Research Triangle

I had all these ideas about things to blog about. That was yesterday. Today, I can't remember what any of these ideas were. What's sadder is that one of Golden Tree Academy's areas of concentration is to develop the student's use of executive functioning skills. One of these skills would be to jot ideas down. Yet, here I am, not having written any of my blogging ideas down. I'll do so for now on. In fact, I made a list on this page, somewhere on the right.

Today, I would like to talk about the Raleigh-Durham area, now sort of known as the Research Triangle. I really know very little about this part of the nation. However, I hear nothing but good things about it. One of my friends from high school now lives in that part of the country. I haven't spoken to him for a long time, perhaps I should try to get in touch with him. My general research on the area has been positive, and all the city ranking things always list the area.

So, I thought to myself, what about setting up a day school there? Unlike Western Pennsylvania, I don't think we could afford a large amount of land. Even looking at areas an hour or two away from the Research Triangle, I found that land was expensive. I looked into some leases, but couldn't find anything real suitable. I found one nice building, but it had no land. That wouldn't help us much for physical education or holding a class outside. But, I'm still considering it, as well as some other locations, which I'll blog about at a future date.

Doing a bit of research, there are about 30 independent (non-religious) private schools within 50 miles of Raleigh. They range in size from 10 to over 1,000 students. I have no interest in a school of 1,000! Ideally, I would like to see Golden Tree be a boarding school for about thirty students. As a day school, I can see, maybe, 50. However, with the costs of running a school in the region, I'm not sure that 50 students would be sustainable.

According to Hoagie's Gifted, there are only two schools for gifted children in the area. One doesn't even mention gifted on their website, so I'm assuming they are really just a traditional school that has a program or two for gifted kids. If the program is simply putting a kid in a higher grade level class, then it isn't gifted at all. The second school is a public elementary school. This school would serve as competition if we decided to enroll elementary school students. However, a place like that could be a good feeder into the 6th through 8th grade programs at Golden Tree.

So, what do we have? We have an area with over 100 private schools (including religious schools), meaning that people in the area do look for private education. We have only two schools that are even mentioned for gifted, one of which isn't really gifted, the other which is elementary only. Hmmm. Strange that a place filled with technological talent would have so few gifted school opportunities. Something like this may actually be able to work there. If you have any leads for land or facilities in the area, comment to this post.