Small High School Culture?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How much of a social life that is tied to school does your kid need? We have gone through this and it can be tricky because if the school is too small and your kid does not mesh well with the other kids, they end up isolated and miserable and this could lead to other problems. This happened with our kid. It was unfortunate because academically, the school was the right fit and they were thriving. But the social piece was a disaster and this undid all the good. I think if our kid had already had well-developed outside interests/extracurriculars that provided
the social connections, it may have ended differently.

Our kid was at Barrie and ended up isolated and miserable socially. Academics weren’t anything to write home about either. It seemed like a good choice at the time but the small environment turned out to be really limiting to social development and actually caused some harm in the end. We also found the school to be apathetic about the whole thing until we left and then they acted surprised (even after multiple conversations with members of the administration). We generally don’t recommend the school to those that ask (but we only had experience in the upper school). I think the day care stuff (which is more than half of the enrollment) is fine. As kids get older it just gets so small that new kids can’t really find a place.