Thinking of moving to Missoula Area from Minnesota (Great Falls: best school districts, college)

[MinnesotaMom2]

Hello,

My husband and I are thinking of moving with our two kids from a suburb of St. Paul, MN to Missoula, MT or a nearby town. My husband has family there and he really wants to be close to them. They are wonderful people, so I'd love to be closer to them as well, but I have a few hesitations. I've visited for a week or two at a time during summer and loved the people and the city, but I know visiting can be very different from living.

So if anyone can help with these questions, I'd appreciate it!

1. Schools - right now we are in one of the best school districts in MN and my elementary kids are learning Chinese and Spanish. It's important to me that my kids are bi-lingual because of the studies shown to help the brain when one speaks more than one language. Is that possible in Missoula and are the school systems well run?

2. Racial Tensions - My husband and I are an interracial couple, actually I'm bi-racial (white mom, black dad) and my husband is white. In our area of Minnesota, it is totally accepted and so are our kids despite the fact that one has skin more like me and the other has skin more like my husband. Unfortunately, that isn't the case is all areas of MN and when we moved to Rochester, MN there was a lot of judgments and people just being unfriendly towards us and our children. I know Missoula is predominantly white, so I'm wondering if the cultural climate is open to this or if we'd be inflicting pain our kids.

3. Ease of making friends - I'm a pretty friendly person and would miss my network of friends here in MN, but if it is easy to get involved in the community and make friends, that would help me a lot.

I don't really worry about the weather, I'm from MN, I'm used to long, cold, grey, and snowy winters. I can handle what Missoula throws at me. And we won't move unless we have jobs, but before we really start making plans financially and with job searches, I'd like to know a little more.

My in-laws are a little biased as they really want their grand-kids nearby all the time! :-)

[snaps forever]

Wondering if you made it there and your thoughts on the the place if you did.

[davidnrobyn]

I'll try to address your questions:
1. I think the schools in Missoula are pretty decent, but I don't have kids so that's never been an issue. Missoula is a college town, so there is a large educated community there, and they are the type of people who place a high value on good education. So I think there would be considerable public pressure for high-quality schools.
2. Yes, Missoula (and Montana) are very predominantly white. The largest non-white population is Native American, which makes up around 5% of the population, from what I understand. People in Montana don't have much experience with blacks, and I've heard that blacks appreciate Montanans' acceptance of them as people. Charley Pride, the country-western singer, came to Great Falls from the south as a minor-league baseball player and liked it so much he adopted not just the state, but the culture! And the state and culture adopted him as one of their own. Btw--it's my observation that a lot of what's called "racism" is really "culturism". Don't you think?
3. You'll find people in Montana to be as friendly as anywhere. If you're a friendly person, you'll have lots of people around you wanting to be your friend. No problem!

Also--the winters in Missoula are really pretty mild for the latitude. Missoula's in the same latitude as Duluth or Fargo, but has much milder winters. And they seem to get over pretty quickly. The coldest time of year is right around Christmas-New Year's, and gets milder from there on (usually). By February, it's just a LOT milder. The summers are drier and less humid than farther east, which is nice, with nice cool overnight lows. If it doesn't get below 60 on a July night, that's a very warm night.