Discover Columbus

Worthington, Ohio

Discover Columbus is a site about Columbus Ohio. Originally named "Columbus Best Blog," it was never the best blog in Columbus Ohio. It was a blog about the best in Columbus and Central Ohio! Best restaurants, best real estate company, best schools, best neighborhoods..... written by Maureen McCabe a licensed real estate agent with Columbus Ohio's best real estate company, Real Living HER. Discover Columbus is just a site about Central Ohio.

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Columbus - America's Most Literate Cities

Dec. 29, 2007

Categorized in: Columbus In The News

Tagged with: education, literate, schools

Columbus is on the list of Ameica's Most Literate Cities.

Columbus is not on the Top Ten List but ...

Minneapolis, MN
Seattle, WA
St. Paul, MN
Denver, CO
Washington, DC
St. Louis, MO
San Francisco, CA
Atlanta, GA
Pittsburgh, PA
Boston, MA
are....

Congratulations!

Columbus is not even on the top 20 list, although Cincinnati and Cleveland are... Congratulations!
Columbus is number 21 on the list from Central Conecticut State University. There are 69 cities on the list... at least we are in the top third... the study used cities with population of 250,000 +.

Here's the page of the ranking of 2007 - Ameirica's Most Literate Cities where Columbus appears

Copyright 2007 Discover Columbus and Maureen McCabe

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Top 20 US Places to Educate your Child

Dec. 15, 2007

Categorized in: Central Ohio Schools

Tagged with: central ohio, columbus ohi, schools

Where To Educate Your Children

Top 20 Places To Educate Your Child on Forbes.com

I was pleasantly surprised to see Akron Ohio... Akron was number 5 on the Forbes.com list. I was thrilled to see Columbus Ohio on the list of the 20 best cities in the US for schools. What does the Forbes.Com report say about Columbus?

'The Buckeye State gets on the board for a second time with its capital, Columbus. Boasting 6,081,889 books in its library system, Columbus's 284,626 public school students and 28,437 private school students make up a large portion of the town's overall population."

It gives public schools a B, private schools an A+

Columbus is number 6 on the list of 20 US Cities.

A + for libraries...

Being a college town, having access to colleges weighs in....

Public Schools in Central Ohio

Private Schools in Central Ohio

Copyright 2007 Discover Columbus and Maureen McCabe

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Best Columbus Family Community

Nov. 28, 2007

Categorized in: Community

Tagged with: columbus ohio, demographics, family, northern outerbelt, schools

A search ended up on Discover Columbus yesterday for "best family communities columbus, ohio" thus the Title to this post.

I will let you in on a secret here at the start... I don't know the best family community in Columbus, is my initial response is "Gosh I sure don't know but thanks for asking..." Wouldn't best family communities be subjective? Kind of depend on the families, your family?

I visited a relatively new site, ZIPskinny.com (it's a Beta... still testing, equal housing opportunity and realtor logos

not ready for prime time kind of site) to see if they had the answer to the readers search... I searched eight Northern Central Ohio Outerbelt ZIP Codes to see if there was anything in the demographics which would show what the "best family communities columbus, ohio" would be....

The ZIP codes I compared:

43085, 43235, 43065, 43035,43016,43017, 43081, 43082

Do you know your world by ZIP codes? To me those eight ZIP codes are the Dublin, Worthington, Powell, Lewis Center and Westerville areas... (not necessarily in the corporation limits for those cities, a lot of the homes and neighborhoods in the ZIPs are in the City of Columbus , or various townships... same ZIP code may have two or more school dsictricts...) Would school information tell YOU "best family communities columbus, ohio" are? What makes one school district desirable for one family might make it totally undesirable for another... school size, school district size, curriculum... but When I think of families I thi school chalkboard

nk of schools...
Need info on Columbus area school districts?

School information - Public

School information - Private

State of Ohio Board of Education

School Matters from Standard and Poors

Before looking at some info I harvested from the internet read what the site itself, ZIPskinny.com says:

"Please bear in mind that ZIP codes are not uniform population units. They were invented for mail delivery, not population comparisons." but they do it anyway...compare communites using ZIP codes... everyone is using ZIP codes to compare neighborhoods, communities. It may work better for other parts of the country than it does in Central Ohio...

