Any one know of a good Pre-K program in the Huntsville/Madison area? (how much, new home)

[ALDreamin]

Hello Everyone!

We are hoping to move to the Huntsville/Madison area in the next couple months, and have a couple of younger kids we need to find schools for. Our oldest will be entering the 2nd grade, and we would like to find a Pre-K program for our youngest (who will be 5 in January).

We have heard great things about the south/ southeast area of Huntsville, but I am uncertain about which schools in the area are best. I have looked at the stats and looked on greatschools.net, however I would love to talk to some parents whose children attend schools in the area and how the kids like them.

Our oldest seems to be quite a bit ahead of other kids here in this area, but I am wondering how the schools there are. What are the kids there learning in first and second grade? She was doing early multiplication (up to 6's), beginning division, telling time, learning fractions, counting money, etc. Is that about normal there for the first grade?

[BKOTH97]

Originally Posted by ALDreamin

Our oldest seems to be quite a bit ahead of other kids here in this area, but I am wondering how the schools there are. What are the kids there learning in first and second grade? She was doing early multiplication (up to 6's), beginning division, telling time, learning fractions, counting money, etc. Is that about normal there for the first grade?

My oldest is going into first and does the same things you identify above. We are in Madison City Schools and went to Premier for Preschool and Pre-K. Education has as much to do with the parents and their focus as it does with the school, IMHO.

Premier Preschool and Madison City schools are both excellent.

[Charles]

Originally Posted by ALDreamin

We are hoping to move to the Huntsville/Madison area

It depends on where you are going to live: Huntsville or Madison. South Huntsville? Southeast Huntsville?

Does it matter if it is religious?

Where will you be working? I've noticed some nice looking preschools (but that's just the cover, not the book) in the Research Park area.

I liked Hampton Cove Academy but it is religious. We may do Willowbrook in a couple years but it's also religious and it is a schlep over the Blevins Gap twice a day.

There's a Montessori near Grissom High School. We haven't used it but other posters on this forum have. Do a search.

There's also Primrose down Bailey Cove....don't know too much about that one.

[Jai27]

Covenant Classical
Madison Academy
Country Day School

[ALDreamin]

Thank you to everyone who responded! Since we are clear across the country, it is nice to hear first hand experiences!

BKOTH97, what school did your oldest attend for kindergarten? Are you keeping them there for first grade?

Charles, I am hoping to stay at home for another year or so until our youngest is in Kindergarten. Also, we have been told that the south or southeast area is one with good schools near the arsenal where my husband would work. We are unsure of good neighborhoods to check out that would have great schools and be less than 15 minutes away from the arsenal. We are looking to stay under 300K and would rather live in a newer home hopefully with community pool/playground. Any ideas?

[friday13]

Originally Posted by ALDreamin

Thank you to everyone who responded! Since we are clear across the country, it is nice to hear first hand experiences!

BKOTH97, what school did your oldest attend for kindergarten? Are you keeping them there for first grade?

Charles, I am hoping to stay at home for another year or so until our youngest is in Kindergarten. Also, we have been told that the south or southeast area is one with good schools near the arsenal where my husband would work. We are unsure of good neighborhoods to check out that would have great schools and be less than 15 minutes away from the arsenal. We are looking to stay under 300K and would rather live in a newer home hopefully with community pool/playground. Any ideas?

Adams Homes - Huntsville - Oakhurst Place

[shaken8]

Originally Posted by ALDreamin

Thank you to everyone who responded! Since we are clear across the country, it is nice to hear first hand experiences!

BKOTH97, what school did your oldest attend for kindergarten? Are you keeping them there for first grade?

Charles, I am hoping to stay at home for another year or so until our youngest is in Kindergarten. Also, we have been told that the south or southeast area is one with good schools near the arsenal where my husband would work. We are unsure of good neighborhoods to check out that would have great schools and be less than 15 minutes away from the arsenal. We are looking to stay under 300K and would rather live in a newer home hopefully with community pool/playground. Any ideas?

