School Districts in the ATL Metro Area
 

Hi everyone,

My wife and I are exploring the opportunity to move to ATL and live in base. We have elementary age children and would like to live in an area with a good school district.

What school districts are recommended?

probably not within about 60 mile radius 💀

Are you considering living on the north or south side of the airport? In my opinion, each side has its pros and cons. To give you a better recommendation, I need a bit more information. For instance, are you comfortable with driving through heavier traffic for the sake of having more amenities, even if it means a longer commute? Are you a family that enjoys outdoor activities, or do you prefer quieter, more introverted environments? These are just a few considerations. Luckily, we have many great schools in the areas surrounding Atlanta, as well as homeschool co-ops if that interests you.

Lol a 60 mile radius would give him access to excellent schools, both public and private.

Basically, people live North of the ATL beltway. Or they live in PTC/Newnan.

almost no one with kids lives inside the period the beltway.

like someone else said, Northside is closer to mountains and ATL/restaurants & amenities. PTC/Newnan is close to airport, but further from ATL restaurants/amenities

Alpharetta, Milton, Buford, Canton, Woodstock all have good schools from what I've heard from pilots with kids.

PTC doesn't have a monopoly on good schools.

Plenty of good schools within a 60 mile radius. Only people that spread that bs either never leave the wire of FOB Peachtree City or simply don't live in ATL

I'll give a shoutout to the East Cobb area and the Walton/Lassiter/Pope school districts. My kids went to Walton and found it a bit of a pressure cooker. Great if your kids are pretty academically oriented, but a bit much if they are not so scholastically inclined. The best schools in the greater Marietta area are all on the district's east side. I now live in Cherokee County (Woodstock area), and I'm pretty sure the schools in my immediate area aren't quite as good as those in East Cobb. I'm sure there are some great schools in the St Johns/Cumming/Milton/Alpharetta/Buford areas, but I have no firsthand experience.

Also- ignore critics of northside traffic. It takes me :40 to the employee lot and about 1:15 during the worst of rush hour. Since I do this maybe 1.5 times per week, it's not a big lifestyle factor.

Live in Pilot town of Peachtree City 🙃

Agreed. In a hypothetical schedule of 5 3day trips a month, that's 2.5 drives to the airport in 2 weeks. At most a mild inconvenience. And that's assuming you're driving to work during peak rush hour times which I hardly ever start or end a trip during those hours.

I second what was said above about East Cobb. It is where I live. I fly trips with early reports and it usually takes me 30-35 min to get the employee lot. As long as I don’t hit the road for home after 3:30, I can usually get home in 40-45 min. However, much later than that and it can take an hour.

We lived in East Cobb until a little over 7 years ago, SC coast now. I actually grew up in E. Cobb from the time I was 14. Our daughter went to Mt. Bethel elementary, Dickerson middle and Walton high and I attended Walton.
Very good schools, some of the best in the ATL area. Transitioning from Walton to college was no issue for our daughter, she was well prepared both scholastically and in workload management.
Yes the traffic can be a PITA, but doing it once a week is tolerable. My wife had to drive to Coke HQ every day and that was another matter.

As someone who went to those PTC schools, they are hard to beat. Of course I need two hands to count the amount of current Delta pilots from my graduating class.

The only schools that could compete with us academically and in sports were some Cobb schools and whatever private one was up north.

Right now Buford and Forsyth counties place above Fayette county in school district rankings. Nobody is saying PTC has bad schools by any means. You just don't have a monopoly on all the good schools in the ATL area.

As an ATL local I don't get why Peachtree mafia is so fanatical about defending the greatness of their school district. Gotta somehow justify moving to the most meh area around the city I guess?

20 years ago Buford and Forsyth were the boonies. Hell, PTC was the boonies when I first moved there but the schools were the best.

Just like it’s the favorite APC thing to bash PTC, it was (and still is) a nice, safe place to raise a family. Raging around in golf carts as a teenager before they starting registering them was quite nice too.

I left GA years ago and no chance I’m moving back.

You can’t hold Minny ? 🙃

Currently I commute out of the South Florida to the Northeast. So an hour commute wouldn’t be a concern. One of the concerns would be while on Short Call Reserve to be close enough to make it to ATL for the report time. That’s a consideration factor of where to live.

