Canveydave

So an opportunity (read direct order) has come up at work to move to the Orlando office, from Houston.

I am not one of these expats who longs for Florida, but I have to take a look at the opportunity.

I like where we live and the school district is excellent. I have read on here about how bad the Florida public school system is, my question is, just how bad is it?

My boy is in Kindergarten so will be in elementary by the time we move. Is it that bad? Are there any decent school districts??

I would rather not have to factor in private school fee's, but my childrens education is very important to me.

Thanks in advance

anotherlimey

There was a thread on this recently. Do a search it will show up.

hungryhorace

Florida is a dump. It's the arse end of America. I wouldn't send my kids to any school that wasn't private there, and even then, it's hardly going to be Rugby is it?

kins

We turned down a massive payrise because it would have meant either sending our kids to Orlando public schools or paying private school fees which wiped out the payrise.

kodokan

Not Florida, but similar... we recently moved from Arizona (seems to pride itself about scraping along the bottom of state league tables) to Ohio (middling to top state education system).

It's a night and day difference. Their OH schools have a Chromebook for every kid in the class to work on, rather than 2-3 desktops per classroom; they have vastly better PE equipment; programs like art and music are well-funded and supported. Most importantly, the teachers are awesome - engaged, professional, enthusiastic, innovative... and paid on average almost double what their AZ counterparts are, for a similar cost of living area. If you were a well-qualified teacher with a great resume, with your pick of where to work rather than having to take any job you're offered, then the only things keeping you in AZ are family and the weather. Some of the kids' AZ teachers were trying hard but were very inexperienced; the rest were jaded and caustically bitter (fortunately personality traits that amuse and work well with my 'I'm so cynical' high school-aged son).

And we were in excellent schools by AZ standards, where the high school is creditably ranked on the national league tables. But, like Florida, they prioritize low taxes over paying for good teachers, and having decent amenities. It shows.

sir_eccles

A friend of mine commented that he hoped AZ Gov Doucey had bought a powerball ticket. That way if he won he could fund the schools properly.

indigogirl1976

We are in the Tampa Bay Area. My son is in kindergarten. What I found is that Florida knows it's public school system is bad so they compensate though funding charter schools, magnet schools and fundamental schools. These schools are all free as they ar publicly funded but they are smaller and usually operate lotteries to get in. It gets very competitive trying to get into one. For my sons school over 700 people applied for 33 spots. If you are looking at Orlando schools make sure to google any charter schools and have a look at those too. If you do manage to get into one it's actually not bad. I'm very happy with my sons school but I would NOT have sent him to our zoned public school. I would have gone the private route.

Steve_

Florida has no State income tax and unlike Texas it also has fairly low property taxes and sales taxes. It's really a State designed for retirees.

How it works in Florida is that it is highly dependent on counties, far more so than anywhere else I can think of in the US. The counties that have lots of expensive houses have decent schools, or more specifically, the areas in the counties with lots of expensive houses have decent schools.

So it really depends on where exactly in Florida you are thinking of moving to.

I used to tutor kids who went to school in Florida, my personal view is that the quality of education they were getting was appalling, but they were living in mediocre areas.

There are decent private schools knocking about but it really does vary a lot by school district. For example the schools in Weston are great, but the schools next door in Plantation are significantly worse.

I have a friend who lives in Plantation and she can only afford private school for one of her kids and she tells me the difference in the quality of education is marked.

And then there was the whole thing with them messing about with the standardized tests and so on. Hopefully that new Federal law will help sort things out.

Steve_

I'm sure he'd find a way to spend it on building more prisons. I mean, the State Constitution requires the State to spend as much as possible on State universities and they still managed to take money out of the university system and spent it on prisons. Gee, I wonder who his largest donor was at the last election... hmm...

I don't know why they don't just put the kids in prison from the outset and cut out the middleman.

Did you see that episode of Family Guy where Peter went to Tucson?