Best cities for me?

[Gaylord_Focker]

Originally Posted by Avondalist

As a bit of micro-targeted advice if you are interested in the Chicago area I would suggest the Homewood-Flossmoor school district in the southwest suburbs.

How about around downtown and the West Loop?

[Avondalist]

Originally Posted by Gaylord_Focker

How about around downtown and the West Loop?

Not for school age children. As others have said, the risk of losing the magnet school lottery is too high. Better to put down roots in a safer suburb where you know you won't have to move when your kids enter high school.

[ckhthankgod]

Originally Posted by ckhthankgod

Just to add to this, if you do stay in NY, some suburban areas Upstate that come to mind are the Amherst Central and Sweet Home in Amherst; Cleveland Hill, Cheektowaga Central and Maryvale in Cheektowaga. All are in the Buffalo area.

East Irondequoit, Rush-Henrietta, Gates-Chili, Greece, Wheatland-Chili and maybe some others(Churchville-Chili, Brighton, West Irondequoit, Spencerport, Brockport, etc) in the Rochester area.

Jamesville-DeWitt, Liverpool, Onondaga Central, Lyncourt and North Syracuse in the Syracuse area.

South Colonie, North Colonie, Menands, along with parts of Niskayuna, Guilderland and Mohonosen in the Albany area. There are also small cities like Cohoes, Rensselaer and Watervliet in that area that could have some appeal.

Pine Bush, Washingtonville, Valley Central, Spackenkill, Hyde Park, Arlington, Highland Falls, Wappingers, Cornwall and Monroe-Woodbury in the Poughkeepsie-Newburgh-Middletown area.

Also, given that children are involved, the first four areas also have charter options that general perform well academically or private options that could work for you. Same with select urban public(including magnet schools). In fact, the Buffalo and Rochester areas have websites that put charter school options together for families to look through.

Buffalo: https://enrollbuffalocharters.org/

Rochester: https://www.goodschoolsroc.org/

Syracuse(Rochester and Utica) have charter schools under the Science Academies brand: https://www.sany.org/ and others in Syracuse.

Albany has a couple of single sex charter high schools and Troy has a couple of charters as well.

So, you have options and this can offer some insight as to what they are.

Something else to consider are that there are educational programs that allow for graduates of certain schools to take advantage of college scholarship programs. For instance, Buffalo and Syracuse have chapters of this program, which includes students that attend charter schools in both cities: https://sayyesbuffalo.org/scholarships/eligibility/
https://sayyessyracuse.org/scholarships/how-it-works/

I believe Rochester has a similar program associated with the University of Rochester. https://www.ahead-penn.org/creating-...hester-promise

This is another Advantage program for the community college in Syracuse: https://www.ahead-penn.org/creating-...hester-promise One of the school districts mentioned participates in that program and the bolded school district goes up to 8th grade, but the high school options that they have also participates in that community college program.

Albany also has a Promise program and there is also the Excelsior Scholarship program by the state: https://www.hesc.ny.gov/pay-for-coll...holarship.html , (Albany area) https://ahead-penn.org/creating-know...ponsor-scholar

So, that may be something else to consider in terms of deciding to stay or move to another part of the state.