QOTW: Would you move for a better school?

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suuzzzy
iVillage Member
Registered: 02-14-2009
QOTW: Would you move for a better school?
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 Mon, 01-17-2011 - 5:29am

Or have you in the past?

Suzanne

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treddlesewingmachine
iVillage Member
Registered: 05-02-2004
In reply to: suuzzzy
Re: QOTW: Would you move for a better school?
 Fri, 02-04-2011 - 9:02pm
We were in the "Good" school district - but it didn't meet our needs and was pretty crappy overall, just better than the rest of the schools in the district. We could not afford to move, so we homeschooled. We are now in a better district in another state, but our local elementary school is not so great as it is in the "low rent" area (which I personally find repulsive that the schools are so divided economically. There should be a mixture, but this is how the town was built.) So we still homeschool, and actually never thought of doing otherwise because it really meets our needs. Besides, I hate fighting with school people, and I would be due to my son's special needs, being twice exceptional.
muddymessalonskee
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-09-2006
In reply to: suuzzzy
Re: QOTW: Would you move for a better school?
 Sat, 01-22-2011 - 9:03am
We moved for dh's job, where we live on site, a twenty minute drive to the nearest town, in part of a five county cluster with a total population of 10,000. We've always homeschooled, which is fortunate because my the town's schools would be an exceedingly poor fit for dd17 and dd13 - one is dyslexic and the other puts the Energizer Bunny to shame (now I think I'm getting a taste of what it must have been like to raise dh)... ds19 finished high school here and is now an A student at college, so that worked out ok. Anyhow, our location/situation means a lot of driving, adaptation (dd17's is passionate about music and art but spending most of her time on the latter), and out of the box education. For example, a recent family vacation to visit my sisters in a big city included a saxopohone lesson for dd17, who loves her town and gown jazz ensemble here, but finds it hard to practice when her regular teacher, whom she sees a couple of times a year for a few weeks, lives 2500 miles away. So...to make a long answer short, we moved away from educational opportunities for our kids to take a low paying, high challenge personal opportunity for dh...because when the family cannot thrive when the primary breadwinner is unhappy with his job. And the benefits seem to outweigh the disadvantages, most of the time!

Deborah
beeblebrx
iVillage Member
Registered: 12-06-2010
In reply to: suuzzzy
Re: QOTW: Would you move for a better school?
 Fri, 01-21-2011 - 5:46pm
We'd consider moving. Right now that would be tough because of the way our jobs are set up, but we knew when we settled here that there would be a good selection of schools.

Moving's a big thing, though, when you consider not only jobs but also friends, your home and your children's openness or resistance to moving. Maybe driving is better - and easier in the long run.
suuzzzy
iVillage Member
Registered: 02-14-2009
In reply to: suuzzzy
Re: QOTW: Would you move for a better school?
 Thu, 01-20-2011 - 3:47pm
We haven't in the past, my initial plan was to just accept the longer commute. but we are considering it now. The only problem is that DD1 and DD2s middle/high school is in a different town than the new Montessori school we would like to send DD3 to by the end of next year. If we'd move near the big girls' school the drive to the Montessori would be only 5 minutes longer though (30 min), so that's not too bad (but kind of silly: move away from it, at least now it's sort of on my way to work). And the town where the high school is in, is a lot less appealing than where we live now.... But we're growing out of our house soon, so the girls are pleading with us since we have to move anyway to move closer to school so they can meet with friends, and don't loose so much time biking to and from school (50 min one way)... I don't know...
Suzanne
singrorge
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2001
In reply to: suuzzzy
Re: QOTW: Would you move for a better school?
 Thu, 01-20-2011 - 10:06am

We moved when my oldest was entering 3rd grade, mostly because with a third child on the way our house was way too small.

gwennyc
Community Leader
Registered: 05-18-2005
In reply to: suuzzzy
Re: QOTW: Would you move for a better school?
 Thu, 01-20-2011 - 7:55am

We've lived in an area with decent neighborhood elementary schools since before our kids were born.

http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc248/gwennyc/b6yfcl.png<A href="http://s218.photobucket

m00minmamma
iVillage Member
Registered: 07-23-2002
In reply to: suuzzzy
Re: QOTW: Would you move for a better school?
 Wed, 01-19-2011 - 12:44pm
The point is mostly moot for us, as we homeschool. However, we have vaguely considered the issue of whether to move for music education opportunities. In our case we live in a fairly rural remote area, with the nearest gifted magnet school and symphony orchestra being 8 hours away in another province. It would also involve jumping through some costly and time-consuming hoops to get dh and me licensed to work in our professions in that province. For instance I would need to do a full year of full-time++ retraining -- simply not possible while homeschooling four kids.

If "moving" meant buying a new house within an hour of where we live, certainly we'd consider doing that. But moving from our current location to anywhere that offered considerably more for our kids would be far more onerous and really isn't possible for us.

Miranda

Miranda
in rural BC, Canada
mom to three great kids and one great grown-up
unschooler, violist, runner, doc 

weedosmom
iVillage Member
Registered: 09-13-1999
In reply to: suuzzzy
Re: QOTW: Would you move for a better school?
 Wed, 01-19-2011 - 7:45am

Avatar for ctimber92
ctimber92
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
In reply to: suuzzzy
Re: QOTW: Would you move for a better school?
 Tue, 01-18-2011 - 8:04pm
I posted already but wanted to mention we are in the same situation with one of our twins girls. One child is absolutely thriving at the middle school and I expect will do the same next year in HS. The other daughter has not really found her niche socially and we are considering a private school 20 min away. Like you, all of the kids in the MS continue on to HS, we live in a small community. Both girls took the ACT in Dec and the dd who is not thriving did pretty well for an 8th grader (scored in the 84 percentile for all students who took the ACT), don't have the break down of how she did compared to other 8th graders yet. Just wanted to let you know we are in the same boat.
Cathie, mom to Audrey & Emily 12 yrs, Libby 2 yrs
Avatar for ctimber92
ctimber92
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
In reply to: suuzzzy
Re: QOTW: Would you move for a better school?
 Tue, 01-18-2011 - 7:56pm

We did. We were renting a house when the older girls were toddlers, we purposefully bought in the best neighborhood we could afford for the schools. Then ended up commuting to a hybrid homeschool/regluar school charter school. And finally moved again to the midwest. I would definitely consider

Cathie, mom to Audrey & Emily 12 yrs, Libby 2 yrs

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