School info for 8 Central Ohio Northern Outerbelt ~~Communities~~ ZIP codes from ZIPskinny.com:

Educational Achievement:
ZIP	43085	43235	43065	43035	43016	43017	43081	43082
<9th grade:	1.1%	1.2%	0.6%	0.8%	0.6%	0.9%	1.3%	0.9%
9-12th:	2.9%	2.8%	2.6%	2.8%	1.8%	2.4%	4.5%	2.9%
H.S. grad:	15.1%	14.0%	13.7%	17.2%	14.1%	11.0%	21.3%	19.5%
Some coll.:	20.0%	20.4%	19.4%	20.9%	18.8%	18.1%	23.7%	20.3%
2 yr deg.:	5.4%	5.9%	6.7%	7.6%	6.0%	5.4%	7.0%	6.1%
4 yr deg.:	32.3%	36.1%	39.5%	37.9%	40.7%	40.3%	30.5%	34.6%
Grad/prof:	23.1%	19.5%	17.5%	12.8%	18.1%	21.9%	11.8%	15.7%
H.S.+:	96.0%	96.0%	96.8%	96.4%	97.6%	96.7%	94.2%	96.2%
4 yr+:	55.5%	55.6%	57.0%	50.6%	58.7%	62.2%	42.2%	50.2%

Would being in the ZIP code that best matched your family make you most comfortable in a neighborhood? Or would you use Educational Achivement in a different way?

Or is marital status the measure of what makes a community

Again from ZIPskinny.com

Marital Status:
ZIP	43085	43235	43065	43035	43016	43017	43081	43082
Never married:	22.3%	32.0%	18.6%	21.8%	27.7%	23.3%	27.4%	14.5%
Married:	60.3%	53.2%	71.4%	68.2%	59.3%	65.8%	58.2%	76.3%
Separated:	1.3%	1.2%	0.7%	0.9%	1.5%	0.7%	1.0%	0.8%
Widowed:	5.5%	5.1%	2.0%	1.2%	2.7%	3.2%	3.8%	3.9%
Divorced:	10.7%	8.5%	7.3%	8.0%	8.8%	7.1%	9.7%	4.6%

Another measure that I find intruiging is ZIPSkinny's Stabiility / Newcomer Appeal.....

Stability/Newcomer Appeal:
ZIP	43085	43235	43065	43035	43016	43017	43081	43082
Same home 5+ yrs:	55.7%	46.0%	49.4%	23.5%	37.3%	44.9%	51.9%	39.6%

Is the neighborhood with the highest percentage the best? Or the worst? I know when I moved to Central Ohio (transferred in 1990) we were thrilled with a neighborhood because there were lots of other transferees there. We had lived in neighborhood in the Dayton suburbs which had a lot of stability....we never met many of our neighbors. Our next door neighbor in our new Columbus neighborhood stopped over and invited me to lunch the day our moving truck was unloading. Same day the neighbor three houses away (on a different street) brought us homemade peanut brittle... or maybe"best family communities columbus, ohio" has nothing to do with Stablity / Newcomer Appeal... for your family.

ZIP	43085	43235	43065	43035	43016	43017	43081	43082
Males:	47.4%	48.6%	49.6%	49.9%	50.5%	49.4%	48.0%	49.5%
Females:	52.6%	51.4%	50.4%	50.1%	49.5%	50.6%	52.0%	50.5%
Median Age:	38.5	34.0	34.5	30.5	31.5	34.4	34.1	36.5

I have no idea what Gender tells us about family or whethe a ZIP code is but above is from ZIPskinny.com too. I wanted the age thing... Age... the Worthington ZIP (43085) is the oldest.... maybe depending on your families age you can match up the "best family communities columbus, ohio" via ZIPSkinny.com. Remember the "Please bear in mind that ZIP codes are not uniform population units. They were invented for mail delivery, not population comparisons." Worthington Village Sign

The 43085 ZIP code is the City of Worthington as well as area north of 270 bounded by Flint Rd. Park Rd, Interstate 71 and 270 on the south. That area is in the City of Columbus mostly (there could be something in a township.... )

It might all be the Worthington School District... I believe but it is not probably all that uniform....

Diverse, different cities, different school districts... all they have in common may be a ZIP code. All tables in this post are quoted from ZIPskinny.com, I believe all the data on ZIPskinny.com is from the 2000 Census. Thanks ZIPskinny.com

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Central Ohio Back to School

Aug. 11, 2006

Categorized in: Central Ohio Schools

Tagged with: back to school, central ohio, columbus, schools, suburbs

Where did the summer go?

Looks like Bexley starts school first, on August 22. The Grandview, Olentanngy, Hilliard and Upper Arlington schools are all starting school on Wednesday the 23rd of August. I believe Worthington's first day of school is Thursday, August 24. New Albany-Plain Local and City of Columbus schools start August 28.

Westerville does it different :

"28-Aug Classes Begin Grades 1-5, 6, 9
29-Aug Classes Begin Grades 7-8, 10-12 "

And Dublin starts school on August 31!

More information additional public school districts and private schools is available on my Maureen.McCabe.com website.