Grand Rapids - please advise

[flaneur]

Thanks everyone who have aswered so far. This is very helpful. I also wonder if any one had first-hand experience with city central middle/high school? If you look at the MEAPS results it seems to be ranking pretty high, but then people on average reccomend to stay away from city schools for a while. If I had a choice I would rather live in an urban-like setting than a suburban one. Ideally I would like to be able to walk to coffeshops, a bookstore, a city park etc, but then of course the school issue would outweigh this.

[Chris_]

Kent County has school of choice so if your child has good aptitude you should be able to take your student to any school they desire. City High / Middle is an excellent school. It is one of the gifted academy's and one of if not the best school in GRPS.

GR has some great urban communities that are really growing at rediculous rates. Midtown is the area just east of Heritage Hill and the City, you can find really good prices on great older homes with tons of character. the edge of EGR / Eastown is also a great place to buy. You can get into EGR Schools and keep the urban feel you desire. Also Cherry Hill District, East Hills, and Stockbridge are all upcoming urban areas.

Ada is suburban as crap. and ULTRA Conservative.
Contrary to popular belief the downtown GR area has voted for non conservative candidates in the past 4 elections, it's the surrounding communities that give GR the conservative reputation you will find a lot of diversity celebration and understanding in the more downtown districts.