[08grad]

Originally Posted by homerboy

Interesting to know. Which school district do you teach now, CCSD?

The only one in the county. I'd leave if I could.

Originally Posted by aboveordinary

Hopefully not. We don't need someone that ignorant educating children.

There's very little "educating" that's actually happening in public schools. You would know this if you were slightly knowledgeable about the situation.

[WisconsinVegasHeights]

Originally Posted by Vic Romano

Where exactly did you go in Vegas? Did you go outside the Strip and Downtown? How many days were you there?

This sounds a lot like the guy who spent a couple days in downtown Reno and pronounced the entire city a s***hole.

Yeah, man, for real. I couldn't agree more with this comment. I'm a maniac, braniac anyway with Spock like attributes. I'm a misfit loner rebel with an attitude. Fell in love with Vegas in 2001 after a 2 night stay.

Took 17 years, but finally made that dream come true. I am being offered a job in Japan and I'm saying hell no, I have everything I need right here. The Vegas dream is alive and well.

Veni vidi vici!

WVH

[WisconsinVegasHeights]

Originally Posted by the topper

Strip, downtown core, north, east(215) area and Hoover dam. 5 days

Blow dryer effect? Bring it on. Much better than living in Minneapolis or a desolate ultra conservative town with 8 dollar an hour jobs in Wisconsin where in January and February you can feel your nose hairs freeze when you breathe in through your nose.

Also lived with the rudest, meanest, most pretentious people you could imagine in Anchorage where my apartment complex had plug ins for my car to keep the engine block warm.

People are laid back and tolerant here. I have lived in DC and New England and believe me living in the West is the best! I am only 48, but have lived all over the country and I have a huge wealth of experience and frame of reference.

Besides, without me, where would the downtrodden lost souls here get their cigarettes and dollar bills.

Here is Matthew 25:40 '“And the King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!’

[WVREDLEG]

There is a symphony I prefer: "Symphony of Destruction" by Megadeth.

One can get in a mess of trouble here easily. Lots of people I've met are successful in their endeavors and enjoy life here--you have as much chance as anyone to get it right. Here or anywhere. These threads and inputs helped me considerably in my research--I have no regrets moving and living here.

[RationalExpectations]

Originally Posted by homerboy

RationalExpectations, based on your and your daughter's experiences, what is your opinion of LV based on my views of Seattle? Would you say LV would be a positive move? Wife and I are hoping we can eventually retire here, esp with the benefit of lower COL.

I've never lived in Seattle, so I can’t make any comparisons. I love good coffee (I roast my own) so perhaps spiritually I have some modest connection to Seattle.

In general, my sense is the population approaches a non-symmetric kurtotic bi-modal distribution: a great many people dislike Las Vegas, some really love Las Vegas, and there are relatively few in-between. You either love it or hate it. Some people move here and decide they just can't deal with the summertime heat and leave (note: Las Vegas is about 5 degrees cooler than Phoenix, another popular relocation destination). Some retirees come, like it here, but leave to be close to their kids (and more importantly, to be close to young grandchildren). It is hard to predict if you'll find yourself in the camp that likes Las Vegas - I suspect so, but you never know. Having a positive attitude toward a relocation is at least half the battle.

You mention competitiveness of schools, so I infer you have school-age children. I've never had kids in the Las Vegas school system, so I cannot comment - but I do believe the following. As parents, where we live largely determines the schools to which we send our kids (either public or private), which in turn determines the universe from which our kids will select their friends and peers. Sometimes simple logistics have a big impact: we started our daughter off in the Cupertino Public School system (very high quality) but the logistics of before-school and after-school childcare just were not manageable for us (both my wife & I worked). There were lotteries at the public elementary school for scarce before- and after-school slots, and we didn't gain a spot. After a couple years we switched to an academically focused private school mostly because of logistics: the school had before-school and after-school programs on-campus with excellent supervision from 6:00 AM until 6:00 PM, including healthy food and snacks and a plethora of clubs and activities from which the children could select - everything from chess to robotics to choir to piano or violin lessons to sports to arts & crafts, etc etc. My point is we didn’t have complicated logistics to deal with. I don't know anything about the schooling options and logistics alternatives in Las Vegas, but like all cities there are a few highly regarded private schools and magnet schools.

At the end of the day, much of this is actual parents and their level of involvement. If the parents have a focus on education being important, so will the kids. You are your children’s most important role models, and your own attitudes about school are very important to their worldview.

Just an anecdote: when I'd ask my daughter's then-elementary school friends, in age appropriate language, "what do you want to be when you grow up," I'd get replies such as "I want to be an electrical engineer" or "I want to work for Google" or "I want to work for a start-up" because their own mothers -- the most important role models they have -- were electrical engineers or worked at Google or worked for a startup. When our daughter was a freshman in college, we would visit once or twice a year & take her & her suite of friends out to dinner. I’d ask these young women, in age appropriate language, “what do you want to be when you grow up.” The response was telling. I’d get puzzled looks, as if the question made no sense. One finally said something like, “Do? What will I do? Eventually, I’ll get married, and my husband will work on Wall Street, we’ll live on Long Island, I’ll volunteer on the board of a couple charities, maybe manage an art gallery and take tennis lessons and Pilates classes.” It was my turn to look dumbstruck – at first, I thought she was pulling my leg, but she wasn’t. She’d just described her own life growing up, watching her own mother who is her most important role model. Yes, there were young women with career aspirations - some went to medical school, others to business school or various grad schools and the like - but there were many women with visions of their lives that would look at home in an episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

Sorry for rambling but my point is we as parents have a life-long impact, not only as role models, but because we determine the local set of experiences in which our kids will grow up and the local set of people our children will see as peers and from whom they select friends. So do your homework – this isn’t Palo Alto or Cupertino.

