Moving to Winchester area (Lexington, Richmond: rental, houses, schools)

[penquinmom]

Hi everyone,
Our family is exploring the idea of a move to the Winchester area. My husband would be working in Winchester anyway, but I'm not sure if we would be living there or elsewhere.
We have elem. school aged kids. We would like to rent a house. My daughters are in dance (ballet, tap, jazz), we would like to be close to good activities for our kids.
I'm looking at surrounding areas, and I have a few questions...
Is it realistic to commute to the southern part of Lexington from Winchester?
What about Richmond? The schools look nice there, and it is bigger than Winchester (one of my concerns with living there is the size of it).
Could you suggest any other area I should be looking at? My husbands job will probably fly us out to look around, but I know we won't have much time.
Thanks for any replies!

[saturn731]

Nicholasville is a nice area. Winchester has horrible amount of traffic considering its small size. Plus, not much in Winchester. Nicholasville is right next to Lexington. I don't know which part of Lexington is considered to be the South side. And Nicholasville schools were a lot nicer than the ones in Richmond and had a tougher standard for the students. When my daughter was in the Richmond schools she'd bring home grades of A's and B's so I thought she was learning. I looked at her homework later on and saw that the teachers were just not grading right at all and my daughter should have even been failing some of the subjects. I never saw that problem in Nicholasville. She had to earn her grades there.

Nicholasville has an excellent public library. There are lots of family activities. And most of the people there were friendly. Had I not lost my job I'd never have moved from there.

[CraigCreek]

Winchester is an easy commute from Lexington - it's only around 18 miles way by I-64. You would find more rental choices in Lexington - I'd suggest looking in Hamburg or in the burgeoning area off Liberty Road for rental houses. You would also have more choices of dance instruction in Lexington than in Winchester, I believe, through Winchester is a perfectly nice small town with a very attractive historic downtown area and friendly people (at least, everyone I've met from Winchester has been pleasant - I do realize that cannot possibly be the case for everyone). Winchester also has a good public library.

Much of what goes on in Richmond is focussed on Eastern Kentucky University. The commute to Winchester would take you up I-75, then over via a state road, well-maintained but mostly two-lane. Distance would be comparable to Lexington, or perhaps a few additional miles.

Lexington schools are good, for the most part, with some being better than others. If you rent in the Hamburg or Liberty Road area, you should be fine for the elementary years.

[penquinmom]

Thank you for that information, that helped me focus a lot! I'm glad to hear that the commute is not a big deal, I had someone else tell me that the traffic was horrible.