the GTA is cool and all but.. it’s so flat there.

Shhhhhh. Don’t give them any ideas!

Pretty generic and half baked ask. What have you researched so far? Do you have question about any specific town? What’s your budget? Would you prefer commuting via train?

Holliston is the coolest little town in MA. Good schools (our daughter went through French Immersion). Homes go from $350k up to a million. It’s a quiet town with excellent high school sports teams, there’s a real sense of community. It’s everything you’d expect from a small New England town. Until a few years ago there were only two stoplights in the entire town. There are now four lights.

I do not miss waking up at 5:30 am to get ready and catch the bus. Phew!

I did two years of elementary school in Florida and when I moved back to MA for middle school I was critically behind to the point where they almost kept me back lmao. I was a great student in New England beforehand and I remember Florida schools just being incredibly easy. That made me think I was a genius, but actually I wasn’t developing because I was just doing what I already knew how to do. But I got caught up thank goodness!

I had to be in home room in high school by 6:40 (class of 08).

This guy taxes

>more collaborative learning centers/community centers where kids could go rather than had to go…

Yeah as great as this sounds this wouldn’t work out. Unfortunately some if not most students even upperclassman high schoolers need structure. Giving them the ability to choose where they do and do not want to learn would most likely lead to low productivity and lower overall test scores.

Western Mass at the moment. I go to Montreal more often than I go to Boston. NYC more often too.

Bedford, Burlington, bellrica

Where do you live?

Why?

Based on your criteria, Melrose is a great spot. I think it was rated one of the top zip codes in the country.

There are some great parts of Toronto, but most of it is really sprawled out. And where they do have density it's often newer high rises with sterile streetscapes. For such a populated urban area, a lot of it feels pretty lifeless.

I'd take Montreal over Boston easy, and maybe Vancouver, but not Toronto.

You’re only proving my point - you see teachers as babysitters, and therefore, below you. Your problem isn’t with teachers, it’s with the lack of accessible and affordable child care in this country, and a misplaced sense of superiority. You’ve somehow convinced yourself that teachers are to blame for the inflexibility of your own working conditions. And that if they fight for their own equity and it causes you an inconvenience, well that’s just not fair to you because you have it tough too. Based on what you have described about your working conditions, you have a lot more in common with teachers struggles than you’re willing to come to terms with. Once you understand praxis, you’ll develop some class consciousness and understand why supporting teacher and other worker strikes benefits everyone.

>Could they make this shit any more confusing?

What they're doing, which is treating it like any other tax refund, actually is the simple thing, since it's just applying all the ordinary rules, the way most people assumed they would.

OK, those ordinary rules are complicated (but only if you itemize, which most don't)

But this particular refund check not being "special" compared to other refund checks is the simple thing.

Want to argue it shouldn't be taxable at all? Well, that wouldn't go over too well, because it actually is a refund of taxes paid, and for a handful of people it is very large refund - which is to say money they've never paid federal taxes on. So if you were going to make it not taxable for little people, but still taxable for the handful who got big checks, then you have to go make it complicated again by writing new limit or phaseout rules.

That's why ruling it should be treated like any other refund check is the simplest thing that could have actually worked.

Yeah GTFO with that Dunkies sh*t

I'd rather live in Boston. Downtown Toronto stinks of weed and cigarettes, and traffic is atrocious. Boston, on the other hand, is much cleaner and is right next to the ocean.

Today? Toronto, absolutely and I kinda feel like if you asked me a year ago or before I would have said Boston

Not really, imagine you are a single parent and school doesn't open. Your boss doesn't care about the strike so you need to find childcare on short notice or risk losing your income.

Toronto, bears.

Price range is definitely key, given the school district standards and under 1 hour commute -- cities and towns like Newton, Lexington, Belmont, and Concord are quite expensive.

I grew up in Waltham (the "working class" town abutting Newton, Lexington, etc.) and was able to get an excellent honors level education, but its system does deal with a larger percentage of children with various learning challenges. However, the adults who run the gifted and honors programs make sure to keep academically advanced kids engaged.

I think I'd look at Acton/Boxboro

Not sure if that exists - good luck!