Looking for the best schools— particularly high schools! (Atlanta, Sandy Springs: sales, colleges)

[Soccernerd]

Originally Posted by PTC Dad

https://www.schooldigger.com/go/GA/s...87/school.aspx

I tend to take rankings with a grain of salt. However, according to the website, Riverwood is ranked 117th. Walton (our top pick high school) is ranked 6th. That's a pretty large difference.

[AtlJan]

Originally Posted by Soccernerd

I tend to take rankings with a grain of salt. However, according to the website, Riverwood is ranked 117th. Walton (our top pick high school) is ranked 6th. That's a pretty large difference.

Yes they are different. Riverwood has more socio-economic diversity than Walton, but both have a wealth of high achieving students, advanced classes and great extra-curricular opportunities. Obviously you'll need to check out the various schools and see what you like. I'm just saying R is excellent and a bit closer to your work, without being too far from Dobbins. You are correct, however, that your housing budget won't go as far as it would in East Cobb, either.

[Soccernerd]

Originally Posted by AtlJan

Riverwood has more socio-economic diversity than Walton

Yes I definately noticed that. I saw townhomes and condos from the 100,000s homes that are selling for many of millions of dollars, and everything in between. There are probably few school clusters in Georgia or perhaps even the country with that diverse of housing stock. Add in the fact that Riverwood's a charter school so presumably it's drawing in students from outside the school zone, you've got a quite diverse school.

[PTC Dad]

Originally Posted by Soccernerd

Yes I definately noticed that. I saw townhomes and condos from the 100,000s homes that are selling for many of millions of dollars, and everything in between. There are probably few school clusters in Georgia or perhaps even the country with that diverse of housing stock. Add in the fact that Riverwood's a charter school so presumably it's drawing in students from outside the school zone, you've got a quite diverse school.

Some of the reasons for the socioeconomic diversity at Riverwood is because a lot of the residents in the area send their kids to private schools. One of my co-workers lives in the Riverwood district but sends their kids to private school. They said most of their neighbors do the same, whereas in the Walton district, almost everyone sends their kids to public schools.

[Soccernerd]

Originally Posted by PTC Dad

Some of the reasons for the socioeconomic diversity at Riverwood is because a lot of the residents in the area send their kids to private schools. One of my co-workers lives in the Riverwood district but sends their kids to private school. They said most of their neighbors do the same, whereas in the Walton district, almost everyone sends their kids to public schools.

That is very true. If you're able to afford a 2,3,4+ million dollar house in Atlanta you're probably sending your kids to a private school no matter how good the public schools are. You can tell the a higher rate of people send their kids to private schools because the Riverwood district is quite large but the enrollment is lower than at Walton.

[dblackga]

Originally Posted by noooooney

The education here (GA) period falls very short so imo your best bet is homeschool. That is what we have haf to do. Other than that I heard Gwinnett county has good (good for GA) schools and education.

The area where the OP is looking have excellent schools. If you choose to homeschool for other reasons, that's fine, but don't run down the schools in this particular area. Walton and it's feeder schools, Lassiter and Pope are always near the top of the heap when it comes to school quality. One or two HSs in Gwinnett may be comparable, but otherwise, Gwinnett won't meet the other criteria that the OP named.

[dblackga]

Originally Posted by Soccernerd

My husband and I are going down Labor Day weekend to look. I think East Cobb is the best option at least on paper. We'll also look at West Cobb and the Riverwood district. The Riverwood area will have better access to retail and the city, but it looks like a lot of the housing within our budget is older or multi family. We'll see though.

Don't worry about the unincorporated vs. incorporated. East Cobb is mostly unincorporated. Roswell and Sandy Springs are incorporated, but honestly, there's not a significant different in taxes or services. You pay your taxes primarily to a county, with a bit tacked on for city services.

Walton is an excellent school, but it is also pretty cut-throat. If your kids are easily high achievers, they will probably still find themselves working pretty hard. For kids who are average or above average, some struggle, and can be easily intimidated by the number of high achievers. I've talked to parents with academically gifted kids who deliberately chose a different high school in order to give them a chance to be in the top 5 or 10th percentile. Something to think about.

