103 Gilsum Rd, Sullivan, NH 03445

My daughter started as a kindergartner this fall and is doing so well here, we love Surry Village! Her teachers, Miss Jenny and Miss Jan, are so sweet and have really helped her feel right at home! There are a lot of special programs and enrichment activities - art, PE with a teacher from the YMCA, and now Miss Danielle from MoCo Arts working on a play with the kiddos once a week. They have gone on a variety of fun field trips - Distant Hill Garden, Stonewall Farm, the Keene library, and the Colonial Theatre to name a few. I am very impressed with how my daughter is quickly picking up sight words and reading! There is a nice, supportive, community feel to the school and plenty of opportunities to get involved with school activities and events as a parent.

The lack of demographic information about the success of low-income and disabled students is very telling. As someone from both of these communities, my experience at Gilsum Elementary (before it was a STEAM academy) was repressive and invalidating. In 1st grade I was being evaluated for autism and receiving 1:1 time with the counselor, but when she moved and they hired a new counselor, this was brought to a halt, because she “didn’t want to.” Despite being bullied for a variety of manifestations of my income and learning differences throughout my time at Gilsum (and Sullivan, per the school system at the time) it was quite literally never addressed. Whenever I brought it up I was told it was “just a misunderstanding,” and several times I even got in trouble for standing up for myself. The curriculum was often mind-numbingly boring for me because I was very book smart. However, I almost never completed homework due to my home life and executive dysfunction. This red flag was ignored, and a teachers aid who followed my class for several years consistently bullied me for being so far ahead of the class and my lack of social skills. My younger sister and I were very much failed by this school system. I’m sure many of the teachers are different by now, so I will leave my poor experiences with them out. I did have several wonderful teachers, and my younger sister and older brother thoroughly enjoyed having Adrienne Noel (current principal) as a teacher (I never had her). Because the very biased counselor I dealt with has left, I will leave you by pointing out that the number of kids per counselor is double the state average. At-risk kids will continue to get left behind until this is resolved.