you would need to demolish some areas.

[Aktof 2]

what you could do is if you have alot of low density buildings with the old people in it is to zone them into medium let that grow up and it would have a newer crowd in it, you can also do this with med/ high and then zone it down to medium which would reduce the damage done to the neighbourhoods. Other than that you just have to wait till the old people go away and someone comes to take their place, which is a really long time if the healthcare is good.

[padwan 0]

LOL. This is where the "realism" part starts to die... I have 1-3 teachers at every school in my city. I'm surprised the school board hasn't asked me to shut down and consolidate the schools like they would in real life. Thanks for everyone's thoughts.

[z1 566]

This is really a game bug. If you have good health care, eventually the average age in your cities shoots up way beyond what is realistic. And nobody goes to those school board meetings any more - they're all too old to have kids in school. This is something that should be fixed by Maxis - if there were still a Maxis to fix it.

[Tysons4 68]

maybe since your sims are aging and there is no longer any hard demand for elm schools give your 5 libraries and unlock the main library, and once you have the main library built take out all the other libraries as the main library services the entire city... this will educate your sims even further

then do the same with the museums (i think it's 6) and put the reward musiuem and then delete the rest

after you have those 2 reward buildings put just enough large elm schools to cover your residence and the same with large highschools (fund as necessary)

it sounds like you are on the right track with this city and could be a great place for sims to live... i bet your mayor rating is through the roof

a few things about the game... when sims get old and die they pass some of their knowledge on to their children... the smarter your sims are the less chance of abandonment will happen...

just keep the police stations in your city or things could get bad... as some sims only follow the rules when there is enforcement

when all is keen you could unlock the bureau of bureaucracy

[SC4BOY 20]

The easiest way is to bulldoze some of the old areas for "urban renewal". This has been a problem since the beginnings. Frankly I dont think the game was ever much intended to operate in "steady state".. it was expected to always be evolving and developing or deteriorating and renewing. The lower your health quotient the more young people you'll have continually renewing.

Originally posted by: z1

This is really a game bug... .quote>

Actually this happens in "real life" as well. Old, settled neighborhoods with high average age and few schoolchildren. The neighborhood in that state tends to go downhill with poor home maintenance and deteriorating tax base.. eventually they start dying off and "new blood" starts coming in.. unfortunately it is often in the form of "absentee landlords" who let the neighborhood deteriorate while milking them for depreciation, income, tax writeoffs, etc. Eventually if lucky it gets new blood starting to come as the property is "good opportunities" for young, less affluent people who are having families and want to get into the game for "sweat equity". At this point those neighborhoods tend to become "bright new hotspots" and undergo renewal.. Then the cycle repeats.

[LSuga 2]

I swear my sims are living to be 300 years old. I constantly yell at the screen: Just die off already! I want the new people in!

Sure, I look silly talking to a game, but if the game answers back, I have a bigger problem.

[padwan 0]

@SC4Boy: You might be right about the urban renewal. I wish I could build retirement homes and "entice" the older sims to move in to them to make their homes available for younger sims to move in and start families. . I don't want to lower health care because that would drive down demand for commercial and I'm already having a hard enough time getting now skyscrapers to build up.

[Livin in Sim 83]

You wanna put me in a retirement home?    Get off my lawn!!!

[Jezus53 18]

Originally posted by: Livin in Sim

You wanna put me in a retirement home?   

quote>

I lol'd.

I can honestly say I've never had this problem for a whole city, but I have in parts. To this day I'm still not sure on what to do, but I think if you let time pass then things will fix themselves. In the mean time build a highway system or something. That's what I do....till my game crashes before I save and I just give up and build a new region.