2210 Tandem Court SE
Olympia, WA 98501

Best middle school around! I’ve had multiple kids here and they’ve all had great experiences!

Lots of clubs, great school spirit, great education...they're really focusing on the mental health of the students (especially after COVID). As a parent I'm impressed.

The principal, staff, and teachers go above and beyond. Several of the staff currently or in the past had their own children attend the school. They hold fun optional group events like the Run Club which is incredibly popular and gives all the kids a chance to get outside and spend a little more time together outside of an academic setting. We feel that the PTO and the school work well together with the same objectives in mind for both. The parents are as committed as the school and that matters to us. Time and time again we have witnessed just how much the teachers care about the success of their students. = We love everything about this school and the neighborhood. It's an absolute gem!

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.