McDowell Plan in Villages at Edinburgh by Eastwood Homes
Chesapeake, VA 23322

Coming from a student here, the administration is absolutely horrible. Don’t let these reviews from parents fool you. The teacher’s here are extremely sensitive. Other day ask my teacher for an extra paper to write my rough draft on and he took it like a just screamed a bunch of hateful comments toward him. Completely awful school, though the Physical Education classes are great, amazing teaches upon PE. Backtracking on the Administration. They don’t go into full investigation. They get a couple words from a couple students and call that a full “investigation.” They really be handing out suspensions whenever they want to. Over her at hickory, If you forget your badge for 5 days out of the entire school year. You get a full day of In School Suspension! Administration never get actual witnesses, they just get kids who say they were “there” but only got told by a friend who was there. In conclusion this school is awful and is being ran by horrible administrators. The ratio from kids who like this school and kids who don’t would be sensational

The school does not have an inclusive philosophy for children with developmental or intellectual delays. They still use self-contained classrooms as the primary placement. Southeastern happened to be our school district, but many of my daughter’s classmates were bussed in from other schools to attend the self-contained class, further separating those students from their peers by not only being in a separate class but also a different school. My daughter was not challenged in this setting, she was not exposed to the same curriculum as her Gen. Ed. peers, even after I obtained the Gen Ed materials from other parents and videoed her doing the work. We eventually pulled her and placed her in a private school where she is 100% included. While the VA DOE does have a published guidebook for inclusion, this school does not follow it. They have not implemented the practices discussed in the guide book such as a written inclusion policy, development of an inclusion advisory team, or universal design learning. I gave this school 2 stars rather than 1 because I believe the teachers did indeed care about my daughter but were not supported by the policies in place, lack of 1:1 aides, and training on inclusive practices. I blame the admin and district rather than the individual teachers.

Overall, I would say that my experience at Hickory High School has been very poor. I feel that this is mostly due to the faculty and administration. Every year, they crack down harder and harder on simple things, such as phones in the hallway, but ignore larger issues, such as teachers treating students unfairly. There have even been several reports of an assistant principle acting incredibly inappropriately with students in a sexual manner at school functions such as the ring dance and assemblies. I have had several friends complain to me about teachers not letting them have water bottles on their desk, giving an unreasonable amount of work in a short amount of time, etc... Granted, not every one here is bad. A good number of faculty like the guidance counselors always seem happy to see students and willing to help, bu unfortunately, most of the upper admin, I would say, has been unreasonable to say the least. There are limitations to the bathrooms, and that's assuming they are open to begin with. There are 4 boys' bathrooms in the school, and most of the time, 3 of them are closed with the last being watched at all times. The food is absolutely disgusting, and there are rumors that a few students got food poisoning from spoiled milk that the school sells with lunch. If you look into the ceiling, you can see the ventilation is covered in thick dust, which can be problematic for some students with breathing disabilities. Students are required to attend an advisory class to teach them about bullying and help them to make new friends. This itself is not an issue, however almost every student, and most teachers, have complained that nobody, student or teacher, wants to be there, and that it's not working and that they should stop. However, faculty seemingly either never listened or never cared.