Moving to Coastal NC and looking for best schools (Raleigh: insurance, houses)
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Hi There! Our little family will be relocating to NC from MA next summer/fall and are looking for recommendations of some of the towns with the best schools. We’ve been considering the New Bern vicinity and would love to know what the better areas would be for younger families with great schools. Definitely open to suggestions on areas, but do not want to be in Wilmington as it’s a bit too big and busy for our tastes. I’ve seen a bit on here that New Bern has mediocre schools so that is off-putting. Our daughter will be 4 at the time of the move so we will hopefully be starting kindergarten shortly thereafter.
We have family in the Raleigh area and want to be within driving distance, but also easy access to the coast. Smaller town that has great local restaurants, farmers markets, hiking, kayaking, outdoor activities, etc. a plus within a 30 minute or so drive. Thanks in advance!
....Our little family will be relocating to NC from MA next summer/fall and are looking for recommendations of some of the towns with the best schools......Our daughter will be 4 at the time of the move so we will hopefully be starting kindergarten shortly thereafter.
I agree that New Bern is a desirable town for the reasons you mentioned. According to the criterion of growth in achievement scores, the best elementary school in Craven County is Albert Bangert Elementary, referenced here: https://ncreportcards.ondemand.sas.c...ar=2019&lng=en
That school has a B-rating, and is in the Trent Woods neighborhood. You can use NCReportcards "dig deeper" function to go into more detail.
You could also look at Carteret County (Morehead City or Beaufort, especially), but the best are also B-rated schools.
Another site using a different ratings system, Greatschools.org gives a 9 of 10 to Creekside Elementary, which is near the Carolina Colours neighborhood. It give the Bangert School a 6 out 10. By the time your daughter gets to middle or high school things may change. There is also the Early College High School if she is academically talented.
With either of those schools, your child would have an above average education. I would not bother with looking further away at Jones County.
Last edited by goldenage1; 04-15-2020 at 10:56 PM..
Hi There! Our little family will be relocating to NC from MA next summer/fall and are looking for recommendations of some of the towns with the best schools. We’ve been considering the New Bern vicinity and would love to know what the better areas would be for younger families with great schools. Definitely open to suggestions on areas, but do not want to be in Wilmington as it’s a bit too big and busy for our tastes. I’ve seen a bit on here that New Bern has mediocre schools so that is off-putting. Our daughter will be 4 at the time of the move so we will hopefully be starting kindergarten shortly thereafter.
We have family in the Raleigh area and want to be within driving distance, but also easy access to the coast. Smaller town that has great local restaurants, farmers markets, hiking, kayaking, outdoor activities, etc. a plus within a 30 minute or so drive. Thanks in advance!
I have a couple of recommendations...outside of the Trent Woods possibility...if you are considering areas within about an hour of New Bern...you could look at the Chicod area in SE Pitt County. Its just north of the small town of Vanceboro and within 15-20 minutes of Greenville. Chicod school is rated well and is a K-8 school. It feeds into Conley High School, the highest rated high school not along the coast, and it sits on the outskirts of Greenville.
As well, you could consider the Cape Carteret area, which has a highly rated Elementary school in White Oak, a good rated middle school in Broad Creek and a highly rated High School in Croatan. It sits directly across the bridge from the beaches in Emerald Isle and Swansboro is just down the road. Its about 45 minutes or so to New Bern with the new Jones County bypass. Cape Carteret gets busy in the summer with tourist season, but is very manageable the rest of the year.
Thank you so much for that! I’ll definitely check out the link.
We’ve looked at a few houses online and a lot that we see and like seem to be in Trent Woods, Fairfield Harbour and River Bend. I do see a lot of the listings in Havelock advertising their great schools but I can’t find much information on them to actually warrant all the listings to have it noted. I’ve also seen people recommend Newport in other threads on here.
We will (hopefully) be coming down to the area again this fall when we visit family so we can really poke around and drive around and see the areas we’re looking in a little closer.
We also considered Southport but aren’t sure with how far it would be from family. My husband is weary of being right in the ocean with hurricanes so we haven’t really considered Morehead City/Beaufort in our search all that much. I think Beaufort is such a cute little town though! .
We’ve looked at a few houses online and a lot that we see and like seem to be in Trent Woods, Fairfield Harbour and River Bend....
A caution about Fairfield Harbour. There are very few children there, as the homeowners are mostly retired people. Your daughter would have very few other kids to play with.
We also considered Southport but aren’t sure with how far it would be from family. My husband is weary of being right in the ocean with hurricanes so we haven’t really considered Morehead City/Beaufort in our search all that much. I think Beaufort is such a cute little town though! .
The closest beach to Raleigh is Wrightsville Beach near Wilmington. Southport is pretty close too. There is no safe place along the coast from hurricanes and that definitely includes Wilmington and New Bern the surrounding areas which got inundated with flooding from Hurricane Florence two years ago. Many parts of coastal NC, including the city of Wilmington, were literally cut off from the rest of the state by land and only accessible by helicopter or boat. If you're not prepared to deal with that as a possibility, the coast might not be the place for you. Hurricanes definitely don't hit every year, but it is always a possibility. Usually every year we are watching hurricanes along the coast. Most of the time they will peter out or turn and go back out to sea, but you have to keep your eye on 'em. Sometimes they decide to make landfall in NC or give us a glancing blow. Flooding is usually the big worry here. Florence just hung around and poured a ton of rain on coastal communities and then you have to wait for the rivers to crest so it's a long process. Sometimes they come up through the inland areas of the state, too. Ask an old time Raleigh-ite about Hurricane Fran. You will need hurricane insurance along the coast. Look into it.
Do you need jobs? Or do they travel with you? Coastal NC is pretty dependent on tourism for its economy.
Last edited by poppydog; 04-16-2020 at 09:42 AM..
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