My child went here. There are some happy memories, and some decidedly very unhappy ones. I have to give more than one star, because some of the teachers here are dedicated to their jobs, and they are good teachers and decent human beings. I pity them, because they are in the company of some others who are cynical, burned out, going through the motions, and heavy handed in dealing with the children. If you're not happy teaching, choose another profession, and don't inflict yourself on innocent little ones. My child used to love going to the school until entering the class of one teacher, who turned going to school into an ordeal for many of the students. If this is the crystallization of what a teacher achieves -- making children hate school -- then they are a failure and they need to look for a different line of work. This school needs to move such teachers out the door -- and in our experience, it doesn't.
The school held lots of meetings with parents about policy changes. Whenever they went about changing the dress code, the attendance schedule, etc., they'd go through the motions of seeking input from the parents. In retrospect, in my perception, whatever decisions this school's administrator(s) had come to were inevitably actualized, making the meetings a mere pretense, a hoop the school had to jump through so it could check off the box that it had held such meetings.
I had better things to do with my time than attend "input meetings" that I don't believe ever really respected or wanted my input.
The school leans hard Left, getting the littles ones initiated in the "Diversity Agenda," the "Social Justice Agenda," equity training, etc. If there are different facets for some of these issues, you'd never know it from the messaging posted on the hallways, fencing and bulletin boards. This propagandizing, presented as "The Truth," sits comfortably in the perches provided by Alexandria and similarly "progressive" cities across the country. Some of the instruction provided was "Good Touch, Bad Touch" training, which was promptly actualized when my child -- who resembles nothing so much as a Teletubby -- tugged on another child's clothing. This resulted in accusations, hysteria, denunciations, outrage, phone calls, meetings, and lots of similarly horrifying tumult. When this ordeal first began, I came running, to find my child had been ejected into a hallway and was sitting there alone, sobbing, devastated, thoroughly traumatized. Aside from the teacher, who certainly handled this situation idiotically, the school office staff, which had known my child even as a toddler, did little to nothing to intervene and stop what was happening. In the midst of it all, seven words kept coming into my mind: "This is some kind of political theater." It did not matter that we all knew we were witnessing and participating in foolishness; despite the school's advertised maxims about altruism and fairness, the machinery grinding up my innocent child had to be allowed to run its course.
I was thoroughly appalled. And I was further appalled that there was no shame in them for doing this.
Such things happen in a lifetime, and you deal with them as best you're able, and then move on. But you don't forget. The other actors in such events forget them, but you don't. And neither does your child. read more
