Toper Turor

As aforementioned, we chose to relocate our family from Texas to Atenas, Costa Rica  last year because of the great climate, family friendly, small town feel and close proximity to major infrastructure and airports. Our main concern was school options.  There are many websites out there with emphasis on retirees and empty nesters, so when it came time to research education for our children, more in depth investigation was required.  What we found, which again is why we chose Costa Rica, is the educational options are quite good. After abolishing their military in 1949, many of those funds were funneled into the education system. The public school system provides some of the lowest illiteracy rates in Latin America and the opportunity for most every student to attend a Costa Rican university.  Unfortunately, the public school system does fall short in some areas. The system does not have the funding for computer labs, new, up to date textbooks, and substitute teachers and there are currently only three public schools accredited for US universities. We witnessed the lack of substitute teachers every day in Atenas. If a school teacher is absent during a school day, class does not occur, so students hang out in the park for an hour until their next class and then return to school. The interesting thing weve noticed about the culture, at least in Atenas is the kids stay out of trouble and return to school, even with the down time. I dont think I would have been able to resist the temptation. Private schools on the other hand are as good as most in the US and at a fraction of the cost. We have included a link to search all schools in Costa Rica provided by the Ministerio de Educaci�n P�blica. It is an excellent resource using a google map to pinpoint schools, private, public, grantee, from Preschool to College plus Special Education. As you can see from the map below, I have only included Private schools and most of the pins are in the Central Valley. 

There are not many private school options around the beach towns, but there are plenty of options throughout the Central Valley, so if you still want to live on the beach, and you have children, this is something to think about.  Atenas has 2 private school options and some of the larger Central Valley towns have many.  While the public schools might be adequate with plenty of backup teaching at home, we definitely want our children to have the option of going to any university or college when the time comes; and in order to do that, they must graduate from an accredited school.  As far as we know, the only public accredited high schools are in Palmares, San Ramon and Limon. At this time, the program is very young and we need to investigate more, but the article we read about Palmares and the newly adopted program IB program (International Baccalaureate) seems to have very positive feedback, and we even know a Tico family who drive their son to Palmares every day from Atenas so he may receive the opportunity of an accredited education within the public sector.  We have hopes that this will spread throughout the central valley and so on, further cultivating the education options in Costa Rica; which is still currently one of the higher ranked systems in all Latin American countries. There are 16 schools in the program, 3 of which are public. The IB program is only necessary during the high school years so we have plenty of time to advocate enriching Grecia and Atenas schools with the likeness of this wonderful new program and plans to spread throughout CR.

In the meantime, I found this list of private schools in Grecia. 

Now we have moved to Cebadilla, a small village outside of Atenas because although we loved Grecia, it was far from our business needs. We prefer the location here, but we do miss the school in San Francisco. Max and Sara both attend V�ctor Arg�ello Murillo. This school does not have an administrator, which is the principal and we have noticed several differences. This school does not seem to have as much cohesiveness or direction, but it is still a good school and Max and Sara are learning well. They are both fluent in Spanish and teaching us some of the rules. The teachers are wonderful and welcoming, the main difference has been the cost. Escuela San Francisco often displayed civics with performances called acto civico during, or after food was often served, either in treat form, or a full party with cake and chicken or pizza and a bouncy house. This school seems to always need donations, perhaps because there is not administration. It is not expensive, but it is money, usually weekly. Hopefully they will catch up and hire a principal because I think the teachers are a bit overwhelmed doing both jobs. To read more about our life in Cebadilla, visit our developments webpage at www.valleverdequintas.com. Pura Vida!