If you your husband works on the arsenal, South Huntsville is a great choice. They are building quite a few new homes off of Hobbs Rd. in Huntsville. Also, English Village is off Redstone Rd, and there are quite a few newer homes (<15 years old) in the newer section of that neighborhood as well (the builder--Thermon Drake, not sure about spelling?--is/was VERY good, not sure if he built the newest ones in that neighborhood, but he built my parents' house there back in 1990, and they had wonderful things to say about him). VERY convenient access to the arsenal from that area. I'm not sure though if the school districts are for Farley or Challenger. Challenger is typically considered the better school, but when I went to Farley in the early 90's, the gifted program was exceptional, and the teachers were very good (I don't know how much, if any, this has changed in 15-20 years). Either way, you'll be in Challenger Middle zone, which is very good. And Grissom High has a ton of opportunities (advanced placement, AP, lots of extra curriculars).

$300K shouldn't be a problem in the least, but depending on the area it may or may not be brand new (generally Challenger school district houses will be higher than Mt Gap or Farley, even for older homes). I think those new subdivisions off Hobbs are just under $300K, and quite large homes, some of them.

Good luck!

[BKOTH97]

Originally Posted by ALDreamin

We are unsure of good neighborhoods to check out that would have great schools and be less than 15 minutes away from the arsenal. We are looking to stay under 300K and would rather live in a newer home hopefully with community pool/playground. Any ideas?

Dreamin,

Looks to me like you are talking about Madison, not SE Huntsville. Madison meets all the requirements above with many neighborhoods meeting exactly those characteristics. While SE has a few new neighborhoods, they are mostly a little older (1960-1980s).

My oldest goes to Rainbow Elementary, it is a Madison City School. He will be going there again this year.

Good luck!

[Charles]

Originally Posted by ALDreamin

We are looking to stay under 300K and would rather live in a newer home hopefully with community pool/playground. Any ideas?

Yes, but it won't be a slam dunk, but since Huntsville/Madison is so small, it won't be that tough either.

I used greatschools and Alabama dept of education to get data on every school in the region. I built excel files. I did a lot of filtering on those data and came up with a candidate set of schools. I then placed them on google earth so I had permenant maps of these schools and their locations.

I also used city data forum a lot.

I used valleymls to look for homes within these schools (the great thing with valleymls is you can filter on schools). So then I came up with candidate neighborhoods.

So I have a set of candidate neighborhoods and I start filtering on amenities (and this generally requires phone calls) for things like community pools.

So then I got it down to about five or six neighborhoods. Those are the ones we drove through. A couple we eliminated due to things like too hilly.

That's it, and we just waited for the right house. Kept working valleymls.

Too bad there is no resale data or addresses on valleymls but one more tip: if you see a house on valleymls, look at all its pictures - sometimes the address is in some text in the picture frame. Also, google the mls number and "Madison" for example, sometimes the originating realtor will put the address on its webpage (by mistake) but you can get it that way.

[shaken8]

Renaissance and Ashtynn Manor are the South Huntsville subdivisions I referred to earlier. I think Renaissance has a community pool/clubhouse, but I'm not sure about Ashtynn Manor.

I would be leery of Madison, simply for the traffic issues. If you live in South Huntsville (especially west of the Parkway) traffic will be pretty easy with you working on the arsenal. True, the parkway is bad in the morning, but you will avoid that altogether. Trying to get out of Madison in the morning, or into Madison in the evening is rough. And school traffic makes it that much worse. However, that said, Madison will have more newer homes to choose from, and it's up to you to decide if the traffic is worth it. But for me, it wasn't.

Also, remember that these school rating sites should be taken with a grain of salt. The numbers say Farley is not one of the better schools that feed into GHS, but from my experience, I was very well prepared for middle school at Challenger. I would caution you to take advice from parents of children that go to these schools, rather than sit there with a mountain of test score data. Not that it isn't somewhat indicative of the school, but you have a lot of other factors as well. The Farley district covers a larger area than any of the other elementary schools, thus, there are a wider variety of people there (some of which live in somewhat more rural or poorer areas). I would expect that this is a good thing. The snobbery that I encountered when I moved from Farley to Challenger was pretty rampant (although, I adjusted to it just fine). And, even for the kids at Farley who were in "richer" neighborhoods (I'm included in this), there was not the sense of being better than other people because of money or status, etc like there was at Challenger. Nothing against Challenger, really, but that's what I noticed. Either way though, your kids will be fine. Just take those test scores with a grain of salt.