Head over to Yo's new Public schools forum, where a thread has started about how residential development in neighborhoods like Lincoln Park, the South Loop, Rogers Park and West Lakeview has revitalized neighborhood public schools. Unfortunately the gentrification of various neighborhoods also has resulted in lower-income families being forced out of those communities, and that trend is also mirrored in the local schools.

We've gone all suburban this afternoon at Yo. Here's another new project: Kildeer Estates, a collection of 110 single-family homes on a parcel at U. S. Route 22 and Quentin Road (no rendering available just yet). Apparently the selling point of this Dartmoor Homes community, which isn't quite in the village of Kildeer, but close by, is its proximity to Stevenson High School, which has quite the reputation among young families. The houses have standard elevations but buyers can opt for "more peaks or higher-pitched roofs" says Ron Sova, Dartmoor's vice president of sales and marketing. The houses have four bedrooms, 2.5 baths and two-car garages, Sova said. Larger homes also have a den that can be used as a media room or home office. Features include central air, formal dining rooms and nine-foot ceiling heights on the first floor and ceramic bathroom tiles. At press time, the homes were priced from the high-$500s to the high-$600s.

Yo's truly is fascinated by the effect good schools have on real estate values. Another obvious example is the Bell School's impact on home prices in St Ben's. Anyone else got other good examples of home prices shooting up in Chicago because of proximity to a good school?

Gubernatorial candidate Judy Baar Topinka unveiled her long-awaited education plan yesterday, but like Rod, she's sidestepped the 10,000-pound gorilla in the closet - property taxes. We think the state's reliance on property taxes is fundamentally unfair, but we'd love to hear what you think as homeowners, parents, taxpayers… Click "Comments" below to add your two cents.

Evanston, or at least a vocal contingent of Evanstonians, is up in arms about Northwestern University's quiet purchase of a $600,000 house at 1945 Orrington Ave, near campus. The town bellyaches that NU has sneaked another home off the local tax rolls to the tune of eight grand a year. NU, anticipating the tempest in a North Shore teacup, conveniently released a new study last week retailing the school's economic benefits on the community.

The University of Chicago has announced that Urban Works Architects will redesign the building at 5710 S Woodlawn Ave, the future home of the Office of Minority Student Affairs, the Amandla Student Resource Center and the LGBTQ Student Resource Center. And the university seems to have thought this one out quite nicely: Urban Works Architects is run mainly by women and minorities.

Dawn Turner Trice laments in a column today that the big, bad Goliath of the Chicago Public School bureaucracy stomped on a poor David in the shape of Chris Devane, creator of a popular map of Chicago neighborhoods. Trice can't understand why CPS would tell Devane to cease and desist (the reasons CPS gave publicly sound lame). Trice should check out the recent Crain's story, which presented a pretty good reason CPS might want to distance itself from Big Stick Inc. - allegations of racism and the $6,500 he failed to pay his partner, the Chicago Association of Realtors. If the charge of racism seems overblown (it did to us, at first), a visit to Tally's Corner might give it some credence.

I've railed against the effect of good schools on real estate values in the surrounding neighborhood and how it becomes difficult for many homebuyers to move into an area with high-quality public schools. But I must say that it's nice to see a good school move into a community that is struggling.

At the end of August, the University of Chicago is opening a charter school for kids in grades six to 12 in Woodlawn on the South Side, giving enrollment priority to kids who live in the immediate neighborhood. University officials tells us they are doing this because they are concerned that only about 48 percent of African American boys in Chicago graduate from high school and the graduation rate for girls isn't much higher.

The University of Chicago Charter School, Woodlawn High School campus will be located at 6420 S University Ave. Now watch the real estate values rise in that area.

Check out the University of Chicago's south campus development plan. By 2008, this area will be home to a residence hall for 900 students, a couple of office buildings and parking garages, a dining facility, cafe, convenience store and some other retailers.

The plan covers university-owned land bounded by 60th and 61st streets, Drexel Boulevard and Dorchester Avenue, just south of Midway Plaisance Park. Currently, the land is covered with surface parking lots and a smattering of buildings.

One of the planned developments, a parking structure with an office building wrapped around it, slated for 61st Street and Drexel Boulevard, was designed by Chicago architect Carol Ross Barney of Ross Barney + Jankowski Architects. Ross Barney was the architect selected to design a new federal campus for Oklahoma City, following the 1995 bombing.

To the south of the University of Chicago at 61st Street is the community of Woodlawn, which is currently starved for retail and is hoping to benefit from the development.

New single-family homes have become rare in the city, much less single-families in the Alexander Graham Bell school district. The elementary school is the kind parents move to North Center for, a fact Centrum Properties is counting on with the second phase of Bradley Place, 24 detached houses at Addison St and the Chicago River. What will new Bradley Place residents do with the money they're saving on private schooling? We can't say for sure, but a chunk of it's likely to go toward the mortgages on homes priced at $1,259,000. Plans call for houses with five bedrooms, 3.5 baths and more than 4,600 square feet.

What? Another student high-rise development may be taking place in the South Loop? Is it only a matter of time before the frat pack well and truly decamps from Lincoln Park, and everyone starts referring to the South Loop as SoLo?

Rumor has it that Smithfield Properties has acquired a building at 626 S. Clark St., which the condo developer plans to convert into 700 beds of student housing. The nabe, of course, is full of universities and Mayor Daley has been encouraging student migration to the Loop for a long time, as part of his plans for a 24-hour downtown.

The area is already host to the spanking new University Center on State Street, and wealthy suburban parents are coughing up for condos across the South Loop to install junior and a buddy or two.

The influx of students has brought a healthy vitality to the South Loop over the last eighteen months, although budget-friendly restaurants and retail have been slow to follow suit. But hopefully it won't result in a plethora of sports bars and other signs of Wrigley-fication in the neighborhood.