What about Morristown, TN

[Rommie]

Hoosier07, I saw your post about Stonebuilder. It is actually Stone Builders. Stone Builders builds great homes and nice subdivisions. The website is [url=http://www.stonebuilders.net]Stone Builders - Morristown, TN - Home Page[/url]

[tsmith71553]

Hoosier07 - -

I am in Knoxville, and considering a job prospect in Morristown myself - - I have driven the Knoxville-Morristown route from I40 - I81 - 25E, and it's not bad - - about 50-55 minutes or so - - if you live outside a large city and trying to commute into town to work , it could easily take just as long , and that's without the aesthetics of a calming country drive with mountain scenery every day. I used to commute from about 10 miles north of Knoxville to Maryville every day - - around 30 miles - - and I enjoyed the scenic ride into work every morning - - helped to put things in perspective .
Morristown seems to be a nice community , but there are a lot of Latinos there now - - you might try looking in Jefferson City, which is a pleasant little community on Cherokee Lake, further west in towards Knoxville on
rte. 11E . Schools might be more attractive for you, with Carson-Newman College at the primary center of activity there - - it is a highly regarded institution, so I would think that the surrounding educational facilities also reflect the same attitude and perspective on education.

One major caveat in all this - - with East Tennessee small-town living, comes small-town politics, "good-ole-boy-itis", and a lot of easily percievable "back-scratching" - - and believe me, East Tennessee is lousy with it . Don't get me wrong, East Tennessee can be one of the greatest places on earth to live - - but because of some prevailing cultures and attitudes that haven't stepped into the new millennium as yet, it can also be one of the most frustrating. But, we came from a major city "up north", which , in recent years, has really gone downhill - - so comparatively, we realize that we're much better off and not sorry at all to have made our home here .

Good luck to you and your little family !

[oldmanbob]

Native from Morristown, have lived in k-town for past several years, and still have family in Morristown. The best realtor their to help, as she and her son, Diane Weaver, and Tim at First Realty, will make your transition great, and fun and do you a super job. Her work number is 423-231-0737. You can see with her listings, she has some of the most in the county. good luck, and Yes I would move back there without any reservations, a great place to live, pending where you locate. Great homes for the value.

[oldmanbob]

Sevierville is a great little town, made famous by Dolly, and just a short drive to the Great Smoky Mtns, and if you can plan around the tourists travel, not a bad place to be. Be careful when purchasing as some of the homes, had little to no building codes.

[wyldeirishrose]

Schools everywhere are going to have English language learners, speech/language students, and special ed/resource students leaving the classroom for pull out lessons (although push-in is becoming a lot more common, wherein specialists come into the general classroom to work with students rather than taking them to a separate location.) It is absolutely ridiculous to state that "no learning is occuring" because of this. If no learning occured when kids were pulled out, then no student in America would be learning anything. You also forget that gifted learners are pulled out of the classroom as well for their special classes. I am an educator who is originally from Morristown, TN, and I seriously can't believe what I just read. Please, please ask a teacher if you are in doubt about how something works before you make comments like this. We will be happy to discuss it with you and correctly inform you. I have taught in both a classroom completely comprised of ELL students (which is atypical as most districts do pull out instead of self-contained; also I have gifted ELL kids as well as speech/language kids in my ELL class) as well as a general ed classroom with speech students, students with special ed IEPs for other reasons, ELLs, gifted learners, etc.

Originally Posted by PYM

All Saints' Episcopal School covers pre-school through grade 8 (www.allsaintsepiscopalschool.org) and there are a few other Christian schools. All Saints is where most of the doctors and corporate executives send their kids. I volunteered at a Morristown elementary school for two years (needed to stop to do work on my house), working with kindergarten and first graders. It had been years since I was in any kind of public school, and I was amazed at the number of interruptions in the classroom, esp., in these grade levels. There has been such an influx of Hispanics to Morristown that when they start school, they need English lessons. So, they leave their regular class once or twice a day for ESL lessons and then return to class. Also, special ed students are mainstreamed and they, too, leave the regular classroom for special ed instruction of varying kinds. And...there are students who leave for speech classes. It was very aggravating for the teachers and very little learning occurs under these circumstances. Morristown just recently started an international center on the Walters State campus where non-English speakers can receive ESL instruction before attending regular classes. Don't know how this will work out but it should help. And remember that a lot of learning takes place peer-to-peer. In the school where I volunteered, most of the students were on the school lunch program and many came from broken or dysfunctional families. It was really very sad to see so many young children in such need, and the school did its best to do what it could. There are better elementary schools, so I've heard, esp. on the west side of town. Our local paper's website is: www.citizentribune.com, and from there you can find links to the school board and other community resources. Also check out these websites for regional news: www.wate.com (ABC affiliate in Knoxville); www.wbir.com (NBC affiliate in Knoxville). I forget the call sign for the CBS affiliate but you should be able to Google it. A lot of newcomers to this area homeschool their kids. Let's face it. Public school in this country is just not what it used to be. I'm sure you'll be able to find a suitable one for your children. And parental involvement is just as important as classroom instruction. Good luck.

[lakeuser]

We moved to Morristown a few years ago and love it. We found a place on the lake that has been a dream of ours for many years. Moderator cut: please dm this info. We are very happy we decided on the Morristown area, it has become home to us. Another plus is we no have liquor by the drink at our local restaurants, that was the one thing Morristown was missing. Hopefully after the economy picks back up there will be several new restaurants locate in Morristown. Just wanted to add my .02 on our great little town.