Chicago Suburbs to move to from Austin TX (Naperville, Oak Park: home, schools)

[Hiruko]

Originally Posted by Rhino4401

As Hiruko suggested, consider Skokie. There’s a visible Muslim population, the schools are outstanding and it’s a cool town. But I have no personal testimony to offer (or even pass on) on your exact question re India/Pakistan Muslim presence. Skokie’s is probably smaller than that of other towns you mention, maybe significantly. But, FWIW, the overall culture in Skokie is multi-ethnic. Being a smaller group among a diverse community may be as good for your family as being a larger group where the majority culture is whiter. Given the other benefits of living there, it may be worth the effort to reach out to the Muslim community center and ask about different school communities. It could be a great fit.

There are at least 2 different elementary school districts serving Skokie. I don’t think any of the ones in district 65 have more than a handful of observant Muslim kids, but Skevanston doesn’t meet your other needs anyway. The others are likely to. 68, 69 & 73.5 are the district number. If you do talk to someone it’ll probably help to know the names of each district’s middle school.

There aren’t as many obviously wealthy/high-income families as in other towns, Idk if relative wealth matters anyway but FYI. Still, the schools are well funded. Skokie’s overall scores on the Illinois report cards might not be as high, but the kids who are good at school are equally well served.

Good luck.

There are definitely a lot of Indians and South Asians in Skokie. There is a statue of Gandhi and the Indian flag on McCormick Blvd. There are a handful of Indian families living in my parents' Evanston neighborhood at this point, something that has been very surprising as Evanston has in general been super segregated.

There are definitely still a lot of obviously high-income families in Skokie, Lincolnwood, and Morton Grove. I would say that they heavily concentrate in so-called 'Skevanston', Lincolnwood Towers, the Evanston Golf Club area, and the enclave around Devonshire Park that has a lot of wealthy Orthodox Jews. There are a lot of million-plus dollar homes there.

[nana053]

Originally Posted by Hiruko

There are definitely a lot of Indians and South Asians in Skokie. There is a statue of Gandhi and the Indian flag on McCormick Blvd. There are a handful of Indian families living in my parents' Evanston neighborhood at this point, something that has been very surprising as Evanston has in general been super segregated.

There are definitely still a lot of obviously high-income families in Skokie, Lincolnwood, and Morton Grove. I would say that they heavily concentrate in so-called 'Skevanston', Lincolnwood Towers, the Evanston Golf Club area, and the enclave around Devonshire Park that has a lot of wealthy Orthodox Jews. There are a lot of million-plus dollar homes there.

Many of the Indians in Skokie are Hindus, not Muslims. My ex-dils parents live in Skevanston and she is Hindu not Muslim.

Evanston was certainly not super-segregated when my family and I lived there in terms of Asians. It was segregated in the 1960s certainly. The black population was, though, and still is pretty segregated in terms of housing. The black population was different than the Asian population though.

Evanston, Illinois, has become the first city in the United States to make reparations available to its Black residents for past discrimination and the lingering effects of slavery. The Chicago suburb’s City Council voted 8 to 1 to distribute $400,000 to eligible Black households, with qualifying residents receiving $25,000 for home repairs or down payments on property. The Evanston, Illinois, has become the first city in the United States to make reparations available to its Black residents for past discrimination and the lingering effects of slavery. The Chicago suburb’s City Council voted 8 to 1 to distribute $400,000 to eligible Black households, with qualifying residents receiving $25,000 for home repairs or down payments on property.

[Hiruko]

Originally Posted by nana053

Many of the Indians in Skokie are Hindus, not Muslims. My ex-dils parents live in Skevanston and she is Hindu not Muslim.

Evanston was certainly not super-segregated when my family and I lived there in terms of Asians. It was segregated in the 1960s certainly. The black population was, though, and still is pretty segregated in terms of housing. The black population was different than the Asian population though.

Evanston, Illinois, has become the first city in the United States to make reparations available to its Black residents for past discrimination and the lingering effects of slavery. The Chicago suburb’s City Council voted 8 to 1 to distribute $400,000 to eligible Black households, with qualifying residents receiving $25,000 for home repairs or down payments on property. The Evanston, Illinois, has become the first city in the United States to make reparations available to its Black residents for past discrimination and the lingering effects of slavery. The Chicago suburb’s City Council voted 8 to 1 to distribute $400,000 to eligible Black households, with qualifying residents receiving $25,000 for home repairs or down payments on property.

Ok...I'm not disagreeing with you on Skokie demographics. I have no idea how many are Muslim, Hindu, or whatever. I doubt there are really good stats on that.

Back in the 2000s, when I would walk to Lincoln Elementary School. There were NO people of color on our street. There was one kid whose family was from Hong Kong who actually lived in the southeast part of town. Otherwise, not a single family that I went to school with was non-white. Only those who were bused or came from outside of southeast Evanston were of color. Maybe it was different up north on Ridge, but on the lakefront, there were very few non-white families back then.

