Lexington area high schools and Christian schools? (Clay: real estate, houses)

[csr]

Our family is seriously considering moving to the Lexington area in the next few years and we would like to find out which high schools are the best overall. We're primarily interested in grades 10-12, public or Christian.

Also, do you have to live within a certain number of miles to attend these schools?

Are there any other sources of information about high schools in Lexington (or the surrounding area) that we should look into? Thanks.

[lexingtongal]

Lexington Christian Academy is the largest, and best, Christian school in Lexington. It is large enough to offer most sports programs (although they are the only school in town without a lacrosse team). The facility is fairly new and houses middle and high school. I'm sure they have a website but I don't know it right off.
Lexington schools are considered Fayette County district. There are several factors in deciding on a public high school.
www.fcps.net has a listing with a link to each high school. Dunbar and Henry Clay are considered the best two overall. There are several magnet programs within the high schools. Dunbar has a Math, Science, Technology program. Henry Clay has The Liberal Arts Academy magnet. It is for identified gifted kids. These two have admissions criteria. Tates Creek will have an International Baccalaureate program starting this fall. Lafayette has a Pre-engineering program. Each of these have link from the schools site that describes the program and admissions criteria. Dunbar and HC's magnet programs list their average ACT and SAT scores as well as which colleges offered scholarships to their students. Tates Creeks website is not as informational.
Bryan Station has a brand new facility but the scores are usually well below the other schools. It houses a Spanish immersion magnet but kids have to start in it at kindergarten.
If your child is in a magnet you do not have to live within that school district. If they are not you have to live within the district. From fcps.net you can search by street name to see which district it is in. Most of the online real estate listings will list which school dsitrict the house is in.
www.lbar.com(I (broken link) think this is correct) lists houses that are on the multiple listing.

There are a number of other private schools. Sayre is an excellent prep school. Lexington Catholic is also a very good school.
There are several other web sites I would look at to get an even bigger picture:
www.lexchamber.com/doc_lib/BluegrassRanking.pdf
www.visitlex.org (broken link)

[gimme it]

I've found two really helpful websites: privateschoolreview.com and greatschools.net or.com.

[Muffin]

I graduated from Bryan Station High School c/o 99, now if you're looking for a good school academically I wouldn't send my kids here (unless you really plan on going the extra mile with your kids and their academics at home), but one thing about Bryan Station is that most of the kids were on the same socioeconomic level which made problems existing at PLD, Henry Clay, Lafayette and Tates Creek non-existent.
You may even want to look at Lexington Catholic, they've been around for a long time. Decent school. You'd really want to check out that Fayette county public school site. They have a page on there where you can type in an address and it will tell you what district the school is in.
Lexington is notoriously retarded when it comes to districting, a kid could live on one side of the street and go to Lafayette and a kid on the other side of the street goes to Henry Clay (i kid you not!, however that's mostly for the black/poor white kids in the east end of town that they're actively rebuilding).
Anyhoo, not a whole lot of HS to choose from, they're all decent.
Good luck

[ic-epi]

Originally Posted by Muffin

but one thing about Bryan Station is that most of the kids were on the same socioeconomic level which made problems existing at PLD, Henry Clay, Lafayette and Tates Creek non-existent.

Hi Muffin, can you expand upon that a little? What kinds of problems specifically are at Dunbar, Henry Clay, Lafayette, or Tates Creek that are related to socioeconomic level?

thanks!