....the quality of life is better in some parts of New York state than it is in some parts of the southeast....
I guarantee this is so.
Also in my day the schools in rural New York were superior to the schools in the South. I would say that Minnesota had excellent schools by comparison, I suspect that they no longer rate as well.
because of my dad‘s work we were always moving in the winter during school year, so I had lots of shitty school years and plenty of great summers.
I also went to school in Washington state and Arizona, two schools in each, and I would judge them nearly equal to rural New York. I never did go to a New York City school but I went to city schools in Kentucky Minnesota and California.
By far, the worst schools I have associated with are in California, and this was evident from the time I moved here.
Clearly they spend a fortune on the buildings and accoutrements but the quality of education suffers from over administration and teachers motivated to avoid censure by the system leaving education to come last in their lesson plans.
Now you would think that bucking the system as a fine old California hippie tradition deleting well back to the old Governor Moonbeam era and the adventures of Jane Fonda.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The California teachers unions are so powerful that the communist party would have succeeded in Russia if they had run slightly closer to the recommendations of the CTA.
Teachers do not dare to cross the union, and in fact are simply indoctrinated from early on what it is and what it means to them. It’s not that they couldn’t buck the union but, that they would never consider it.
Meanwhile, California invests their pension fund in risky stuff and constantly the DemocratZ who run the state drive down the stock market.
I guess this is all my roundabout way of telling you to be very cautious of the school system where you live and what the requirements will be for you to educate your children.
If you want to send them to a Catholic school like my dad went, or a non-denominational Christian school like my daughter went, Or a state school like my eldest daughter, this would be one of my primary concerns when choosing a new abode.