Moving to Dallas from Michigan?

Travel Info
I am looking to move from Oakland County MI to the Dallas area. I need to know what areas of Dallas would be most similar to where I live now as far as amenities and safety. Where are the best public schools in the Dallas area? Where is the best place to commute from downtown Dallas? In my current city, I travel opposite of most of the rush hour commute and would love to do the same in Dallas. Thanks!

Travel Tips

Please do not listen to these people. Dallas schools can be highly integrated, but bright youths do VERY well in college coming out of Dallas high schools. The best are Hillcrest and WT White. A lot of White district parents have deliberately banded together to assure that local residents are well represented. Many Dallas elementary school are blue ribbon rated schools. What is different is that Dallas schools are very diverse economically and - unlike your 80% white population in Michigan - will be close to 70% Hispanic. You will find more hispanic students at all public schools in this area except Highland Park.

Richardson schools are very good, and there is one - Lake Highlands High school - where you can live close to the DART rapid train. The East side of town is the only place right now to catch this train.

Plano schools are excellent but HIGHLY competitive and very large. A graduating class in Plano can easily be 800 students.

If you can afford to spend a minimum of $700K on a house, look at the Park Cities. Best schools, just about, in the country. Again, highly competitive but smaller and more intimate.

If you want to be opposite traffic, look at Kessler Park which is very close to downtown . Grade schools are OK, neighborhood is beautiful, but after grade school you will want to do private school.

Hope this helps.
Others

There is no such thing as a *good* public school in Dallas. There are some in the suburbs but not in Dallas.
The answer above is true...unless you go a private school and pay out the....! As far as commuting, it depends on what type of work you do (and please be careful of downtown D at night!) It doesn't matter which way you go on Central Expwy(75) it's bad most of the time. Don't get me wrong....Dallas great, but there is construction EVERY where!!! So traveling can be hair pulling most times. I hear Plano, Frisco and maybe Richardson are booming. Sorry I couldn't be of more help. Ohhhh by the way, Welcome to Texas :)
Plano has the best schools as far as teaching. Plano schools have some of the highest testing scores.
We have a train system now that runs through downtown. This can help your commute as driving and parking downtown is at times horrendous. You can see the train route at www.dart.org
Plano has best schools... DART connects to every major Public transportation in the DFW area... Mavericks ROCk!! ...

http://dallas.about.com/
http://www.dallascityhall.com/
http://www.dallasnews.com/
http://www.dallascvb.com/visitors/...
http://www.dart.org/
best morning show... http://www.kiddlive.com/

last but not least..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/dallas,_tex...

GOOD LUCK!!
Dallas public schools are not the best. They're actually notoriously bad. If you live in that district, I would suggest sending your children to private school. However, in the suburbs, there are great schools. In my opinion Mesquite's are some of the best. It's only about 30 minutes outside of Dallas (still in Dallas county) and if the highway is backed up there are numerous other ways to get in. There really aren't many places to commute to outside of Dallas, unless you go over into Plano and such (and just my opinion but they're kinda overated), but even then, you're going to run into traffic because they're working on the higways out there and there's a lot of traffic out there.
If you work in dowtown Dallas, you cannot travel the opposite of rush hour traffic unless you work at night. Downtown Dallas is the worst place to work, but living on the east side of Dallas would probably be the easiest to commute from.