Our LS interview at GDS was really bad. The interviewer seemed really disinterested throughout, didn't pre-read anything about our kids, was just going through the motions. It was such a different vibe than what we had expected from the school and turned us off completely.

At a Waldorf school, a teacher at an Open House asked my child to leave the room so they could describe the philosophy.

It wasn't so much that the philosophy was a certain way, it was that they had a mission and a plan and it was supposed to be kept secret from the children.

My kid was pretty rigid at the time (we were testing him for what was then called Asperger's/HFA) and there were some open-ended developmental rules and concepts (play was with natural objects instead of plastic, snacks were grown right there on campus...) but that clothes with stripes or dots were OK but clothes with letters or words were not.

It was not a uniform, but I thought we have so many rituals already, applying another layer of "if/then" statements to a shirt could make me go nuts and would result in my 7 a.m. battles over tee-shirts.

*Caveat: This is not a dig against Waldorf, it was the the presentation of the structure that made it seem mysterious and hard to manage. I was also really tried and stressed at the time.

Ultimately, my kid looked at the art work and said, "I can't do that. I am better at ______" and we parted ways.

Anonymous wrote:Entered a third grade classroom on a tour and noted the wall clock was stopped by five hours. I thought it showed a lack of care on the teachers part to leave it stopped and she missed opportunities to teach kids how to read a standard clock.

You know those clocks usually run on batteries and it’s entirely possible that it had stopped overnight, the teacher put in a maintenance request that morning and it just hadn’t been fixed yet. Sounds like the school avoided a crazy parent though.

Entered a third grade classroom on a tour and noted the wall clock was stopped by five hours. I thought it showed a lack of care on the teachers part to leave it stopped and she missed opportunities to teach kids how to read a standard clock.

During a tour, saw a teacher working on some papers right in the middle of class time. Asked her if she was marking papers or making new papers for students. Answer was that she was doing “administrative paperwork”. Made me feel either there is too much administrative overhead or that the particular teacher had lost her focus on teaching the kids - neither of which were happy places to be.

This is why visiting the schools is so important. Your kids will get a good education at any of them, but there really is such a thing as "fit."

Terrible tour at one school. Guide kept running into things and knew very little about things that admissions knew were very important for our child.

Sidwell. Great school and we have many friends with kids there who love it and are happy. Unfortunately, during our Zoom information session, a few of the 5th or 6th graders that presented (and were great - all of them were intelligent, well spoken, absolutely lovely) noted how their teacher(s) helped when they were feeling anxious. The fact those children referred to feeling anxious at all during that type of presentation worried me. I felt it wouldn't be a good fit for our child.

We were proudly told during the tour that there is no official "snack time" during PreK and K, that kids just are free to go help themselves whenever they want during class work time. I like flexibility, but this was too unstructured for us. Same school also told us that Prek-5th grade all have recess together, though the younger kids are often are intimidated and stick close to the teachers. This was a big concern for us, the overall vibe was far more Lord of the Flies" than we were comfortable with. (And same school later had HUGE issues arising out of an older child abusing younger kids at the poorly supervised mixed age recess).

Head of admissions took us on a private tour because their tour days conflicted with other school tour days that we'd already committed to. We really wanted to see this school and we were happy that he made this exception for us.

We weren't impressed with random student interactions with both each other and with the admissions head during our tour. When we reached the newly re-done football field with fancy new upgrades/updates we were informed that the school hired a contractor that didn't catch a huge sinkhole under the field and that it all had to be torn up and redone which would disrupt the football season. They also forgot to budget for LIGHTS so even if the sinkhole situation didn't happen, there would be no "Friday Night Lights".

We didn't even submit an application.

Anonymous wrote:Local girls school in MoCo

Student tour guide was, frankly, sort of a B and talked to us with outright disdain

Head of admissions kept getting my kids’ names wrong (they are pretty typical names)

Obviously ended up at another school

Holy Child or Stone Ridge?

My daughter didn't have a great shadow day buddy at GDS. She still was okay about the school, but noted that the kid soured it for her a bit.

At St. Patricks, her buddy was so terrible that she told me she didn't want to consider the school. When I mentioned it to the school, they offered to have her come visit again with someone else, but the first visit was so bad that my daughter didn't even want to try again. The girl was unfriendly and seemed like she hated the school and didn't want to be there. I was surprised they would pick a kid like that for a buddy.

GDS tour in K the kids eat when seated on the floor. That want too bad but they let all the kids go on break and leave all the markers without their caps on and not cleaned up. It sort of made me feel that I was going to have an uphill battle at home if everything was so messy at the school. We ended up elsewhere.

Sidwell. Student tour guide was competent but truly not friendly. Student zoom meeting for info session was all about the senior student speaker and her accomplishments. Nothing about the stated values of the school. It was rather gross.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We’ve lived in 2 cities and looked at many schools over the years. Highlights from 3 schools we withdrew applications from:

(1) HOS tried joking with teachers and students, and was met with nothing but disdain; it was painfully obvious he was not liked by anyone. I’d already felt uncomfortable so this just magnified the feeling. There were other minor issues, but the poor staff interactions really clinched it.

(2) Shadow day went poorly.

(3) DH & I saw an aide speak sharply to and manhandle a student by grabbing them roughly by the shoulders and pushing them into place. We were alone in a hallway waiting for our meeting with the HOS when we witnessed this. And, yes, we reported all that we saw.

What is HOS

Head of School