Hi D.,
I have lived here for over 10 years and have a 17 month old son and another baby on the way. The College Station school district is very good as a whole. The Bryan school district has some good schools and some pretty bad schools. You have to be more selective on where you live if you are in Bryan. Since I do not have a school-age child, nor any friends who do, I don't know much about which College Station schools are the best. We live in Castlegate and are zoned to Forest Ridge, which is a recently built elementary. I have heard good things about it. I also hear wonderful things about College Hills Elementary.
As far as daycares, I am really surprised about the comment on Stepping Stone School below. I visited practically every daycare in this town and SS was by far the best I saw. Stepping Stone prides itself on following NAEYC guidelines which are more strenuous then the state guidelines. They do not have any TVs in the facility and do arts and crafts every day. Check out their website at http://www.steppingstoneschool.com and make sure you at least visit. My son was at A Special Place for a very short while whil we waited to get in to Stepping Stone (their waitlist is VERY long) and I absolutely HATED it. They have extremely high turnover in their staff (at least in the infant room, were very lax about keeping track of when children came and left, put babies to bed with bottles, and had a child with horrible ezcema but none of the teachers knew what the oozing rash on her face was when I asked. I would avoid that place. I also was not impressed with Aggieland Learning Center. They have a drop-in daycare and often combine the drop-in infants with the regular infants, which seems wrong to me. I have a friend who uses Kinder Care off of Anderson and loves it. I know there is a lot of variation among the different Kinder Cares in town.
I hope this helps. College Station is a wonderful place to live with a lot to offer at a low cost of living. i was born and raised in Houston and i will never go back to a city that size. If we want to visit the zoo or museums, we can just drive to Houston or Waco and back in a day with no problem. Let us know how the house hunt goes!
