10 #A
Sentinel, CT 07928

Flawed ratings. Too many kids end up in private school in Chatham and for many it's a direct result of the high school's culture. Tutors are very popular, sports have so much parent influence it's laughable. If you are the right family, with the right amount of money and popularity, it's great, otherwise good luck.

A constant battle. Frustrating and ultimately just a tragedy

Stressful environment for a child who has learning difficulties, child needs not to only deal with academic challenges but social and emotional anxiety due to the stressful social environment that surrounds them from children to adults! Although the teachers tries hard, but the regulation and the executive staffs are stressful to deal with making it hard. If you are not on the honor list, be prepare for a rough road ahead.

I have had 2 kids go through this school. Every teacher has been excellent. However, our experience with the school was generally poor. Class sizes are large (ie 24 kids in a single teacher taught Kindergarten class, even more in later grades), and appear to be much larger than neighboring districts. Every year, my kids had multiple seriously disruptive kids in their class. Sometimes the kids had a shared aide who tried to handle them, sometimes they didn't and the single teacher was left to handle the chaos, which often resulted in the teacher focusing on disciplining the misbehaving kids instead of actually teaching the class. My kids would regale me nightly with tales of their outrageously behaved classmates, who apparently have just as much of a right to be in class disrupting the class as my kids have a right to learn. I would have appreciated smaller class sizes and a more robust special ed program to deal with kids with major behavioral issues.