Perhaps everyone's holy grail does exist, but you won't know you have it until you get it, and you may well not know until you deal with the culture shock that often comes with international work lives. Many people don't do this and end up leaving looking for the greener grass. If you go into this worklife with the awareness that your current location is an international location for some people in your community, you might begin to have a better appreciation of where it might be headed. Obviously where you live now has its problems (hellish commute is one you note) but would you know of them until you lived there? Do all the people in your community have the same priorities? I'm guessing that they don't and that your current place has heterogeneity. So will your new place and you need to be prepared for this. Our first priority in our latest posting was children's safety, but that does come at a significant premium in many other ways. Still, its much easier to deal with all of the peripheral issues when they are just that. If you are being particular then my 20 years of working the globe says you need to be brutally honest and be very sure of your main priority.

I'm not one to apologise or rationalise high teacher turnover rate. There may well be many reasons, but the fact that t/o is there has to have some impact on the culture of the school and on its community. There is no reason to avoid the higher t/o schools but you do need to go in with an open mind and no serious expectations of excellence. You may well get a pleasant surprise. You'd also do well to realise that high turnover does not necessarily mean that you have lots of opportunities; the t/o may well be because of the lack of career opportunities that exist. Cronyism, credentialism and appearanceism in leadership roles is very real and often results in competent and capable teachers burning out having to carry the can for poor decisions made by their supervisors.