Awesome school! I feel like not many people know about this school. They start a 6 weeks all the…read moreway up to full day kindergarten

Excellent private school. Easily the best on the Main Line. The reviewer that says "it is no…read moreBaldwin" probably did not get in. The teachers are dedicated and know every student. The curriculum is challenging. Also, if you are looking at Yelp to decide where your kid should go?... shame on you.

FANTASTIC school and community with dedicated and remarkably engaging faculty. The kids at Friends…read moreCentral School (FCS) are kind and caring, humble and free of elitism! You (kids or parents) don't have to be beautiful, wealthy of wear expensive sneakers to feel valued here. And the parents are a thousand times friendlier than the ones at Gladwyne Elementary. If you read "Battle hymn of the tiger mom," Baldwin is more like the mom and FCS is more like the dad. They both end up as Ivy League professors but take different paths to get there. So, it depends what you are looking for. FCS is intentional in teaching excellent academics (just look at the list of colleges the kids attend), critical thinking, intellectual risk taking and compassion. The school uses various strategies to foster psychological and social well being and the result is that kids are not bogged down by loneliness, depression, anxiety, etc. Sports are in perspective alongside drama and music, and other co-educational activities. The curriculum integrates concepts with interesting experiences, such as going to the Rennaisance Faire as part of the social studies lesson on societal structures or examining cheek cells through microscopes for a biology lesson in cell structure. No wonder the school makes kids eager to learn and study! Our child has attended three schools and is by far the happiest at FCS. . Check it out for yourself: Friendscentral.org OPEN HOUSE Sat. Oct. 15, 2016

I used to attend this school. Meh... a lot of the teachers played favorites, the cafeteria faculty…read morewere nightmares (we'd all get in trouble over something ONE person did), most of the kids' parents are horrible people, and if you were labeled "weird" by the teachers, you were treated extremely differently by most teachers. My experience at this school was quite awful.

As a teacher who has travelled and lived in 5 continents, I have some perspective. This school,…read morefrom the ladies in the office, to the aides and most certainly the principal ...TREMENDOUS. When my niece relocated to another school I literally wanted to ...cry. Yes, most of my high school literature students think I am incapable of warm emotion but this school reminds me why I became a teacher in the first place. This school is the elementary version of SUPERMAN because EVERYONE "gets it" and does their part. Bravo!

This camp was rude, unprofessional and incredibly inappropriate. It has treated my friends and my…read moreparents horribly. As a camper, i had an okay experience. There's a pool, different "specialized camps", and plenty of opportunities to make friends. As a Jr. CIT (basically an employee that still pays ~2,000 dollars to attend the camp), it was a whole different story. A couple of friends and I were Jr. CITs for the summer of 2017 and worked under the supervision of the directors. Again, this was a camp so during lunch and such the Jr. CITs would hang around the lawn and eat some lunch. One day, my friends and I got called down to the office, and were told that we were spotted climbing the fence out of the campus and then seen climbing back in. This was an absurd accusation as neither my friends nor I had been in the vicinity of the fence. The directors would hear none of our explanation. When I was trying to explain we had done nothing wrong, I was interrupted and called a liar. (Imagine: a 50+ year old male director calling a 7th grader a liar.) However, they did take the time to let the one Caucasian girl off the hook, leaving her free to go while my friends and I (all of whom are racial minorities) to take the blame. Now other than the fact we were accused with no evidence whatsoever, with no opportunity to defend or explain, other than the fact only the racial minorities of the group seemed to be implicated, and other than the fact my friends and I were paying 2,000 dollars to attend the camp, the directors were also incredibly rude and dismissive of my parent's concerns. When my mother called about this fiasco, she was rudely brushed off, asked by one of the directors (Bill/William Darling) "What can we do about it?" in an incredibly rude manner. After calling and being ignored and having my mother's time wasted, Mr. Darling said he would issue an apology to the girls. When I came to camp the next day, the apology turned into a warning speech. We were told we were off the hook for our actions and that we should be happy. The whole speech given was incredibly condescending and obnoxious. Never was I issued an apology for a very wrong accusation, never were we explained why the minorities were the only ones implicated, never were we treated as real, paying customers (which we were) and never was my mother apologized to for the horrible way she was treated. After speaking to a few of the other paid employees, much of them felt much of the same and experienced similar interactions from the directors. I would strongly advise you not to go to this camp. The directors (the aforementioned Bill Darling and also another by the name of Kristi Kallam are extremely rude, inappropriate and not worth the time of day.

