It's ironic that two stars is "meh, I've experienced better" since - unfortunately - I have not. I had the misfortune of being unwillingly relocated to this school district where they want to hammer everyone into the same peg holes. For six years I attended Mayfield Middle and High School -- and was subjected daily to sexual and class based harassment from students, as well as race and class based harassment from staff/teachers. There were several bright spots in my years there -- Ray Goh and Mrs S who ran Media Services, Mr Siedlecki (English) and Laura Capello (Art). There were many teachers in the foreign langauge department (NOT Mrs Mitra) who were compassionate and supportive. Mrs Farris - the college counselor - recognized me as a senior just a couple months before graduation and asked "What are your plans?" Apparently, my guidance Counselor Anna Garris had NOT submitted me as a college bound student to Mrs Farris (the college counselor). A few words about Mrs Garris -- she was completely hostile and not supportive. Unforunately, she was my "guidance" counselor the entire time I was at Mayfield High School by virtue of alphabetical order -- and I was apparently stuck with her. She had a negative, vindictive attitude toward me for years. Never mind the fact that I was a TEENAGER - coming from a broken home with an abusive parent who continued to give my family problems - I also had other difficulties but extremely good grades. As a student from a lower blue collar family with no socioeconmic clout in the community -- she treated me like total crap -- and even refused to accommodate my request to graduate early despite the fact that I only had to add an English and Government class my senior year to do so and was a year older than my classmates. Her response was "What do you think you will do with your time if you graduate early?" Probably "none of your business" but recovering from major surgery and a life threatening chronic illness probably should have been enough given my extremely high grades. Garris even refused to allow me to take Photography in my senior year - despite the fact that she signed my work permit - saying "It's not cheap - I don't know how you and your family will come up with the money for the materials" - instead approving me for German 1 and FOUR HOURS of study hall my senior year (no joke). In fact, Garris, Mitra and a few other instructors seemed to think that my serious chronic and life threatening illness was a summer cold and treated me like a juvenile delinquent trying to get over one on them despite the fact that I had letters from doctors and required major surgery. In my junior year -- I had an English teacher named Mrs Wilson who was completely inarticulate and barely understood the English language -- she could not even read right out of the pages of the books she assigned us for grammar. Mrs Garris sided with her - repeatedly - and I was put in detention for questioning my inarticulate and inept English teacher (I could have taught at her level in kindergarten - it's amazing how many bad English teachers MHS had on staff). It's astonishing that I managed to graduate at all from MHS - I was not middle class, pretty, wealthy or a jock. It seemed like the gatekeepers were intent on shuttling me off to a career at McDonald's to join my mother. For over four years - I experienced nearly daily sexual harassment and physical harassment for being tall, ugly and poor - my hair was set on fire, I was spat upon, physically attacked and called names on a constant basis. Other students regularly threatened me and cheated off me during exams. Despite my reports to teachers and counselors - this was treated lightly. I was even sentenced to babysitting duty for "retarded" kids because the mothers of the wealthy/popular kids did "scoliosis" screenings and sent me off to the gym class for the physically defective along with a dozen other unpopular/geeky kids who actually had no scoliosis or physical problems (the school just needed help keeping the Downs Syndrome kids busy, methinks). My experience at MHS was that it is extremely classicist and racist -- extremely cliquey and tolerant of sexual harassment and misbehavior by the privileged twats who pay the bills. read more