Love Disney so much thinking of moving to FL - anyone from Winter Garden Area

[staceymay00]

The website greatschools.com ranks schools based on each state's standardized test scores. Good for comparing one FL school to another, but not for comparing a FL school to your NY school since they have different tests. I am not familiar with Winter Garden, but back when we were considering a move to Florida to be closer to friends and family I looked into Lake Mary schools. Lake Mary seemed to have high achieving public school options all the way from K-12. Lake Mary is suburban, so that may or may not fit what you are looking for. We have friends who live in the city of Orlando and they are happy with their public neighborhood K-8 school, but I think they plan to go private for high school unless their zoned high school improves.

One thing about the Newsweek rankings...they are based on the number of kids who take IB and AP tests. Many of the top schools, including the FL schools in the top 20, have magnet and IB programs and students must apply and be accepted to these programs. Not to take anything away from what these schools have achieved, but they are not "regular" public schools.

Based on my research and personal experience (I moved to central FL from a northern state in middle school), I don't think in general schools in central FL are all the great. I still managed to get a pretty good education at my mediocre middle school and good, but not great, high school in Florida. I now live in metro Atlanta (yes, Georgia, land of horrible education rankings) and the neighborhood public schools in my community are excellent. For what it's worth, my kids' school has very high ITBS average scores and the high school my kids will go to (not a magnet or IB school) is ranked in the top 100 on the Newsweek list. I know someone who moved from Westchester County, NY and was pleasantly surprised to find herself more impressed with our elementary school than the one they left.

Overall schools in the south may be lagging behind northern schools, but it is possible to find great schools in the south. I am confident that the OP can find some good public schools in the Orlando area. Good luck with your research and decision!

 

[LauraLea]

I cannot help you with the schools, but now is a great time to purchase a home in central Florida. Still many homes in foreclosure and looking for buyers. You may be surprised in how far your equity from your current home will go down here. In June 09 we sold our home in Indiana and was able to buy a home here w/out a mortgage.

We are in Lake county, just about 50 minutes to WDW.

Laura

 

[Sammie]

The best advice would be to find a good local realtor that can advise you about schools and crime, etc about certain locations.

Windermere is a nice area and with that come high costs to live. Dr. Philips is another nice area, near Windermere.

I have friends that live in Clermont and Winter Garden and other than traffic to get to and from work they are satisfied with it, but they don't have children in schools.

 

[staceymay00]

The best advice would be to find a good local realtor that can advise you about schools and crime, etc about certain locations.

I cannot help you with the schools, but now is a great time to purchase a home in central Florida. Still many homes in foreclosure and looking for buyers. You may be surprised in how far your equity from your current home will go down here. In June 09 we sold our home in Indiana and was able to buy a home here w/out a mortgage.

We are in Lake county, just about 50 minutes to WDW.

Laura

I have heard from friends (and news reports) that Orlando home values have taken quite a hit. I agree - now is a good time to relocate to Orlando if you can sell your current home and find work. We looked at some homes in the Tampa area 6-7 years ago. We were pretty shocked by the prices and quickly decided we were not going to spend more money to live somewhere that was not as nice (in our opinion) as where we currently live. Prices have since dropped, but now our kids are further along in school and more involved in sports we don't want to move unless we have to.