5834 Balsam Rd
Madison, WI 53711

Coming from a junior at Memorial, This school is heavily restricted and pure learning-focused. This school treats us like we are five year olds. Only clean music, no free time, and no games unless it says “EDUCATION” in big bold letters and is recommended by at least 500 moms on Facebook. This place also loves to suck every penny out of you, by putting unnecessary charges on your school bill and lunch bill, and making lunches equivalent to the price of a bag of chips and soda at Disneyland, with the quality of the garbage juice slurry at the bottom of your trash can. , Would not recommend this school if you want your child to have a fun experience here.

The principal is dismissive of parental concerns. There seem to be no consequences for children behaving badly, and even violent children are allowed to stay in the classroom jeopardizing the learning and safety of the other pupils. The teaching staff are very nice, but are ineffective at teaching due to the administration and the rules they have to follow.

The school is total Chaos. I've stopped in on numerous occasions to see dozens of 1st, 2nd, 3rd grade kids milling around in the hallways unsupervised. I've seen fights break out with no adult to stop them, kids jumping off of furniture, throwing hard objects. The problem is there's a few very poor neighborhoods nearby, so there are a lot of disadvantaged kids. Which is fine... but the school administration refuses to staff for that. After numerous complaints, meetings will all levels of the administration and a community petition signed by dozens of parents they finally hired 1, part time person. That's it. The problems persist, there is little to no communication with the families and it's only a matter of time before a child is seriously injured here. The principle is completely clueless and doesn't even seem to think unsupervised 7yr olds is a bad thing.