From the owner: Friends Central Summer has traditional day camps for ages 3-12. We swim twice per day with…read moreinstructional swim every morning. We offer a balance of structured activities and free play opportunities, experienced early childhood educators, cooperative rather than competitive activities, and a low staff/child ratio.

I waited a little while before doing this review so that it would come from a logical place instead…read moreof an emotional one. I try to be as fair as possible in my assessment of a business and think I can do that now without it seeming like I'm spiteful somehow. My experience was that my daughter came off the waitlist after initially being passed over in the lottery for acceptance here. After accepting and sending in the necessary forms, I believed I was waiting to be followed-up with for additional forms, but I was not. I didn't really think anything of this, because I had limited communication with the other school my daughter was accepted into - her catchment school, so I figured: par for the course. What I did not know until the day we showed up for the first day of school was that she was not enrolled. I had received no information that she was reassigned to the waitlist nor that she had been auto-rejected due supposedly to inaction on my end. I left in tears and so upset that this happened. When I immediately reached out to the administration, I was told that I needed proof that my daughter was accepted. I was in a sensitive place already and I felt it was a very accusatory way to be handled. Would I be going through this much trouble? Nonetheless, I did my due diligence after basically being told it was too late by contacting their CEO directly. My email was responded to with a brusque reply that redirected me to her enrollment staff. There was no empathy on her part whether the error was on my part or theirs. She simply didn't even ask for details, just passed me on. The enrollment staff that did contact me informed that I had not accepted properly by clicking the 'Accept' button in their Schoolmint platform. He attached a screenshot that proved nothing other than that my daughter was in the system, by the way, but that was the explanation: I hadn't clicked a button. Mind you I had sent through 3 registration documents, but somehow I hadn't accepted admittance for my daughter. I work in corporate America on my computer all day. I am a millennial who knows her way around new technology and this was what I was told. Now, let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say I did miss this step. How is this system flawed in such a way that there are no longer notifications to notify a student's status has changed? At the bare minimum, a notification that she was put back on the waitlist would have suggested to me something was off. All in all, I believe this was divine intervention. I went to the orientation and even before the acceptance ordeal my gut reaction to the environment was not great. I immediately noticed the age of the school. The bathroom had clearly not been renovated in years. The paper towel dispenser was hanging down. The space was kind of depressing. The CEO really hyped the academics at the orientation and I am sure they are great, but the rigor they require of the students is a bit troubling to me. It's like all school all the time with heavy emphasis on projects. Where is the fun? There's already no recess. I later learned, there's no gym. There was no tour offered prior to enrollment. Even the neighborhood school offered a tour. I sent my daughter sight unseen into the building her first day. Her "first day" was chaotic. The traffic surrounding the building is terrible and they have a crossing guard, but it's seriously on another level. The parking situation for school pick-up and drop-off is awful. We had to go around the corner. I also was told they would bring the children to parents, but I had to arrive to no one knowing where my child was at first. Before that even occurred the welcome in the morning from the staff was cold. They didn't even introduce themselves and the one gentleman kind of looked at me like I was bothering him by asking a question. Overall, this is feedback meant for them to look at areas to improve, and for parents, like me, who could find no new information on this school in any reviews online. I had a fellow preschool parent who raved about the school, but I personally know a former employee who essentially told me we dodged a bullet. If you look at their employee reviews on Glassdoor or Indeed the staff are unhappy and overwhelmed. Their CEO is not spoken of well at all. So, just something to keep in mind. My daughter did eventually attend school this week and she is in a brand new facility with a teacher who has a sunny disposition and emphasizes fun in learning. There's also a beautiful playground for recess.

Nice teachers, no water fountains and provides no cups for students. Allowing them to become…read moredehydrated

This is my second favorite middle school because it is in the Lower Merion School District!…read moreEven though I go to Welsh Valley, I still respect BC

I'm actually a student here, unlike the other two reviewers. It's an okay school. Most of the…read moreteachers are nice, but the kids really aren't. They are spoiled and always get what they want. They are constantly mean to one another, and I've witnessed a LOT of fights, both verbal and physical. Has a great library, and the food in the cafeteria is okay. It's a large school, so it's easy to get lost when you first start attending, but you'll get used to it. The school has a lot of sports programs and clubs. The school itself is okay, but the students are awful.