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Visas should be the top thing on your mind.

Do you have a plan for that?

No visas, no school, no move.

Hello Guys ... all 4 of you,

Gadener is right ... no Visa = nada!

The word education has many meanings and not all require a class room. You have not stated the purpose of the trip but surely it will filled with adventure for all. The question you must ask yourself is which is more important the education they would receive in school back home or the education they will encounter living in a foreign land which has a unique culture. They may learn more going to school with normal kids than with rich snobs (los sangrones).

They can catch up with the US kids next year if need be. Let them learn.

Regards ... Tom

This may be out of date, but it does not seem that Residency visas are that hard to obtain. The 90-180 day tourist visas look very simple and one can apply for residency while living off the tourist visa.. do correct me if it is otherwise.

Our desire to go to Ecuador is based around giving the kids an international experience while they are still young enough to not object. We can work remotely for our jobs so will be working from a base rather than traveling for the year. My first thought was to do local schools, but upon reading up on them, they do not seem to be necessarily well regulated and in many cases there is not much structure. The US is no better. In our greater area in the US there are indeed a number of really drastically bad US public schools. I definitely want the kids to integrate and be immersed in the culture there (homeschooling is what I had in mind, although a number of families do that in Ecuador). If that means private schools that have more resources to help them along in their struggles to integrate with the language, then I could see it making more sense and actually being a better fit for our needs and a more productive way for the kids to integrate. Some private schools seem actually very reasonably priced, like $100 a month so probably also applicable to the new 'middle class' that I gather is growing in Quito. I've only just started doing all the research though so would love to hear from people with first hand experience with the schools. All the info that I'm finding may be well out of date.

Not to diminish the worthiness of your goals, but government in general really doesn't care what people 'want'.

So in order to get your family to Ecuador no matter the motivation, you must fulfill the Ecuador government's requirements for permanent residency visas.

And this can be a mighty hard tick to pull off.

From the pinned post at the top of this forum "New Online Ecuador Guide" you will find information about permanent residency visas:
/en/guide/south-am … uador.html

As Americans, all of the required documents must be submitted for each member of the family, and all documents must be notarized and apostilled, and then translated into Spanish in Ecuador, for the permanent residency visa application in Ecuador. Apostilling is the process of verifying that the document itself is genuine and true, and can only be done in the US.

In general, it is very difficult to get all the document requirements taken care of outside of your home country. Therefore, going to Ecuador and then getting extended tourists visas while there, will do nothing in the way of acquiring all the papers you will need from the US to apply for the permanent residency visas.

If you browse around this forum for a bit, you will find many people struggling with the permanent visa process, and many hardship tales.

Visas are the first priority.

It does appear that investment or professional visas are in order here, and all the complications involved.

Most useful, thank you! It's a good thing we have a year to figure this out. I really appreciate your help.   Visa first!

Keltic Tom wrote:

They may learn more going to school with normal kids than with rich snobs (los sangrones).

If your implication is that students at all Ecuadorian private schools are "rich snobs" or (per wordreference.com's definitions for "sangrones") greedy or annoying, that's an unsubstantiated slur.

Keltic Tom wrote:

They can catch up with the US kids next year if need be.

The implication here is that CaraG's kids might need to "catch up" on their education after a year in an EC public school, by returning to the United States.

Also off base.

I agree.  The education comparisons are unfair.  I have been to Ecuador several times and have met teens educated in Ecuador and they are light years ahead of those educated here in the US.  Of course this is one person's experience of a very small sample so it is anecdotal but at least it is a note to think about when generalizing about schools.