Word: westons
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Many corporations, after fleeing the chaos and decay of New York City, have relocated around Weston, in Connecticut's Fairfield County, which now boasts more FORTUNE 500 company headquarters than anywhere else in the country except New York City itself...
...there is precious little evidence that Weston's schools are cranking out better and better students each year. As with public schools everywhere, the growth in electives has meant less time for core academics. One rough sign of the decline is weakening performance on the Scholastic Aptitude Test, which colleges often use to help evaluate an applicant's real academic promise. Nationwide, scores have slipped gently but steadily in recent years, and Weston has been no exception, with test results now averaging in a distinctly mediocre 450 to 480 range. Though most seniors go on to college anyway...
...Weston now has 21% fewer students than it did seven years ago, but the teaching staff has dropped by less than half that much. Meanwhile, the population has aged, and more than 50% of the town's residents are now beyond 55 years of age and no longer have children in the schools...
...three nights in a row, Weston's townspeople-housewives and commuters, doctors and architects, retired businessmen and young divorcees-wrestle with the dilemma, and by then it is clear that for many of them, "quality education" is really just a code phrase for a far more mercantile concept: the propping up of Weston's sky-high property values...
With whole armies of executives now being transferred in and out almost daily by their employers, the real estate market has been kept churning, and resale values for homes have shot into orbit. In Weston, a three-or four-bedroom ranch that might have sold new in 1970 for $50,000 would today be snapped up almost immediately...