[nana053]

Originally Posted by Hiruko

Ok...I'm not disagreeing with you on Skokie demographics. I have no idea how many are Muslim, Hindu, or whatever. I doubt there are really good stats on that.

Back in the 2000s, when I would walk to Lincoln Elementary School. There were NO people of color on our street. There was one kid whose family was from Hong Kong who actually lived in the southeast part of town. Otherwise, not a single family that I went to school with was non-white. Only those who were bused or came from outside of southeast Evanston were of color. Maybe it was different up north on Ridge, but on the lakefront, there were very few non-white families back then.

Lincoln Elementary and Lincolnwood Elementary were very white. The district began busing kids for racial reasons in the 1960s or 70s, I think. I remember being part of the meetings where Evanston wanted to close either Orrington or Noyes elementary schools. If Orrington was closed, both black and white students could have walked to school (I lived in the middle and was in favor of closing Orrington which had structural problems). They closed Noyes instead and made it an art center. The white population was happy.

Here is an article and a book on how integration both succeeded and failed in Evanston.

https://www.chicagomag.com/city-life...l-Integration/

The greatest point of tension in Evanston’s process of integration wasn’t the buses. It was school cafeterias. And the tension had as much or more to do with traditional beliefs about gender than it did with race.

Today, debates over school lunch tend to center around whether the ones schools provide are healthy enough. In Evanston in the late 1960s, the debate over school lunch was over whether students should be permitted to eat lunch at school at all.

This was a minority view—2,500 out of 3,000 respondents surveyed by the PTA in 1967 favored a supervised lunch period. But the school board was dominated by an older, white, well-off ward of Evanston and defeated the idea of expanding a small-scale sack lunch program, which allowed a handful of students to eat at card tables under the watch of PTA volunteers. Barr writes: “Lunch had been considered a family responsibility. Some believed that communal feeding was part of a dangerous triumph of socialism. A lunch program might weaken the spirit of individualism, or so some members of the board thought.”

These beliefs shaped the composition of the photo on the cover of Barr’s book—the composition of her friends. That thing I mentioned about the photo at the beginning: there are seven white girls and six black boys in it. That breakdown by race and gender is not a coincidence.

Despite the civil-rights movement, despite women’s liberation, expectations for boys and girls remained very traditional, even for young boys and girls. Those expectations shaped their days and duties—shaped who their friends would be, which Barr came to realize as she was working on the book.

******************************
The city’s unease about school lunches would not survive these social shifts. Integration meant busing children across town, making it impossible for many children to get home for lunch. A volunteer-based program would no longer work. By the school year of 1969-1970, Evanston finally got school lunches and paid lunchroom workers.

*****************************

After elementary school though, the kids in our neighborhood became nasty. So she transferred from Haven to Chute. Chute had a large population of foreign children at the time. She did a lot better there than she had at Haven in terms of making good friends. She is still friends with her locker partner from Chute now and they are in their forties. They don't live in Evanston and they do not live that close to each other, but they keep in touch.

My son was on some predominantly black soccer teams when he was elementary age and middle school age, The Pele Stars. He walked past the subsidized housing on the way to the high school.

[Suburbanmom76]

I think the comments about Skokie might be a little outdated. My impression is that there is a very large Pakistani and Muslim population in Skokie now. Probably less so in D65 than the rest of Skokie.

[nana053]

Originally Posted by Suburbanmom76

I think the comments about Skokie might be a little outdated. My impression is that there is a very large Pakistani and Muslim population in Skokie now. Probably less so in D65 than the rest of Skokie.

My dil's parents still live in Skokie in the D 65 area.

[spicy_guy]

Schaumburg

[ToriaT]

I lived in Skokie for ten years back in the eighties. My first house was there. Yes its diverse. Problem is the housing stock is aging and in many cases dated. You can find a much bigger more modern house in Naperville with excellent schools. We lived in a l950 Georgian model, much smaller and more crampled than some of the newer open plan house are now. It was nice but a lot of separate rooms, no master suite and they had quite a bit of basement flooding there.

[Hiruko]

Originally Posted by ToriaT

I lived in Skokie for ten years back in the eighties. My first house was there. Yes its diverse. Problem is the housing stock is aging and in many cases dated. You can find a much bigger more modern house in Naperville with excellent schools. We lived in a l950 Georgian model, much smaller and more crampled than some of the newer open plan house are now. It was nice but a lot of separate rooms, no master suite and they had quite a bit of basement flooding there.

Skokie is significantly closer to the City of Chicago. This justifies and explains the higher price per square foot in Skokie and older housing stock. Although, Skokie's 50s era housing stock is considerably newer than most of adjacent Evanston and Wilmette.

[chicagodesi]

Go with Naperville, excellent schools, express train to downtown Chicago, and great Indian/Muslim population.