1 Ames
brookline, NH 03033

Great school, teachers, and parent participation. New principal is great and has shown she is a team player.

A few of the teachers are standouts in this school, but thats where the good news ends.The school pretends it can support 504 plans, but it does not and in fact while the principal will assert they can fully support 504 the most recent budget votes in the town meeting highlighted that it does not actually have enough resources nor will the budget allow for it.Additionally this school is rife with bullying - sexual comments, threats of rape (yes amongst 11/12 year olds), racist slurs, and so on and every case is swept under the table. If you can persuade the school to investigate, they won't find anything. Appeals are managed by the same person so they go nowhere.In speaking to many families, they've moved, sought private education, and so on to get their kids a safe learning environment.I am disappointed as i moved to this town for the "great schools" only to realize this rating is outdated and at best the schools are average, at worst they;re downright dangerous for your kids mental health

As a parent, I cannot recommend this school.Our experience has been that student and parent concerns are too often dismissed rather than addressed. When concerns are raised, the response frequently feels defensive and adversarial rather than collaborative. Parent-teacher meetings that should be focused on helping students succeed can instead leave families feeling blamed, intimidated, and unheard.One of the most troubling aspects of our experience was learning that members of the school community had characterized my son to other students as "trouble." Whether intentional or not, this type of labeling can have a lasting impact on a student's reputation, confidence, and relationships with peers and staff. Students should be supported, mentored, and encouraged to grow—not defined by negative labels.These concerns extend beyond academics. In athletics, we observed behavior from a football coach that we believed was inappropriate and demeaning toward student-athletes during practices, games, and in the locker room. When concerns were raised, we felt that school leadership and the athletic department were more interested in defending the teachers/coaches than in objectively evaluating the concerns raised.Over time, this created the impression that teachers, coaches, and administrators are rarely held accountable, while students and parents are left feeling powerless. Vulnerable students who need support and advocacy may instead feel ignored or dismissed.A school should teach more than academics. It should model respect, integrity, accountability, and good character. Unfortunately, our family's experience was that these values were not consistently reflected in the school's culture.While there are a very small percentage of dedicated teachers and staff members at HBHS, the overall environment left our family feeling unsupported and discouraged. I would encourage parents to carefully evaluate whether this is the right environment for their child, particularly if they expect school leadership to take student and parent concerns seriously.Based on our experience, I would not recommend this school.

We transferred in to the district before the start of eighth grade and were not notified until the end of the school year that a more advanced math track was available. The school counselor simply ignore an email request about this, then after follow-up got snide. Based on our experience we couldn't recommend guidance as a good part of the school experience here, though there are many other good things about the school. Another poor area is teacher communication to parents and students. The teachers in our student's classes were spotty in their attention to grading and posting grades, with the result that sometimes assignment and homework grades would lag for months and show as Fs on period summary emails. Even heading into the final week of school we didn't have an accurate representation of our son's grades. Despite all that the school is a fun place for kids, with a climbing wall in the gym, well-conducted field trips, and an actually decent music program. Physical education is unfortunately mostly an afterthought, but that's true of most American public schools.