There is no preference over North or South Atlanta. Both my wife and I are unfamiliar with the area except for College Park is where they chop cars.

We enjoy the outdoors, running on trails, cycling (Road and Gravel), fishing, and playgrounds for kids. Schools are important, but we also want to live somewhere where there are activities to do, restaurants, stores and is an enjoyable place to live.

I’d say come up for a weekend in the Spring (if you can. Spend a day in PTC, and spend a day in some of the Northern suburbs. See which you vibe with more.

there really is a spot for everyone within short call range. And if you ever get a wild hair to do Cp, Duty Pilot, SLI, Tech Pilot, etc… you can as a local. 👍

There are plenty of good school districts in the burbs, north and south.

I agree with the above. Come visit. We did a lot of research and picked two areas we thought we would like Drove around them and neither was for us. Turns out research was good but no substitute for walking the ground.

Good hunting, driving to work turns a good job into a fantastic one

Signed--a guy who doesnt play golf but owns a pretty nice golf cart

PTC is literally a "bubble" that exists south of ATL. It has a lot to offer including great schools, but it's distinctly separated from ATL proper. Kind of it's own thing.

North side is more ATL suburb (unless you go REAL north.) Not saying that this is a bad thing, at all. Just that PTC is a bit more "detached" from the metropolis that is ATL.

SC is "Promptly Available" in "Normal Traffic"

So if you can be at the airport in 2-ish hours driving the speed limit with whatver time you need to get out of the house, you are legal.

I've taken 3-4 hours to parking lot (and another 30 to gate) for SC assignments that are "get here ASAP". Not my fault they called to the furthest airport (granted that's not an ATL thing) at peak rush hour in a snowstorm. I'll get there when I safely can. Under 100 miles is easily defensible. 120 if you are right off the interstate might be.

Buford schools are great. High School looks like a quality small college campus with an equally impressive football program. Hell of a drive to work though, particularly during rush hour. Easily could be 2+ hours.

Kennesaw/Marrietta area is the "value" play. Great schools, good amount of quality new build homes coming on the market for $700-$900k at reduced rate financing from builders. Ton of Delta pilots with young families moving into the area.

I grew up in Atlanta, whats the beltway? You talking about I-20 or 285? There's a bunch of us that live inside the perimeter/285 in in-town neighborhoods. It's def not as wild and hairy as some might think.

One of the top #10 schools in the state, is just off VA Ave, behind the Louisiana Bistreaux. Tuition looks like it's well within the range of a Delta pilot. I'm not sure if they catch any stray bullets from VA Ave or not...

The private school tuition's around here are out of this world, you're paying sometimes over $30K a year per kid at some of these places for K-12.

For 30,000 per year a child should be Albert Einstein by the 7th grade and get a job for a million a year after graduating high school 😂.

That's just the cost of private school tuition these days, specifically high school. I don't know about the Atlanta area, but where I live, people live in areas with not good schools to save on house values and send their kids to private school. It can be a wash in a pure dollars and cents metric.

As long as the school doesn’t have LEARING center on the sign instead of LEARNING center you’ll be good .

There are solid schools everywhere around ATL. But you really need to visit schools and talk to people with kids at those schools to really get an idea of the quality.

If your definition of a “good school” is the subjective rankings of the greatschools website, then you’ve lost all credibility in the conversation.

I bet they'd be smart enough not to turn down a flow at least.

And what sort of non subjective insight would a random parent of a kid at a school be able to give you that a aggregator not be able to provide insight on?

A lot. Do you have kids in school?

We just went through this. If you have ever had to try to work with the administration at a public school for a specific need/situation your child might have, you'll find out how completely hosed you are and stand no chance in getting the school to make any sort of accommodation, even if its incredibly minor and requires no additional resources or work on their end. Just wait until you find out you're getting a DFACS case opened under "educational neglect" against you for your straight-A kid that you're moving mountains to try and support. Then you realize how broken parts of the system are. Whatever grade/score some website gives a school is just a sliver of a breadcrumb of the whole picture.

