Something interesting here is that both Matt and NHJ have just one child. When you add a second kid (let alone a third or fourth) to the family calculus, the case for optimizing geographically becomes much stronger. With just one kid, upper-middle class parents can roll the dice and be pretty sure that if things go south at the local public school they can switch to a private school fairly easily. It might cost $50K per year, but you only need to secure one slot. With two, three, four, or more kids, exiting the public school becomes a lot harder. Obviously, there's the huge tuition bill that would come with it, but less obvious to non-parents and parents-of-one is that it's really difficult in a lot of schools and daycares to get multiple slots simultaneously.