1636 Bowman Avenue NW
Olympia, WA 98502

Extremely woke , anything other than leftist thinking will bot be tolerated

It is very misleading to read poor scores and reviews at this school. Garfield is an amazing school. The kids get to do specialist in art, music, library and PE. every week. The specialist are an enriching wonderful part of their day and my kids find so much enrichment and joy in their experience with the specialists who clearly care and give all they have to the students. The staff are very responsive and involved in the care and well being of all the children. The principal is out regularly before and after school checking to make sure he knows the children's name and checks on their well being. I have spoken with many parents with kids at garfield and the feeling is similar with experience of appreciation and feeling fortunate to be at Garfield.

Overall, the worst school for my child. Principal and vice principal are bullies. When they leave messages for you, they can't even be bothered to pick up the phone, they just tell at the speaker phone. It is quite unnerving. They do not consider that a child may have had a hard life, or be going thru difficulties. Sit down, shut up, and don't ask questions works well at this school.

My daughter has been attending ORLA for her sophomore year. She feels the environment is fun, engaged, positive and honoring of various learning styles and needs. While we wish it were more ethnically and culturally diverse, we do appreciate the neurodiversity, gender diversity (not just girl/boy), and socioeconomic diversity. This is an interesting blend of alternative school, home school and traditional public school. I love the mission, really addresses a need in the community where kids might otherwise “fall through the cracks”. The class offerings are a good mix of core classes and fun electives like yearbook/media production, pottery, and theater. We have seen our daughter thriving academically and the monthly progress accountability checks seem to help. She is a self-motivated learner and I do wonder how kids who are not self-starters are able to keep up with assignments as it does seem like there may be some wasted instructional time while the class “goofs off” (social time?) and there ends up being a lot of homework time needed at home as a result. But that might not be the case for all kids - mine tends to get caught up in having fun with friends. To be honest, this is tipping the scales for my kiddo in a direction she needed after missing out socially during the pandemic and following years. Overall we are quite happy with our experience here and wish we could have enrolled her earlier and lived closer so we could be more involved in the school community.