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Hi, this is my 1st time posting. I am currently living in NY and may be relocating to the area. My husband may be working for a company in Durham. My main concerns are the school systems. From doing a lot of research on the net the last 2-3 days and speaking with a realtor from the area I've heard that WCSS are the best but are going through some very hard times b/c of the growth. What are your thoughts on Orange/Franklin/Johnston CSS? What makes Wake Schools so much more impressive than the others? Is it the curriculum, teacher/student ratio, funding, school supplies(computers, books, etc.) less drugs, violence? Coming from NY, education here is very strict and demanding...I also believe that with parent/teacher(school) involvement your children will succeed much better whether the school is a good one or not, minus the heavy drugs and violence. Although, I know you will get that in every school, some are much more than others which will bring the school down. I also am concerned about the year-round schooling and prefer traditional, are the schools in the other counties more traditional or are they as mixed as in Wake? Any opinions and information is greatly appreciated. TIA.
Stephanie
Last edited by Stephanie3; 06-16-2007 at 04:47 PM..
Reason: Add County
Just so you know, Chapel Hill & Carrboro have their own school system seperate from Orange county. Be sure to include it in your research, as I understand that it is very well respected. Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools
I think it's difficult for most people here to compare schools across disctricts as most people here have only had experience with one disctrict, maybe two. I only have experience with Wake County schools and for the MOST part, I would say that they are very good. There are a few poor performing schools sprinkled in, but you have to do your own homework to determine that. There are more year round schools in Wake than in other areas because of the crowding issue not being experienced by more rural distrcits, but there are still PLENTY of traditional calendar schools to choose from if you choose this area. Again, you need to do your homework and determine which schools are traditional and which areas in Wake you might want to live in.
My guess is that Wake schools seem to be the most unstable for newcomers, but I would also say they are some of the best academically. It's a risky situation to be in and honestly if I were moving to the area, I'd be asking myself what is the MOST important thing to me: academic scores? calendar? stability? parental involvement?
I know we'd ALL like all of things wrapped into one great school, but that rarely happens. I think the average person in any of these places will probably tell you that while there are minor problems they'd love to see fixed, they are happy with the school they are in.
I do realize that most people may have only experience with only one school. And I have been doing my homework for the last couple of days (although that is not a lot compared to what I did when I moved to NY from MI a year ago and took 7 months to find just the right school and living that fit my family). With that said, my daughter is still in school (we don't get out until next week) I am almost 9 months pregnet and b/c I am on restrictions can not come down there and do my research hands on b/c I am not allowed to travel. Also, with that being said, the absolute earliest I will be down there is August (with a newborn, who is due at the end of July) and only a couple of weeks before the start of school there, so I am trying to gather as much information from right here in NY that I can. I can go to all the websites like great schools and individual county and specific school websites, but that is just #'s on paper per say. I was looking for any personal experiences, which I know may not be many but someone may have some good information as to why they choose the area they did and stayed away from a certain county or area within that county when moving there. I guess I was also asking and maybe it wasn't clear, is all of Wake County experiencing overcrowdedness or is just the areas in Carey, Apex, Holly Springs and not so much in Wake Forest, Durham? You also said that Wake are some of the best academically, my question was what makes that so...teacher/student ratio, school equipment, etc. Thanks you for your response anyway.
For Wake schools, I think the curriculum makes it very good as does the fact that there are not really many impoversihed schools in the county. It makes for a healthier learning environment for students and a better teaching environment for teachers, but maintaining that equilibrium comes with challenges for the system as well as families. The overcrowding is not limited to certain areas, it's spread out over the whole district. If you go onto the website you can actually look at school report cards and they show you the total school cpapcity and then they also tell you the enrollment numbers from last year so that you can actually see which schools are over crowded.
Unfortunatley I cannot compare things like student teacher ratio, resources etc because I have no idea what the other disctricts are like, but I think there is a legal ratio for student:teacher in the whole state, not just each district.
I know that I frequently hear newcomes say that they choose WCPSS because they are good schools and well funded, but I also hear newcomers say that they specifically stayed away from WCPSS because of the instability (yearly redisctricting).
I hope that sheds some light on wake county and maybe someone else will come by with some info on the other ones.
My best advice if you plan to look at Wake County is to pick some specific areas you might be interested in living and then go to the school website and look up the stats for those particular schools.
Stephanie, I'm in MA and have been doing research as well, trying to find a school that will closely match up with our high school in terms of student performance, class size, teacher student ratios, etc. Green Hope High School was really the only one in Wake Co that I found and it was 2.5 times the size of the high school here in my town. But I went down to RDCH last week for a job interview convinced that Cary was the place to be and GHHS was the place we wanted our oldest to go.
I came home with a completely different viewpoint. After actually checking out Cary, I realized I couldn't live there (I'm not knocking Cary because it is veyr nice, but I'm just not into the way it's developed). I really liked Chapel Hill and when I came home to do some more research, was pleasantly surprised that CH is NOT part of the Orange County school system so it's a smaller district, and the two high schools are very, very good. So now, if we move, CH is where we'll be looking.
Hi webfootma, my husband's old boss, soon to be new boss again (maybe) lives in Chapel Hill. I have done a lot of research from the net on CH and would love to live there, the problem being, we are only living on my husbands income right now (I'm a SAHM of two and one on the way) and although we were able to build a house three years ago on a Golf Course and started the process of building again here in NY, he will be taking a significant pay cut to move there and I don't think we would be able to afford a house there. Well, I shouldn't say that, we could but not what we are use to. We have not ruled that out though, also I think there is a college right in CH correct (have not looked into that to much yet, just worried about it being all college town)? My oldest will be going into the 1st grade. How is your oldest taking the move? Thank you for your response, we will have to keep each posted on the progress that we make. GL
Wake County schools are the best because that is where the bulk of the people live and this generates more tax revenue to be used on education compared to smaller school districts/counties like franklin/durham/etc... Also Wake County does a good job at maintaining equality within all of it's schools as far as $$$, percentage of low income students, etc...
As smaller counties like Franklin, Johnston and others grow you will see the schools improve as well. More people means more taxes which means better schools (as long as the money is used wisely)...
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