I went here for three years. I always felt the teachers were under-qualified and got upset or angry extremely easily, and we were learning things in eighth grade that we should have been learning years earlier in sixth. For example, in a "computer science" class I learned about the different components of a computer... such as the computer mouse, keyboard, screen and... tower. Really cutting edge learning going on at this place. By the time I got to high school I felt like I was at least a class or two behind my fellow freshmen (luckily high school wasn't the grueling horror show the teachers at BBMS had constantly felt the need to warn me it was).
I always felt the teachers were easily angered and under-qualified. It was easy to get a teacher off track if you didn't feel like doing much work that class, and certain teachers would not stop talking about politics in a way that was uncomfortable.
One of our teachers was a former law enforcement officer, who claimed to also have been a prison guard, and seemed to bring that authoritarian sensibility into the classroom. I remember one student in particular who was obviously having a hard time with their self-image and could burst into tears at the smallest provocation. This ex-cop/guard teacher would get outright angry with them to a degree that, looking back now, honestly feels like abuse.
Early on in my time there I heard a teacher make a comment about a magazine I had, the cover of which had the leads of a recent superhero movie on it. The leads - an attractive man and woman - were merely the characters from the movie to me, but this 60-something year old man looked at the magazine, looked at me, and muttered under his breath "in your dreams." Not only wildly inappropriate for an 11-year-old to hear, but hurtful! Thankfully I only experienced about half a year with that teacher.
I remember my parents, who had considered sending me to a private Catholic school, telling me that this wasn't a "Christian school," but that the woman who ran it (Barb Howell) was Christian. Considering this place doesn't, or at least didn't, advertise itself as a Christian school, I always found it weird that Barb would trot out hand puppets and give us all a show about the nativity during the holiday season.
These people should not have been teaching kids. If this place is still in business it should be seriously scrutinized. read more