I'm a highschool student at Valor. I've been to this school since the beginning and the negligence regarding the mental health of students is appalling. This school is incredible homophobic, transphobic, and it also has been very unprofessional in several interactions.
Firstly, there's the issue of the lack of teaching degrees. None of the high school or middle school teachers have teaching degrees, instead they have a degree in the subject they're teaching. At least, most of the time. I've been in several classes where the teacher has no degree pertaining to the subject, they are just decently knowledgeable about it. And I'm not talking about electives. I'm talking about science classes and math classes and even English classes. While some teachers do a great job of teaching the material, I believe that my education is still suffering because several of my classes are being taught by a teacher, that despite numerous complaints, has changed nothing about their teaching style. I do not believe that this teacher should be teaching, and I'll explain further. This teacher will be referred to at teacher A.
Secondly, I had a friend competing in a school sanctioned activity that required them to be gone for weekends, including missing that Friday. There was a project due on the next Monday, and according to the school handbook, they were to be given an extra 48 hours to complete it. This should've been given without question, and without even needing to ask. However my friend had to have a meeting with her mother and teacher A, practically begging him for the extension she should've been given. When this issue was brought up with faculty later, the response given was "well yes but you got the extension right? So it doesn't matter." Except that had my friend not already been aware of the rule, and had she and her mother not fought for that extension, she would've just been stuck.
Thirdly, in a class with teacher A, what I believe to be a very inappropriate conversation occured. In a science class with this teacher, we started talking about divorce, and why it's apparently the worst thing someone could possibly do to their family. There were students with divorced parents in that classroom, and students with step parents. Our teacher talked to us for 2 days about how 99% of step parents are terrible, and that if you absolutely have to get divorced, the worst thing you can do is get remarried. Not only do I think this is an incredibly inappropriate conversation (if you can even call it that) to have with students in general, to have it in a completely unrelated science class doesn't make sense and isn't ok.
Fourthly, the lack of mental support is appalling. When an entire class got together to tell teacher A that the amount of homework they were giving was unreasonable (over an hour every night combined with classwork) and that we couldn't do all of their homework along with the homework of our other classes, their exact words to us were "just work harder". I was on the edge of a breakdown and that almost pushed me over the edge. I went home that night and cried because of how overwhelmed I was. Over the years at Valor, I have heard some variation of "just work harder" from several teachers, and I have only been offered support once, by a lovely teacher who unfortunately, no longer works at the school (they weren't fired, they moved out of state). There is no school counselor or any mental health support, and between that and the high expectations, it is incredibly hard to healthily succeed.
There are more things I could mention here, including plenty of anti-mask and homophobic/transphobic remarks, but I think you get the gist. I am counting down the days until I get out of here, and I hope that no one sends their child to this school. Please, find somewhere else. read more