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My wife and I came for graduate education, and spent last ~20 years in midwest (OH, MN, WI). Currently we have a 8th grade son and 4th grade daughter, who go to schools at Middleton, WI. We like the suburbs here and schools are really good.
Now I am going to move on to my next job, and I can go to either Seattle, or Research Triangle Park, NC. From what I saw, RTP feels more like midwest that I have been used to; while Seattle is definitely big city feel (did not go beyond the downtown - airport area).
Both places have very good public schools. But my wife has perceptions that bigger cities provide more varieties and children have more exposure to different culture, people, choices, *things* ... than schools in smaller cities. We do want to give them greater opportunities if possible. But I don't feel big cities are necessarily better in this regard.
Neither of us went to schools here; we have not lived in the large cities of either coast. I would very much appreciate your input.
My son like Science, technology, and minecraft, plays violin in youth orchestra; shy in a new environment or around non-familiar people, but can be chatting when get comfortable. My daughter is completely opposite, very social, friendly, and find friends wherever she goes, like all forms of art (not necessarily good at it), and doesn't like the stereotype that asian are good at math :-)
I went to school in Raleigh, NC. The school system is pretty good, but NC's attack on teachers has probably caused a lot of the good teachers to flee. Compared to where I teach now (in a small town in Missouri), behavior problems at many of the middle and high schools in Raleigh are BAD. My high school had fights on a regular basis. I think we've had 1 or 2 fights here the whole year.
Raleigh feels nothing like the Midwest. Although the size of the area might compare to in size to certain areas of the Midwest.
We moved to Raleigh/Durham around 2 years ago from Ohio, but having lived all over the midwest in the last 30 years. We had a daughter entering 7th grade at the time. This is NOT the Midwest!!! Raleigh can be very insular and the school system is county based and hard to navigate. We ultimately ended up buying in Durham, where our dollars got us much more house and allowed us to send our child to private school. Our cul-de-sac has a lot of transplants and and the subdivision is close to the border of RTP (which, by the way, is located mostly in Durham). Many people will tell you Cary has the best schools, but most are overcrowded and your children most likely will not go to the neighborhood school. If you are used to big (1/2 acre+ plus midwestern lots) you will find most of Cary's houses on top of each other. We thought we were fortunate to find .25 acre with new construction.
Also, people talk about the cheap cost of living here; which is probably true coming from the Northeast, but it was very lateral from Ohio, maybe even a little more expensive.
Please feel free to pm me if you have other questions.
I'm not in NC, but we had the option of moving from a large city to a small town (way much smaller than RTP). I believe it gave our kids more opportunity rather than less. Academically the school in the town we moved to is very good. But beyond that, I talking the other things that lead to a well rounded person.
a. Sports. Both kids played club and for their HS team. In much bigger schools far fewer percentages can play. I'm not talking about whether the team was the biggest champ in the state, but the fact that they got to play for their HS.
b. Continuing one, DD played travel soccer and got a chance to play some pretty good tournaments. Our local club cost one tenth the price of the travel clubs in the city we moved from. Got all the same experience at one tenth the cost.
c. Access to "culture." In real travel terms it doesn't take much longer for us to travel to a city that has all the typical large city things, museums, theatre, pro sports, than if we lived in that city. Reality is most people aren't in the museum every week, so access isn't the value people like to think.
d. Small towns are not a bunch of isolated hillbillies out in the sticks. The HS theatre group has visited Broadway. The band has marched in national parades. People are well traveled. We have kids with perfect SAT/ACT scores. Heck I'm on here right now with Fiber to the Premises connection at home which is not available in most cities.
All in all the smaller town gave our kids a lot more opportunities to succeed than they would have in the larger city. Been a good choice for us.
Personally I think Seattle offers the best of both worlds - big scale urban amenities and cultural opportunities with small scale neighborhood villages and schools. Our kids attend a private international school in Houston but we would put them in Seattle public schools if we were living there full-time and seriously consider the school near our Seattle home (Garfield HS) an option for high school even if DH continues to work in Houston.
That Seattle is situated in and near some of the most beautiful and varied landscapes on earth is just icing on the cake.
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Depends on what you want
