South Suburban Montessori

Our family has had one child at the school since kinder and one since the toddler room. The younger grade teachers are excellent. We personally loved that music and Spanish are included from younger ages.The teachers/curriculum until about 3rd grade are ok. Most teachers are able to provide differentiation for more accelerated students or some support for students that are struggling. The school does not have the capability to help students that are really behind/struggling.The Upper Elementary program needs attention. During the time our children have been at the school there have been at least 3 total turnovers in the Upper El teaching staff. The current Upper El staff includes one teacher who is only 1/2 of the day in the classroom. There are two full time Upper El teachers. One of these teachers is an experienced teacher without a Montessori background. The other Upper El teacher only has experience with preK students and she doesn't seem to have much compassion towards older or more outspoken students. During the past year, multiple students have expressed their distrust of this teacher. They have been bullied, yelled at and picked on by this second teacher. There is also a real lack of concern about covering when teachers are out. Our older child noted that his advisories were canceled if teachers were out and lessons were often skipped for a week. Over the course of four months of school, this resulted in 4 weeks of our child not having a lesson which is basically missing a month of learning. Academically, the math program leaves a great deal to be desired. From one year to the next year, one student dropped from the 70th percentile to the 10th, a friend dropped from 95th percentile to 70th and another student dropped from 75th to 50th. The school did not believe that this indicated any issue with its math curriculum or teaching.The head of school is an ineffective leader which has only gotten worse over the past 6 years. Issues that are brought to the attention of the head of school such as student to student bullying, including physical abuse and issues with unprofessional teaching behavior are ignored. SSMS has been asked for over 5 years to develop an anti-bullying curriculum and has not done so. This year started with 38 students in Upper El, 2 left mid year and at least 12 (possibly more) are not returning in the fall.As a parent, my greatest failing is that we didn't leave the school sooner.

Our son needed more help than the your typical kid and we were clear about the needs. It turns out they weren’t able to provide that help, which is fine. The issues were; The teachers very rarely return emails or calls. For $9000 a year I thought I would get communications back, nope. The only thing this teacher did was take recess away, yell and tell us our son needed more help in the parking lot at pickup or every 3 months at a teacher meeting. So, we start the ETR process toward the end of the year after 6 months of this teacher saying our son is failing in every way, has special needs and he won’t be taken back next year. These teachers and principal sits in the ETR meeting and says our son is fine, he just needs typical help. We were shocked! After the tears of frustration, we start another school…a good school. Well it turns out the new school felt he needed more help too. The new principal basically said, well the old school must have been lying. He is in a better school now getting the help he needs, but we lost a year getting him that help thanks to SSM. When you find a school that is supposed to help kids do this, I just had to warn others.

We are new to the school this year, and my middle school student was in a great school prior to enrolling; so, changing schools was in order, but we have no regret! The curriculum is academically challenging, and well suited for middle school. The learning environment is fabulous! The teachers more than dedicated to student growth, and I really can't say enough positive about the good effect, and development I have witnessed. Also, new to Montessori, but not motivated, student led learning, and find it an excellent method for maturing students and fostering a love to learn! Earlier reviews may not have been well-rounded.

Fine if you are looking for preschool. Otherwise, it seems this school attracts problem behavior children or children who have troubles learning. When my son transferred back to a regular school, he had troubles keeping up because he had no organization skills and the curriculum at South Suburban catered to lower performing students. Administrators seem to bury their heads in the sand over academics and prefer to take in anyone that can pay a tuition.

This school is great as a preschool but is really lacking once you start at the elementary years. Not only do the academics start to fall by the wayside but it is often disorganized and not following the Montessori approach like the preschool years. In addition, the school has a rotating student body with many children who attend just for a year or two and then move onto another school setting, making it a disruptive environment for the families who try to build a cohesive school body. Many children who come in these later years tend to have learning issues or behavioral problems which caused them to fail in their original school setting. Many seem as if they are trying to avoid an IEP classification. However,as this Montessori school is so small and does not have the facilities to help these children in the proper way, all the children at the school are negatively affected (including these new children who may need extra behavioral and academic remediation).