We're moving to Atlanta! Neighborhood advice?

[lastminutemom]

I think some of the elementary schools in Smyrna are actually very good. Middle and High are a work in progress but given your kids ages I expect they will follow the path of the elementary schools by the time you get there. There is a ton of community involvement working towards improving the schools there.

Which schools were you finding the houses in Sandy Springs that you liked? They aren't all equal.

Are you corporate nomads type-- so that planning past elementary school doesn't make sense anyway?

In Atlanta, everything is a trade off -- you want X for housing and want to spend Y, then this is where you can buy. You want X kind of schools and have this budget and want this commute, then housing is the easiest thing to adjust. It is about priorities.

For us, we were ok with decent, but solid, schools to have the commute we wanted and the housing type we liked. We could have had much more house and a school with better test scores if we had lived further out, but we just couldn't do it.

[dblackga]

Originally Posted by Ant131531

City of Decatur schools are the best in the state, but it's a small school system and very exclusive IMO. Dunwoody and Brookhaven are also fine. Upscale areas with lots of great jobs which generally means the surrounding areas are nice and the school systems are fine. Sandy Springs are also fine, but you'll be a little outside of the perimeter, but you can still take MARTA to Midtown from the Dunwoody or Roswell station.

Umm . . . there IS no "Roswell" station. The station that is the furthest north is the North Springs MARTA station, and that is firmly in Sandy Springs.

OP, Dunwoody has some very highly ranked elementary schools (Austin, Vanderlyn), but the middle and high schools don't rank as high. Your price range would be very do-able in Dunwoody. Sandy Springs is a little more problematic -- honestly, the elementary schools are only so-so. One of the high schools, Riverview, is excellent, with a 9 on the GreatSchools.org website; North Springs HS is ok, with a few interesting magnet programs, but drugs have been a problem in the past. But there are several good private schools -- Mt. Vernon Presbyterian, Springmont Montessori, the Weber School, Marist, St. Jude's. The Buckhead privates are not that far, either.