Riverwood inside the Perimeter (285 circles Atlanta -- "inside the Perimeter" is the area inside of 285) is a great option -- it has had a robust International Baccalaureate program for years. While it's true that many homes in that area quickly soar above $600K, there are still some around Chastain and Riverside that would meet your criteria. Also, depending on what your children are interested in, just outside the Perimeter is North Springs HS, which is a charter school that is the only HS in Fulton County that is a magnet school for both the Arts and the Sciences. There are some lovely $400-$600K homes that feed into North Springs, with easy access to Ga 400 (look at The Branches, Spalding Woods, etc., as well as the new Aria development by Ashton Woods across from the new Mercedes Benz headquarters. Sandy Springs is also undergoing an aggressive renaissance, with the new City Center complex that basically razed dozens of blocks of older, tired strip shopping centers, and are building (almost finishing) a new Performing Arts center, and beautiful new "city center" shopping and living options. Lots of new restaurants, too!)

East Cobb neighborhoods to look at in Walton include Indian Hills (nice, non-cookie-cutter neighborhood), Princeton Walk (big yards, lovely wooded areas), Ashebrooke, Atanta Country Club (you can sometimes find something in there under $600K), New Bedford

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[AtlJan]

Originally Posted by dblackga

The area where the OP is looking have excellent schools. If you choose to homeschool for other reasons, that's fine, but don't run down the schools in this particular area. Walton and it's feeder schools, Lassiter and Pope are always near the top of the heap when it comes to school quality. One or two HSs in Gwinnett may be comparable, but otherwise, Gwinnett won't meet the other criteria that the OP named.

Lassiter and Pope are not feeder schools--they are nearby Cobb County high schools that are also excellent. I do not think you would see a drop in the level of total school experience at either of these in comparison to Walton. I have a relative whose child is a very high achiever at Walton and she recently quit sports bc of the academic pressure.

And dblackga is also right to recommend North Springs. It is similar to Riverwood and you could be in proximity to the sandy springs Marta station. I realize these two do not rank as highly as the East Cobb schools, but the middle and high achievers do very well. The elementary schools vary in quality in both districts so you would need to do homework there.

[Soccernerd]

My kids are in sports and other activities so I would hope they'd continue with them in high school. The St. Louis area has the highest per capita number of students who attend private school, so they're a pretty big deal. My point is people who excel (I mean really excel) in sports, music, academics etc. attend them, so I suppose the public schools there aren't super competitive. I guess I haven't thought about it until now.

[Born 2 Roll]

Originally Posted by Soccernerd

My kids are in sports and other activities so I would hope they'd continue with them in high school. The St. Louis area has the highest per capita number of students who attend private school, so they're a pretty big deal. My point is people who excel (I mean really excel) in sports, music, academics etc. attend them, so I suppose the public schools there aren't super competitive. I guess I haven't thought about it until now.

Athletics and other extracurricular activities are also a pretty big deal (an even bigger deal in many regards) in the Atlanta area because of the city/metro's location directly within the geographical footprints of major athletics conferences like the basketball/football-crazed ACC (Atlantic Coast Conference) and the football-crazy SEC (Southeastern Conference).

The schools of those two Southeastern/Eastern Seaboard-based athletic conferences (along with other major conferences like the Big-10, the Big-12, the AAC, the Pac-12, the Ivy League, etc, etc) recruit the Atlanta area extremely heavily in both the athletic and academic realms.

Because of its location directly within the footprint of two extremely high-profile athletic conferences in the SEC and the ACC, the Atlanta area is an extremely high-profile area for athletic and academic recruiting.

Most of the SEC and ACC member schools (along with many Big-12, Big-10 and AAC schools) have particularly large alumni and fan/donor support bases in the Atlanta area.

The massive presence of so many large college alumni/fan support/donor bases in the area is something which helps to make prep/high school-level athletics (and academics) "super-competitive" throughout large swaths of the Atlanta metro region, including (and especially) across much/most of the entirety of metro Atlanta's highly-affluent and heavily-developed north side (an area of which Cobb County is a key and central part of).

The extremely high level of athletic recruiting and the location of the Atlanta metro area directly in the geographical footprint of major athletic conferences like the SEC and the ACC has motivated many public high schools across the north side of the Atlanta region to model their athletic programs after the high-major schools of the SEC and ACC.

Many (if not most) large major public high schools across the Atlanta region's affluent north side model their entire athletic programs after the power schools of the Southeastern (SEC) and Atlantic Coast (ACC) conferences, but in particular seem to model their football programs in molds that are similar to that of the football-crazy schools of the SEC and ACC and their basketball programs after the basketball-crazy schools of the ACC (and the University of Kentucky, one of the few real basketball-crazy schools in the SEC).