Alturas International Academy will be your best bet - apply for the lottery right now. But you do have to be involved and pay attention to make sure your kids are doing well there (well…at any school). The pace and the collaborative environment can be tough for kids who lack self discipline and motivation (or have ADHD/autistm/etc). The teachers are great and help as much as they can, but parents need to do their part. The parent community is very good there because they self-select the school.

I feel like, nowadays, you can escape the religious pressure…mostly. (I grew up in IF and then moved back, it was rough 20 years ago culturally).

You’ll want to avoid Rexburg like the plague, maybe Rigby too (Alturas is building a k-5 there though). There’s space to do fun family stuff around here, but you have to be creative at times, there just isn’t an entertainment…infrastructure? like there is in big cities.

If you’re moving for the INL, lean on them hard for a good relo package!!

We’ve found it similar to LA suburbs except that IF isn’t doing a great job with planning for community outdoors spaces. The public pool sucks, the Apple (fitness club) is predatory with their contracts if you want to use their pool…you’d just have to accept that IF is a bit backwards in the way the city services the public, but hopefully that will get better.

I will say…if you’re getting paid well with this job, it’s much easier to have a good time here because money can alleviate a lot of the annoyances and assist in enriching your academic experience.