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As I've posted before, my family is planning on relocating to NH. Great public schools are really important to us, as is being within commuting distance of Boston, so we're leaning towards Hollis, which has the top-rated high school in the state and excellent schools the whole way through.
But I love the Seacoast and would prefer to be closer to my parents, who live about 1 hour north of Portsmouth and 2+ hours from Hollis. It looks like Greenland, Rye and Hampton Falls all have excellent schools through middle school, but high schoolers from those towns attend regional high schools that don't fare as well. (I realize that many people here may have had great experience with these regional schools or other local schools, and I'm not denigrating that at all, just looking at scores, % of grads going to 4 year colleges, etc.) Anyway, I know that Beford recently built its own high school after years of using Manchester schools, and I'm wondering what the odds are that one of these towns will get its own high school within 10 years?
Our oldest will enter K next year, so we do have time
Both Portsmouth High (includes Rye and Greenland students) and Winnacunnet High where Hampton Falls students attend have both built very large additions within the past couple of years to improve the facililities and accommodate the students from towns in each SAU. The student populations in the towns you mentioned wouldn't warrant building new high schools.
In New Hampshire, we like to keep taxes low. (Hence the regional high schools.) We think that waste is only for garbage cans.
Rye,/ North Hampton kids can attend Portsmouth Christian, Berwick Academy, Phillips Exeter, or other private schools. Try York High School-there's no regional school, and very few poor kids (i mean low test scores).
percent of grads going to college has little to do with the quality of a school, but more of the wealth of the family to send their kids to school. Yes there are exceptions, but they are few.
Thanks. Yes, I agree that scores probably reflect more about the demographics of the student population than the quality of the teachers or the school itself. Without being there, I don't really have any other way of judging them, though.
It's hard to ask about the quality of schools without sounding obnoxious because we all define a high-quality school in our own way - for some people, it means a school with excellent sports teams, for some, a strong special-needs program, for some a vocational/technical track, and for others a college-prep curriculum. At this point, I don't know what my kids will be like academically, but we want to provide them with all the opportunities we can. I hope they will meet kids of all different backgrounds at whatever school they attend. In any case, if I sounded snobby or obnoxious, I apologize - I knew I was running that risk in posting the question.
We (ie my husband) are pretty set on sending our kids to public school the whole way through.
With kids being that young, I guess an area that offers as many programs as possible (academics/arts/sports) for well-roundedness. Plus access to a technical school as well as a traditional college-prep high school.
Each town has its own profile here: NH Community Profiles (http://www.nh.gov/nhes/elmi/communpro.htm - broken link) and while it won't have scores/programs listed, at least you'll be able to see which schools will have access to various programs...
I know this isn't what you were asking in your original thread, but thought I'd pass along the site anyway...
I would highly recommend North Hampton. The elementary and middle schools there are excellent - the middle school having been voted "best in state" within the past few years and the elementary school having been designated a "blue ribbon" school. The teachers are fantastic, they love their jobs and love to teach. Many students that have graduated from North Hampton have gone on to Winnacunnet and done exceptionally well, ending up in top tier colleges.
Thanks - this thread is so old that we actually moved already - not to the Seacoast though!
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