Moving to USA (Boston, NY or Chicago) schools advice needed

[jandanaligazan]

Hello

We are potentially moving to Boston, New York or Chicago in July for my husband's work and have three kids aged 4, 7 and 9.

With no fixed location yet I can't start making very set plans, but wondered if anyone knows how the school system works in these places and by what date would we need to apply in order to get a place for this September? We will be looking at private schools.

If anyone knows of any good sources of information on schools in these cities that would be fantastic, or even advice about specific schools.

Thanks so much

I lived in the USA, Washington DC. Also a job move. Kids grown up. You could try the British Expats Forum, USA board. Just make it clear from the start that you're going with husbands job. They get a lot of people who think living in the USA is a "lovely idea" and don't realise it's impossible without a visa!
Good luck with it all.

To help focus I would find out what the office locations are for each city and figure out your target neighbourhood. I would then go on greatschools.org and figure out which schools are good.

You might not need to go private. Here in NJ most of the good public schools follow IB. There is a strong positive correlation between housing cost and quality of schools. In many towns with high housing costs, the public schools are far better than the local private school.

If you are thinkng of buying a home look at the property taxes. In my town $20-25k/year for a family home is considered normal.