Oak Park

As a former student of this school, there are positives and negatives, as with anything in life. But in this case, the positives far outweigh the negatives in the sense that with all of my former teachers, they were eager to teach and helpful when needed. The campus is nice, modern, well funded, and the administrative staff are friendly to students. But, there are some downsides. There are numerous fights that take place here, and it really takes away from this school’s potential. As I’ve said, this school is quite frankly amazing. It has such a diverse culture that is rarely found elsewhere. With all that being said, the main points are: The teachers and helpful and eager to teach, the administration is friendly, the counselors are helpful and available, there are many fights, and the school is modern and well funded.

My two oldest kids have been here since kinder they're are now in middle school. My youngest is now in second. They live the Kurds like family.

Fix it. The school is very backwater, it's constantly setting up portables due to the influx of students from other age groups and isn't establishing long term permanent buildings. Instead, the portables are becoming more permanent than ever, and it's especially messing up the traffic going into the school and out. The only saving grace for this school is it's diverse and intelligent selection of IB and AP teachers. The students there are also very disrespectful and have no shame in throwing out slurs like their life depends on it. They maximize time and efficiency in order to get the generic majority of students out the door and headed into nothingness with their artificially boosted grades into colleges that have a far more drastic knowledge gap for students that come from this school. It feels the only way to be successful is to be an advanced course student, AP, or IB. The general culture of the school Is far too centralized and African American culture which is then fought back against by claims made by the school. Having that culture is not necessarily bad but it's far too centralized on a concept of communication that embodies slang and lack of professionality. We need more diverse arranges of culture, respect, and acceptance of the many nationalities in the school. Saying you will do something about it doesn't mean you are doing something about it. Where is all the money going? Where is it going to where you can't afford to repair busses? You can't afford to take down portables? You can't afford to give free lunch? This school has shown time and time again that it's only saving grace are the excellent teachers in the school whom can't do anything about the economic or social standing of the establishment. And the old as well as the new principal are not taking nearly enough action to prevent foul word play, respect, and hiring more counselors. On that note, the counselor to student ratio is laughable, 367 to 1 counselor? There are many issues that arise with schedule changes and drastic shift of classes. Counselors don't counsel they give you a schedule, they are almost incapable of doing their spiritual job. We need a drastic change because that's gonna be the only thing that will save this school. May god bless those who go to school and stand by those who don't consider themselves as Trojans for God has left the establishment in their entirety. Fix it.