Round Rock ranks No. 6 best mid-sized city in U.S. to raise children

Round Rock ranks No. 6 among mid-size cities in the United States as the best place to raise children, according to a recently released analysis.

Mylife.com, which published the rankings Aug. 5, had this to say about Round Rock:

“The self-proclaimed ‘sports capital of Texas,’ Round Rock has valid reason to be known as such. Not only do they host the AAA team for the Texas Rangers, but Old Settler’s Park is a vast complex with a wide range of sports to choose from, including disc golf and cricket. They were the only city to rank no worse than 64th in every category.”

Mylife started with a list of 189 midsized cities, which it determined as those ranking 101 through 289 in population based on the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2013 estimates. It then applied a ranking of 1 through 189 in each of the following categories:

  • Crime Rate – Your child’s safety is something that is always on your mind. It doesn’t matter if he or she is five or 50, you hope they are staying safe. So we examined crime rate as an important criteria. Data found on neighborhoodscout.com.
  • Public School Ranking – Education is important. You’d like your child to be able to survive a college classroom, and that’s where being prepared comes in. Numbers from schooldigger.com, which explains how they rank the schools here.
  • Public Parks Per Capita – Children getting exercise is of big significance as well. It keeps them healthy, and it helps the parents stay happy. Public parks are an excellent, and free, way to do that. Data found through Yelp.
  • Average Family Salary – We know that money isn’t everything, and plenty of kids had just as much fun growing up playing telephone with a couple of empty soup cans and some string as a kid who may have had fancier toys. But we used this criteria to help determine a family’s monetary preparedness for children. This is the average salary based on a family household. Numbers from the Census website.
  • Cost of Living – In order to balance out annual salary, we looked the cost of living in each city as well. Data attained through Area Vibes website.

After establishing a ranking for each of those categories, Mylife assigned a score to each city for those categories as well. Once those were added up, they divided the sum into an average; the lower that average was the better.

Here is the top 10 list:

  1. Overland Park, Kan.
  2. Naperville, Ill.
  3. Ann Arbor, Mich.
  4. Cary, N.C.
  5. Frisco, Texas
  6. Round Rock, Texas
  7. Olathe, Kan.
  8. Bellevue, Wash.
  9. Torrance, Calif.
  10. Elk Grove, Calif.

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