Itwillrain

Hi all
My visa (L1) appointment date is in October. Many things to sort out before then. Most important is the schooling aspect for my two kids - 6-year-old (he starts year 2 next week) and 11 years old (she starts year 7 next week).

If all goes as planned, we will be moving from London to Florida.

We wanted guidance and advice on how we should go about the school search for our children?

Would schools in Florida speak to us or provide helpful information even before we have stepped in the US?

How does the transfer of grades from the UK to the US work for my children (would year 2 UK go to grade 2 US and year 7 UK go to grade 7 US)?

Thanks in advance. Any help or pointers is appreciated.

RICH

Oh boy. How do you feel about mask mandates?. I live in Florida and If I had kids I would not let them near a school that did not mandate masks ,and vaccines for everyone eligible. After that I would think about which school would be best for Jimmy and Jenny. That depends upon where you live. Or where you live dictates what school they get.

Itwillrain

Hi there, thanks for your comment. My office will be in Tampa. So would prefer to live within 1 hour journey time to work. Where we live? This would depend on finding the right school for my kids.

excpomea

Schools will be dictated on where you live unless you go private.

You can search the local school websites from the UK, no issues there.
There are even sites with school grades A - F
They are young enough to adjust, I would not worry about transferring grades. They will be ahead of the US students, so either jump a year ahead or cruise for a year or so.

In our case, we selected where we wanted to live based on the local school grades for Elementary, middle and high school. Picked a location where there were all A's
Worked out ok, of course this meant that the house prices were amongst the highest in the city.

https://www.greatschools.org/florida/tampa/

robtuck

Living in Georgia, the system is similar.

Assigned school based on where you live - so identify schools you like the looks of and then research those areas for housing and what they would be like to live in.

School Grades are +1 to Years - Year 2 would be 3rd Grade. School year has also started, several weeks before the UK system - they will also finish a lot earlier next year. That won't matter much though because the teaching approach is very different. From my experience (youngest child was 7 when we moved), it took a couple of months to settle into the system, since which he has flown in comparison to classmates. To begin with he was getting some poor grades, but that was usually a case of not having been taught the way to do things. Once he had caught up on that front he was generally ahead of the class. He has managed to move Countries/schooling systems, spent a year as a virtual student and now is attending Middle School with a class that is bouncing around in terms of number of attendees every week! They can absorb a lot of change.

lizzyq

Are you sure? I thought it was the other way around 12th grade = Year 13

robtuck

Haha, yep, had it around the wrong way, it's minus one!

penguinsix

Hi and welcome.

We have a pretty extensive primer on enrolling kids into school in the USA in the WIKI. It will cover some of the basics and also delves into the specifics of finding the right year for your kids:

https://britishexpats.com/wiki/Educa...s_in_school%3F

Let us know if you have other questions after reviewing that.

Itwillrain

Brilliant feedback. Thank you so much. I will go through this in more detail and come back if I have any further questions.