I'd love to get your opinion on a hotly-debated topic in our house right now.

My son is turning 5 in June and will be starting kindergarten in August. We love everything about the house we currently live in, from the floorplan to the neighbors to the yard to the amazing pool down the street. The thing we don't love: the zoned school. It's not acceptable to us for several reasons, and our son won't be going there. For the past two years, we've been searching for a home zoned for a good school, but we couldn't find one that met all of our criteria and was a price we could afford. So, we gave up on the home search and enrolled our son in a Catholic school well-known for its sense of community and academics. The principal is incredible, the class trips seem amazing, and the kids graduate a full grade-level ahead of their public school peers. However, we are not religious, let alone Catholic, and religion is taught as a subject at this school, just like spelling and math. About half the kids who attend this school are also not Catholic. We planned on telling our son that we respect the Catholic beliefs and the people who have them, but we have different beliefs. However, I just can't see a 5-year-old child understanding this distinction. "If mommy and daddy say that the information I'm getting in my religious lessons is not what we as a family believe, is math also up for debate?" The kids also attend mass weekly, and the school day is an hour longer than public schools. Other things that give us pause: it costs money (but we have saved the amount we expect tuition to be for both kids for K-8), and it's a 20-minute one-way drive. Another note: there aren't any other private schools in town that we are interested in and can afford.

This weekend, we toured a for-sale home that actually meets all of our must-have criteria: zoned for a blue ribbon school five minutes away with super-engaged parents and teachers and ranked #3 in our state, on a culdesac, and great yard/floorplan/size. If we put the money we had saved for private school tuition towards the house, there is $0 difference in cost between buying the new house and what we could net on the sale of our house. The cons to the new house are: having to move (we have almost no free time as it is right now), going from a 1-story to a 2-story home, and leaving the home our kids have grown up in for 4 years and the neighborhood we all love. The new neighborhood is nice, but a little less nice than ours now. We currently have all reasonable neighbors, and we don't know what the neighbors will be like in the new neighborhood. We'd also have to go through the stress of selling our current home. My husband in particular is very much dreading the idea of moving and sad about leaving a home we love.

If we want to make an offer, we need to do it today before somebody else does. Our housing market is crazy right now. I'd love to know what you'd do in our situation! Thank you so much!