KTS

[Anonymous]

Anyone of have a child at Katherine Thomas School (lower school). If so, what is it like? How many kids in the class? what kind of curriculum? etc. etc. thanks

[Anonymous]

We attended KTS for three years, pre-K through 1. Our need was in the areas of social cognition and language pragmatics. KTS also provided OT, which we didn't realize we needed until we got it and saw the benefits.

Classes were small -- our child was in a pre-K with 8 kids, a K-2 with six kids, then a K-1 with 7 kids.

Curriculum focuses on language issues, some learning challenges, speech, social thinking. In the younger grades there were more kids who needed help on the social thinking side; as the grades get higher you run into more kids with specific learning disabilities and also some purely physical challenges. Some classes had a few kids showing pretty significant autism challenges, but they tended to move on to autism programs in other schools if their challenges were more than KTS could help with.

KTS puts a lot of thought into building class groupings where the peers can help each other. They try to make sure that every peer in a room can learn something from every other peer. Their judgments aren't 100% but they're high enough so that each year we were there, our child had peers they benefited from being grouped with.

KTS is a good choice if you want to really load up your child with helpful therapies at an early age. We had some misgivings about being grouped with kids with greater challenges than ours, but the benefits of the support of so many professional adults outweighed the concern. At the point where the balance tipped in the negative direction for us, we moved on.

We think the world of KTS. Our child is at a mainstream school now performing very well. We know that this is in large part because of the intensive help KTS was able to give.

The only negative thing I would say about KTS isn't really about KTS, but about perceptions of it. We found when applying to other schools later that it was assumed our child's challenges were greater than they were because of the KTS background, even though our child's academic strengths were otherwise quite apparent. But we eventually overcame that with a good school placement and we do not regret a minute of our time at KTS. Quite the opposite; we are quite grateful to them and would recommend KTS to any family looking for help with language pragmatics and social thinking.

[Anonymous]

Following up my own post -- we even found that some education consultants were more negative about KTS than warranted. This in no way shakes our view that KTS was a fine and helpful school, but we have taken as a caveat of the currency of knowledge of some local consultants.

A few other observations about KTS;

student-teacher ratio extremely low, in some early grades there were almost as many adults in the room as teachers.

The kids were happy --- the school did an amazing job getting socially challenged kids to relate to each other and to feel secure and stimulated in their school experience.

They have also continued to further the specials they offer -- last year they put on a very nice school musical. It was a really ambitious project but they pulled it off.

[Anonymous]

Whoops, typo, meant to write "almost as many adults in the room as kids."

[Anonymous]

KTS parent -- I'd love to talk to you more about your experience off list, as I'm considering this school for my child. Frankly, I have not been able to find many (or any) parents who say good things about the school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:KTS parent -- I'd love to talk to you more about your experience off list, as I'm considering this school for my child. Frankly, I have not been able to find many (or any) parents who say good things about the school.

I'm generally reluctant to provide contact info through a public forum. However, when we looked into KTS we asked to speak with other parents who had had kids there, they lined us up with some, and I would recommend you make the same request. As it happens, we have also told them that we are willing to act as points of contact/references for prospective parents, so it may be that if you ask them for parent contact resources, they may actually direct you to us anyway. In any case I would encourage you to ask KTS to arrange for you to speak to parents who have sent kids there and have had positive experiences. I'm sorry that I don't give contact info out through this forum but I'm hopeful that if you ask KTS for a reference I may be able to help you anyway. Good luck!