Anyone familiar with the Austin area? I'm looking at a transfer to that area and a large part of the decision will be based on how good or bad the schools are.... Anyone have first hand info?

You are in luck. I know everything about them. What age are your kids?

A 7 year old that will be in second grade. The youngest one is only 4 so for her it will just be the pre-k

The Austin area is one of the 'most educated' areas of the US. We lived in Barton Hills near downtown and most kid are several years ahead of grade level and 99% parental involvement with a Art History program. We had incredible teachers. My daughter was four years ahead when we moved here - and they really had no gifted program since most students were so high. They did "modified grouping" often, which meant that the kids five years ahead were in one class and four years ahead were in another. There were three teachers per grade. They take transfer students.

My daughter had several incredible magnet schools to choose from - Kealing and Fulmore for Middle School. One was science and the other Humanities and Law.

However, there are bad schools around also. And there are outlying districts which are excellent. Music and Art are really important in Austin. In the outlying districts, football and sports are a little more important.

This all depends on where you are going and what your personality is like. Many of our parents were professors at one of the universities.

I think if we could find a school where football and cheer leading didn't exist we would be quite happy. Our biggest fear in moving to Texas was that our daughter would be pressured into the insane sports/cheer leading mentality that Texas is known for...

I know this isn't a gifted question... but how safe is Austin itself... we were expecting it to be like most cities and thought we would have to look for a suburb to avoid the crime.

Once you leave Austin, you are in Texas. Austin is very safe - west of I-35. Schools are very different so it really matters where you go to school. PTA's have a lot of pull and some of them contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars to the school and pay for teaching positions. All of the schools have their own personalities. Go ahead and send me a message and I'll be completely honest with you. You'll love Austin - except the heat.

Most of Texas is very, very safe. There are parts of Houston that are as bad as parts of Oakland or Chicago, but that is it.

There is very little criminal-on-non-criminal crime unless you are involved with those who make or sell drugs. Many Texans are armed, either via CHL or in-car-carry and for this reason criminals avoid messing with your average person.

The Austin PD is very, very good and is a young PD with a lot of dedicated officers who have to deal with a very diverse group of citizens.

Personally, I'd find someone who lives in Austin and spend a couple of days looking around. I'd do this on a work week so you can get a feel for traffic as Austin has the worst traffic I've ever seen - especially from downtown North to Round Rock.

Thanks for the information... my only experience was from living in Houston... I didn't think anything would ever get me back into Texas after that experience.

Austin is awesome. If NASA was there, ahh well.....My college roommate teaches there and tells us (sisters, me, anyone else) how great her school is all the time. Way better than all others . She says her kids (in class) are smarter than the average bear. I haven't been back in a while but making MOPAC a toll road seems to help (get a tolltag). I agree though the roads there weren't built for the growth that Austin has had on the North side.

Of course as far as sports Hook-Em....had to get that in there.

We live in Northeastern Texas. Is that true that Texas has that kind of stereotype? We have not really noticed it; we have an incredible school district, though, for just about everything EXCEPT gifted programs, even though the district has an incredibly large amount of gifted and even highly gifted children.

I live in Austin in one of the neighboring districts (Lake Travis ISD) and know a lot of people in the Westlake ISD which is ranked 59th in the country for public schools. Austin is a wonderful place and for a small metroplex it has a lot of PD in the small area. There is Round Rock, Leander, Austin, Westlake, Lake Travis Hays Consolidation, and Del Valle in the Austin area.

And yes... traffic can be bad if you rely on the infrastructure, but if you know Austin there are many ways around the highways so you miss the traffic.

And you can't avoid the sports in this area. Wish you could. That is the main down fall, but as far as arts... Austinites really appreciate it and that is a magical thing.

Westlake is an excellent school district. A number of kids from there haved contributed to the Linux code while still in HS.

Football is not the only sport in Texas. A number of outstanding soccer and baseball/softball stars have come out of the Austin area.

With UT being in Austin, you cannot avoid the football, but living a few miles away from Campus helps.

I caution against going to Westlake.

Why do you caution against going to Westlake?