Atlanta Public Schools (North Atlanta, Jackson, Buckhead: sales, new house, neighborhoods)

[StillThinking]

My wife and I have 4 daughters with the oldest being 5 years old. Are there any areas within Atlanta city limits that have decent schools? For instance, Grant Park or Kirkwood or any neighborhood within the city limits.

We are moving to Atlanta Summer 08.

[BobKovacs]

Grant Park, Kirkwood, and the other trendy, "up and coming" areas aren't generally the biggest "family areas", as the schools still leave something to be desired. While there's a school here or there that's beginning to show some promise due to the redevelopment in the area, there's a reason that most of the recent buyers are gay, single or DINKS. If schools are really important to you, as well as providing a neighborhood that's got lots of kids for yours to interact with, you're still getting in too early. Of course, if people with kids don't start moving in on a greater basis, the area wll never get larger groups of kids, but maybe it's just destined to be that way.

[cmtiger]

Within the Atlanta city limits, you need to look at Candler Park, Lake Claire, Inman Park, Virginia Highland, Morningside, Poncey Highland, or Midtown. The first three are districted to Lin Elementary, the latter four neighborhoods are districted to Morningside Elementary. Both of these are top notch elementary schools. Morningside and Lin feed into Inman Middle and Grady High. The middle and high schools are also excellent.

You can check these schools out at the GA Dept of Education website. Here is the link....

The Governor's Office of Student Achievement

Greatschools.net also has a lot of info on Atlanta schools.

Grant Park has a charter school called the "Neighborhood Charter School." It is part of the Atlanta system. I have a friend or two with kids there and I have heard that it is very good. You can find out info on it at the GA DOE website. I have even heard that there is a new charter school in East Atlanta Village, but I don't know much about it. I don't know if these charters feed into Inman Middle or Coan Middle so you would have to check into that. Coan is not a very good middle school.

You could also check out Toomer Elementary in Kirkwood. Toomer has historically struggled, but a group of parents with young children have been working very hard to improve achievement at that school. There is a parent coalition that you would have to get in touch with on that. I would imagine that if you find a realtor that knows that area well, they could get you in touch with someone involved with the coalition.

What is your price range for a home?

[pinetreelover]

Garden Hills is a great elementary school in Buckhead and Sara Smith, Warren Jackson and Morris Brandon are the "private public schools". The problems arise at the middle and high school level when many, many city dwellers move their kids to private school.

[cmtiger]

Pinetree lover is right. I forgot about the Buckhead area. Smith, Brandon and Jackson are all excellent. I don't know as much about Garden Hills. I believe that these feed into Sutton Middle which I understand is getting to be a good middle school. After that you would be at North Atlanta High. I believe that they have an arts magnet and it would probably be essential to get into the magnet for the school to be top notch. BTW, at Grady, it is also important to make it into the magnet program - Grady is the communications magnet for APS.

Buckhead is even more expensive than the Lin/Morningside districts though.

[south-to-west]

Schools in APS have been improving more and more over the past several years since young professionals began moving back into the city and school sales tax revenue has skyrocketed. Many schools are being rebuilt with state of the art facilities. The elementary school in my neighborhood, Burgess Academy in East Atlanta, has gotten good reviews and a lot of new households are enrolling their kids there. Face it, not everyone can afford private schools and not everyone wants to live in the burbs, so the local public schools have to improve.