Possibly moving to Lexington Area ... can you tell me about Sayre? (Frankfort: crime, best schools)

[NellieJoy]

There is a possibility we will be relocating to the Lexington area from Northern California (Sacramento). In my web searches on schools the Sayre school continues to come up as a top notch school. Is this true? Is it worth the tuition?

Also, how is the Georgetown area? Does it feel a lot different than Lexington proper? Would it be too hard to drive the kids to Sayre from Georgetown with traffic in the morning? Are there any good elementary schools in Georgetown comparable to Sayre?

Thank you!

[DeoGratias]

I lived in Georgetown for years and graduated from high school there. I spent my younger years in Lexington (born there).

Georgetown is very different. Less traffic, friendlier people. I loved it, and was very glad to get out of Lexington. Far less crime as well.

From Georgetown proper you can get to Sayre in 20-25 minutes. I lived north of town on a small farm and commuted to school at Transylvania University in about 25-30 minutes depending on traffic and weather.

Sayre is indeed a very good school, and if you are living in Lexington it is probably your best bet. Lexington public schools are horrible (dangerous and low-achieving). If you choose to live in Scott County, though, there's no need to pay for private school. I'm sure they'd do better academically at Sayre but at least Scott County schools are safe.

[timelesschild]

Sayre has an elementary school. Other elementary schools on a par with Sayre include The Lexington School, Providence Montessori, and possibly Christ the King. Two public elementary schools in Lexington which are highly regarded are Cassidy Elementary, and Maxwell Elementary Spanish Immersion.

I would not recommend living in Georgetown unless you have a reason (family, etc.) to do so.

[Hey_Hey]

Originally Posted by DeoGratias

Sayre is indeed a very good school, and if you are living in Lexington it is probably your best bet. Lexington public schools are horrible (dangerous and low-achieving).

Lexington public schools are not dangerous and low achieving. It's one of the best public school systems in the state. Sure, there will be some elementary schools and a high school or two that have a somewhat bad reputation, but some of the best schools in the state are Lexington public schools.

Lexington ranks in the top 10 metros in the country in terms of percentage of people with a college degree. All the kids of these people have to go somewhere, and they don't all go to private schools (there actually aren't that many private schools in lexington compared to similarly sized cities). Those students are going to perform well, on average.

[timelesschild]

Check out GreatSchools - Public and Private School Ratings, Reviews and Parent Community for objective data on schools.

[lexingtongal]

If I had the option of private school for our son (age 11) I would definitely send him to The Lexington School.
For public schools in addition to Cassidy and Maxwell, Rosa Parks, Glendover and Veterans Park are also excellent elementary schools.
Our son originally went to Cassidy but switched to a magnet in 3rd grade to Ashland Elementary. We had a great experience there as well. It was a very racially and socio-economically diverse school and was a very warm, very safe environment. Unless you go to an inner city school I cannot imagine any of them being unsafe. You can check out incident reports per school on fcps.net. The report card for each school includes this data.

[LEXpert]

Ditto what Timeless and Lex-gal said.

[Hey_Hey]

The other thing to keep in mind when comparing schools is that it is very dependent on the population that attends that school. For example, attending Sayre School will cost a high school student somewhere between $15-20,000 a year. There aren't all that many families that can reasonably afford that tuition, especially if there are multiple kids. It's well known that income levels, intelligence levels, and education levels are all very strongly correlated. The same people that can afford to send their kids to Sayre are also likely to have kids that have the inherited intelligence to excel at course work, and they are going to make education a priority since they likely have a high level of education. If you could somehow move all of the students from Sayre and move them to a poor performing public school then you'd see that school's test scores skyrocket.

I say all of that to highlight the fact that test scores alone don't mean much. Simply because school A has high scores and school B has low scores doesn't mean that the quality of education at either school is dramatically different. A little further investigation into the socioeconomics of each school needs to be done to attempt to control for those things that cannot be changed (parental involvement and support, average intelligence, educational priority, etc).

[teebird1012]

OK I suppose I need to throw my two cents in. I went to Sayre from pre-k- grade 12 having just graduated on May 30. I know a lot of kids that drive from Georgetown, Richmond, Berea, Mt Sterling, Versailles, Frankfort, etc to go to school at Sayre. Fayette County Schools are decent yes, but nothing like... say... Fairfax Co, VA or a high-acheiving district like that but their not terrible by any means.

Sayre is expensive (by KY standards at least). Elementary School costs something like $10,000 per year while my senior year cost me $18,500. The student:faculty ratio is 10:1 and the public schools can't beat that. We have new facilities (Middle School is 6 yrs old or so while the High School is 4 yrs old). The Lower School was built back in the 70's and like many of our public schools is in need of renovation. It was a good place to go to school but it does have its setbacks.

As a Sayre student you typically get sterotyped as the "snotty white rich kid." Personally my best friends went to Henry Clay so I didn't hang around Sayre kids often outside of school. Sayre kids are just a little... different... or I suppose unexposed to the real world is a nice way of putting it. You just don't learn how to deal with different kinds of people that you would learn to in a public school.

In short: great academic education, not so great social education.