For me.. City< Country <'Burbs I've lived them all and the 'burbs have the best balance all around and especially for a family IMO.. I'm currently in the city, but I think I'll be back in the 'burbs this time next year.. I'm very overprotective of my loved ones and I couldn't buy peace of mind living in the city at any price..
The burbs are where the good school districts are, the city is where my job is, so I commute an hour each way.
Lamar, Memorial and Bellaire are just as good or better than the schools in the sticks. Plenty of good k-5 schools and middle school well kids are crazy then.
of course money is an issue so if you wont sacrafice the big yard and zoned neigborhood for a smaller house and a transitional area then I undertand. Funny thing is a grew up in town walked to elementry and Jr. High then went to Lamar. Sure there were kids involved in bad things but we would have to go meet girls from the berbs to have sex with because the girls at Lamar had to be home and were prude. The guys/girls in the suberbs seemed to all do drugs while we played sports after school. I'm not saying by my senior year I didn't party hard on the weekends (I did) I'm just saying there are many misconceptions. OK, rich girls in town will do coke but IMO that is the lesser of two evils when it comes to what the girls we hung out with late night from other places did. Just don't ever buy the school arguement.
My son had hearing problems when he was young and therefore was slow to start talking. He needed speech therapy only and HISD wanted to lump him in a class room with 12 kids with problems ranging from speech to Autism to total mental r****dation. We moved to Cy-Fair. My son got intensive speech therapy with 2 kids his same age and with the same problem twice a week until the problem was solved 6 months later. Don't try to convince me or anyone else there is no difference between the schools in the greater houston area. My son and daughter are getting twice the education their cousins are getting in HISD. No doubt about it. When your districts slogan is "Expectation Graduation" then you have a problem. HISD is just trying to get kids out and other districts are preparing their kids for College and life beyond highschool.
which is why we need equal access to education for all citizens as badly as we need universal healthcare.
I'm all for equal access to education... remember that you also get out of the education system what you put into it. You can be successful if you work at it even in a bad environment.
