If you are planning for R2I and have school going kids, one of the major questions in your mind would be about school - which school I should choose? Other major decision about where you are going to stay rides on this choice as well since you don't want kids to commute long distance everyday. On the top of that, there is another variable that you need to be aware of - which curriculum the school is offering. Mainly two things to choose from - ICSE versus CBSE. State syllabus may not be of a big concern since you don't see that getting offered in private schools and you wouldn't be considering a government school anyway (if you are, you have serious homework to do, before you can do R2I!). Let me expand a bit more on what ICSE and CBSE offer, which might help you in making the choice...
ICSE(Indian Certificate of Secondary Education):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Certificate_of_Secondary_Education
http://cisce.azurewebsites.net/icse_X_Syllabus.aspx
To quote from wikipedia: "The subjects that are offered are divided into three groups. Group I includes Compulsory Subjects - English, History , Civics & Geography, and Indian Language, Group II which includes any two from Mathematics, Science, Environmental Science, Computer Science, Agricultural Science, Commercial Studies, Technical Drawing, A Modern Foreign Language, A Classical Language and Economics, and Group III has any one from Computer Applications, Economic Applications, Commercial Applications, Art, Performing Arts, Home Science, Cookery, Fashion Designing, Physical Education, Technical Drawing Applications, Yoga, and Environmental Applications. "
There will be multiple tests and internal assessments. Marks are given for the final exam and internal assessments. For smaller grades like, only letter grades are assigned. Some of the extra activities like swimming are offered in some schools, based on the facilites available. In general, there is enough focus on basic subjects like Maths, Science and additional focus is given on language. It is common to find langauge like French being offered, which makes the transition easy for kids doing R2I.
CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education):
There is no point repeating the details here. Your best source is the CBSE website: http://cbse.nic.in/welcome.htm
Fortunately, if you are considering your kids to pursue professional career(which may or may not happen since kids choose these days versus parents!), the core subjects are offered both on ICSE and CBSE. However, the 'claim' is that CBSE syllabus is 'closer' to entrance exams since these papers are set based on CBSE syllabus. I haven't validated this myself but that is the 'claim' at least. Another factor that might offset this is - invariably you will be sending the kids to some professional training course outside of school(like FITJEE, BASE or Aaakash etc in Bangalore), to get some focussed learning for entrance exams.
You might be thinking you will start with some school and decide about settling on a school once you are here, say in 2-3 years. Unfortunately, that doesn't work well. As-is, it is a big move for kids from the safety net of US environment. Once they are here, they re-build their friend's circle and that provides the cushion on day-2-day basis. It takes a good 1-2 years for that and even here, kids are shuffled in each year. Asking them to move to a different school as they build their friend circle and re-do all of that in a different school is a hard thing to do and you should avoid that, if possible. Hence, the initial choice of school is a crucial decision and can make or break your R2I decision - you don't want to be in a situation where you have to pull the kids forcefully everyday out of home to school!