Originally Posted by homerboy

Others things we have found to be increasingly unattractive in Seattle are: 1) high cost of living; a recent report shows that median rent in Seattle is now ranked #4 in the US, behind SF, San Jose, and San Deigo, higher than that of NYC and DC. Property tax and utilities keep going up each year;

You’ll get much more for your money in Las Vegas. No doubt about that. Moreover, the lower cost of housing permeates every-day things that seem unconnected to the price of real estate.

Originally Posted by homerboy

2) traffic is atrocious, takes 30-35 minutes to travel 10 miles now, even on the weekends;

As Las Vegas grows, it will eventually take its toll on traffic. If you’re familiar with stochastic network queing models, they do a reasonable job at a first approximation of traffic patterns and flows. One characteristic of their throughput and wait times is that when they are uncrowded, you can keep adding traffic without substantive deterioration on wait times and throughput… until you hit the “bend in the hockey stick” when adding one more driver slows everyone down, and adding another slows everyone down even more. It doesn’t really describe the real world, but you get the idea. We do have a few places and times with saturated traffic, but compared to LA or the SF Bay Area, we have it great. Silicon Valley has absolutely soul-crushing traffic during commute times; people in LV complain, but it is nothing like Silicon Valley. Nothing. At. All.

Originally Posted by homerboy

3) the school district we live in is supposedly highly ranked with high test scores but it is fiercely competitive, and we are not impressed with the teaching and courses offered; we attribute the high test scores to that of extreme helicopter parents, not the curriculum or teaching;

I don’t have firsthand experience with LV schools, as I mentioned above. If it were me, I’d talk to a few experienced real estate agents, call the president of the PTA in a couple schools, talk to the Principals, and do other forms of data gathering to form my own opinion. And I’d probably consider both high-quality magnet schools and high-quality private schools (the cost of living here is much lower so you’ll be able to afford private school, if that is the way you decide to go.)

Originally Posted by homerboy

4) food and entertainment here stinks, LV seems much more exciting.

That’s the understatement of the year.

Originally Posted by homerboy

RationalExpectations, based on your and your daughter's experiences, what is your opinion of LV based on my views of Seattle? Would you say LV would be a positive move? Wife and I are hoping we can eventually retire here, esp with the benefit of lower COL.

Let’s assume you can get appropriate employment here. Your compensation will be lower, as employers won’t be required to pay a compensation premium for the high-cost-of-living of Seattle. Your money will go farther. At the same time, will Las Vegas offer career growth for you in the future? If not, I’d think twice. Now is the best-of-times with respect to employment prospects; imagine a recession – where would you rather be? Here? Or Seattle? Or some other place?

I’d give LV serious consideration. I think you could be happy here.

[RationalExpectations]

Originally Posted by 08grad

There's very little "educating" that's actually happening in public schools.

You teach for a living, so I'll obviously defer to your first hand insights.

At the same time, you describe my own public school experiences growing up in Southern California, where we lived on the wrong side of the railroad tracks. Some of us became educated despite our schooling. I still remember a quiz question:

If Johnny has 3 apples and Billy has 2 bananas, how does Beth feel about the War in Vietnam?

OK, that's an exaggeration for effect. But the following is not an exaggeration. This was an actual quiz question:

The color temperature of our sun (Sol) is about 5900K. The color temperature of nearby Alpha Centauri is about 5800K. What do you get when you add them together?

My response, of course, was "There is no scenario where you would ever add them together." I got the answer wrong. The textbook quiz wanted me to add those numbers together even though at the time I saw no reason to believe color temperature was additive, let alone linearly additive.

[RationalExpectations]

I wonder if the following is actually true. Sadly, I suspect it is. (not Las Vegas specific).

https://i.postimg.cc/zvmDdM55/screenshot-523.png

[ddrhazy]

Come on down OP. The heat sucks but if you don't have any better offers, it wouldn't hurt to give it a shot.

[Commander666]

Originally Posted by RationalExpectations

I wonder if the following is actually true. Sadly, I suspect it is. (not Las Vegas specific).

https://i.postimg.cc/zvmDdM55/screenshot-523.png

Hollywood rules!!

[VLWH]

Originally Posted by RationalExpectations

I wonder if the following is actually true. Sadly, I suspect it is. (not Las Vegas specific).

https://i.postimg.cc/zvmDdM55/screenshot-523.png

Scary, but also believe it’s true. Man, can’t believe how old Denzel Washington is looking, must be a bad picture.