Considering moving to Chattanooga

All I know of Chattanooga is the downtown gentrified area is nice and the interstate traffic rivals Atlanta on bad days.

Make of that what you will.

Chattanooga has google fiber. What more reasons do you need? Your posts will come across before you type them.

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Signal Mountain.

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Really is the only non lottery public school system that is worth a damn from kindergarten to high school. Hixson has a decent elementary school in Big Ridge, but it falls off a cliff after that. Ooltewah has mediocre schools as well as East Hamilton. There are a few very good lottery public schools, but the chances of getting in them are very very low.

Private schools range from blah to amazing, if you have the money, it's hard to beat GPS and Mccallie in getting a high quality education.

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Chattanooga's gigabit internet comes from the EPB, not Google. They built their own, and were the first city to have it.

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Yep, no Google here. EPB also offers 10 gigabit internet now. First to do it as well. It's like $300 a month though. Gigabit is $70 a month.

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I'm going to research all of this on my own of course, but could anyone recommend a neighborhood or suburb with decent public schools that would be affordable for a very middle class family? (I recognize it's also very possible that there is no such place in the area.)

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Look at Signal Mountain, some nice homes up there. Consider Hixson in the Big Ridge School system, but you will probably want to send to private school after Big Ridge. If you don't mind a lower tier school Ooltewah and East Hamilton aren't terrible. However, if you will be working downtown Chattanooga. You need to drive the ridgecut at 7-9 am and also 3-7pm to see how awful it is to drive to/from the Ooltewah area at those times.

I'm currently in Collegedale/Ooltewah area, I really enjoy living out there, but I don't want to send my 3 year old to any of the schools out here and I am about over the ridge cut drive. We are also looking to move. Plus with Volkswagen/Amazon and the small companies that followed them to my exit moving into the area, our home skyrocketed in price and we can sell ours and buy an equal size house and probably pay it off in another area. We will probably end up in the Hixson area with Big Ridge and then probably Catholic private school once she out grows Big Ridge if we are unsuccessful with lottery schools. A lot of our friends live in that area already.

Another option is Cleveland if you aren't working in downtown Chattanooga. The city public schools there aren't too bad, some of them are pretty good actually. The county schools aren't good, so make sure to stay in the city limits.

The thing you said about Asheville isn't here yet for Chattanooga. Lots of affordable areas. The problem with Chattanooga is it was planned very very poorly. A lot of the nice new subdivisions are right next to not so nice areas in a lot of places.

It's definitely one of the areas I would consider.

Chattanooga has pretty cheap housing it seemed like, when I did a search. Maybe that's just Tennessee as a whole compared to Texas?

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Chattanooga has pretty cheap housing it seemed like, when I did a search. Maybe that's just Tennessee as a whole compared to Texas?

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certainly not Nashville. Maybe Memphis and Knoxville.

My brother spent 3 years in Chattanooga. Called it Chatta-nowhere. Moved back to ATL said it was a waste land with an acquarium.

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Ranked 86th school district (out of 146) in Tennessee from the latest rankings that I ran across School Digger district rankings - TN Of course...this comes largely from standardized testing...but they have also been through a handful of superintendents in a very short period of time. Sure, there are some good schools...but overall, they are a broken district in need of repair.

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Let's be honest, most of them will never be repaired. They are poor inner city schools, that's the majority of Hamilton County schools. How familiar are you with Knoxville? I graduated from Farragut before there was a Hardin Valley.

Signal Mountain is in the same territory with the Farragut system. CSLA/CSAS/Normal Park are above that. They are very good schools, but extremely limited on who can attend. There are a few elementary schools that are good as well scattered through the county. Overall though, the county will show bad because of the majority of low income schools.

Superintendent changes lately may have come from that terrible hazing incident with the Ooltewah sports team.


I don't have GPS/McCallie money, but I'd send my kid to Signal or one of the lottery schools I mentioned before Boyd Buchanan. That may be where your brother sends his kids. Send them over the Catholic schools as well.

I know plenty of people who attended public school throughout various areas near and around Chattanooga. They all turned out just fine. A couple of them are very successful at a young age.

Just FYI.

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It seems like my options are pretty limited because I just can't afford private school for the kids.

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Don't let these guys scare you off. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Hixson or Ooltewah. No, they're not some elite tier public, but they are probably as good or better than the schools you are in now.