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I have a hypothetical question, my fiance and I will eventually have a kid and when that kid gets close to school age, she doesn't want to raise a kid within the city simply because NYC can be a blunt in your face to kids that grow up there, and often times forcing them to grow up faster than they should.
Anyway, I know nothing about any of the school systems within the metro or region in general, but if anyone here had a young child and they wanted to find the best city to raise the kid that still had some form of rail connection to Manhattan, was in an area that was some form of small town urban, not suburbia sprawl. Where would people on this forum go?
I am sure this question has been asked before, but I was just curious in the hypothetical sense.
Long Island immediately came to mind. I think education-wise, LI has one of the finest educational systems but it also depends on each area -- not every high school is great, some are probably the same as the bad schools in the city. But when speaking of LI schools, I feel like staff is more disciplined.
Maybe Mount Kisco would qualify for Westchester. Westchester has many small villages, but not exactly urban as in dense development within the core downtown area. Bronxville has excellent schools, and some multi-family housing in the downtown area, but much of the small village is single-family suburban development. Larchmont is similar, though larger than Bronxville, with schools that are not as pressure-oriented.
If you want something more isolated, as in not surrounded by other areas, that would tend to be a bit more upstate. Westchester, particularly parts of Northern Westchester are not bad in terms of sprawl, but the communities can become exurban quickly. Some communities in Dutchess and Putnam are actually worse in terms of suburban sprawl, and really push the commute to NYC.
Summit might be worth considering in New Jersey as it's a small city, but has suburban style development in places, especially in the surrounding area, but is built-up and has good schools.
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I have a hypothetical question, my fiance and I will eventually have a kid and when that kid gets close to school age, she doesn't want to raise a kid within the city simply because NYC can be a blunt in your face to kids that grow up there, and often times forcing them to grow up faster than they should.
Anyway, I know nothing about any of the school systems within the metro or region in general, but if anyone here had a young child and they wanted to find the best city to raise the kid that still had some form of rail connection to Manhattan, was in an area that was some form of small town urban, not suburbia sprawl. Where would people on this forum go?
I am sure this question has been asked before, but I was just curious in the hypothetical sense.
GENTRIFICATION/housing bubble....
cant have you cake and eat it too -- you want a 'good place to raise children' -- thats subjective
is 'good' raising them in a suburbab fantasy saftey bubble?
or in REALITY, the gritty-city?
take your pick. But you cant have both.
My vote, raise them in reality. Look what ended up of all those suburban 80s children... now with massas duh-grees, jobless, broke, in debt, livin in mums cellar, occupying wall-street...
cant have you cake and eat it too -- you want a 'good place to raise children' -- thats subjective
is 'good' raising them in a suburbab fantasy saftey bubble?
or in REALITY, the gritty-city?
take your pick. But you cant have both.
My vote, raise them in reality. Look what ended up of all those suburban 80s children... now with massas duh-grees, jobless, broke, in debt, livin in mums cellar, occupying wall-street...
I digress
I am not sure I would consider the gritty city as "reality" in the sense that it is the only place to live. As much as I love big cities, I also do enjoy small towns, and yes a "good place to raise kids" is very subjective.
I was asking more on the sense of how one even goes about looking into school systems and such.
Also, I was a suburban kid of the 80s and I am doing fine, I just have no interest of moving back to the suburbs, in the sense of typical American suburbia...but then again, I am also thinking about something that is 5-8 years in the future, which who knows maybe raising a kid in NYC or Chicago will be the best option for us.
I was just curious what others on here would think about that might actually have kids or have a good understanding of what raising a kid in the northeast is like.
I thought you knew more about new york than pretty much anybody who was born and raised here, OP?
Well, I know nothing about raising a kid eventually, which is good my fiance knows a lot more about that than I do. School systems is something I have never really had to think about, I have a long time before I will need to seriously think about it, it just happen to be on my mind today and I was wondering what people on the forum had to share in their own experiences with raising kids.
If you have raised kids in NYC, you are more than welcome to share you knowledge on the topic.
I was asking more on the sense of how one even goes about looking into school systems and such..
For NY school systems, the NYT has a great feature for which you can easily plug in a zip code or school and get test scores, # of students, demographics, etc. This isn't perfect, but it can give a generalized picture if you have nothing else to go on.
This is just my personal preference - personally I don't want to lose sleep trying to navigate the NYC public school system over something that should be simple and straightforward. I have seen friends spend long hours reading stacks of books and brochures, and filling up forms about everything from how to game the charter school lottery to getting into a highly competitive school outside their zone (because they couldn't get to one inside their zone!). Even the kids get stressed out and you will end up giving too much power to people who don't deserve it. It's so much easier to either go suburban or private/Catholic.
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