It's been a learning experience for us recently. I've learned if you need anything remotely outside of the rigid framework of public school, you'll have to go private or home school. You'll eventually lose in a battle with public school. Our neighbors have had to pull their kid out a lot for some kind of specialized therapy, the school is telling them that they too will get a DFACS referral and eventually sent to truancy court if they continue trying to help their kid. So unfortunate when you get to peek behind the curtain and see how it all works. The big machine is blind, unable or unwilling to think critically, and just crunches numbers in the end and hands out punishments to the parents. I truly hope you don't have to experience this.

An aggregation of experiences (subjective), but also actual objective info. Does the school have a sport your kid wants to play? How are the coaches of that sport and have they had success? Does it have a club your kid wants to participate in? How active is the PTA? Does the school host community outreach events? Does it have a specific honors program? Does it offer a foreign language you want your kid to take?

Ask any teacher and they will tell you greatschools rankings should never be the deciding factor of a school.

My kid’s school is a 7/10. Greatschools shows it as lower than a neighboring school (9/10) due to inequality of scores, even though it’s well known in the community that our school is top notch, if not better. Our school has a 15% Hispanic population and many of those kids speak English as a 2nd language. Their test scores are lower than the non-Hispanic kids, and greatschools flags that as inequality. (Even though the primary English speaking kids score in the top 10% in the state).

All I’m saying is you need to peel the onion back a little and dig. Don’t rely on a single website to make a decision for you.

frankly that sounds like all schools who receive public funding. a poor teacher? good luck getting rid of them with their union. if a parent has a very specific example, like you, it’s doubtful you’ll stumble on a parent who went through the same thing. not only that, but administrative turnover frequently happens and what was once a solution provided is no longer. homeschool seems to becoming more of an option now that no child left behind is kaput.
niche.com does a good job with thousands of real world parental and student reviews.

At the risk of making people absolutely RAGE on here, we moved nearish to PTC a couple years ago from Nashville, and Tampa before that, and it’s one of nicest places I’ve ever lived, by an order of magnitude. Fantastic schools, great restaurants and breweries in nearby Senoia, low crime so much to do. I’m early 40’s so maybe if you’re younger and all about nightlife it’ll be quiet but for someone who likes suburbia, I don’t think it can be beat for the money. We’ve really enjoyed it. Yeah you might see a guy you’ve flown with at Publix, but I thought that was sort of neat that we’ve had a built in friend group since we moved here.

You’re going to end up with some pretty gangsta kids lol

First rule of APC, you don’t talk well of PTC!

I did enjoy learning about the War of Northern Aggression while in Georgia.

https://www.rogerebert.com/wp-conten...od-For-All.jpg
Lol. Straight up B Rad Gluckman running Joel Cowan Parkwaaaaaaaay

Depends on the reasons . I mean “smart” is subjective to one’s individual circumstances and position in the **** pile .

I’ve lived north of Atlanta my whole life. (Except for that decade or so that I was in the military). I grew up in East Cobb and the wife and I lived in East Cobb for about 10 years before recently moving to Canton. The area we were out just got to be too busy. Every square inch of real estate was developed beyond its capacity. Traffic was getting to be too much and the noise never stopped. We lived in an older neighborhood with larger (1/2 acre) lots and when we were in our backyard it was never quite. Constant mowers/blowers of the yard crews and traffic from the nearby roads.

We were nervous about leaving the top tier schools we were used to but have been truly surprised at the quality of schools we’re currently in. Our kids were even dreading the move but have actually thanked us bc they’re so much happier.

The Canton area was very rural when I was growing up but it is getting developed. There’s still lots of pasture land but there are also a few big neighborhoods. It seems that the area is also getting pretty affluent. Lots of houses that are between $750k and $1.5mil and any that are being built are in that range.

Currently we’re about 15-20 minutes from Alpharetta and Roswell, 20 minutes to the Marietta Square, Milton is only about 10 minutes away. And even downtown Canton is having some great new places open. Hundreds of excellent restaurants available very close.

Traffic to the airport is way overblown. I’m 55 miles to the employee lot and it takes about 50 minutes normally. The worst I’ve had is about 1:20. But if you leave at the wrong time it could be really bad. You just have to put a little bit of thought into it. I sit short call in my pool without worry. I’ve had them call at 4:00pm on a Friday for an immediate assignment and I just did my normal thing and never heard a peep about it.

I completely agree. We love the south side; it's great for families, and I am just close enough yet far enough from PTC to enjoy everything it has to offer.