17 Spring St
Portland, CT 06480

This school is in no way suited to deal with children with behavioral special needs or mental health issues. My child's behavior problems intensified after we had a meeting to "fix" his behavior as they did not keep up with their end and did not hold him to any type of standards for his behavior.

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Yes, parents must take accountabilty for kids but too many parents (everywhere) DON'T. This town is no exception; With nearly 20 years of parenting in this school system, we noticed it is not unusal for children of transplant citizens/taxpayers to have a tough entry into the school social structure of the school system. Newcomers don't have the advantage of knowing the social structure as townies do. Middle school years (like many public middle schools) were the absolute worst and administrators proved to be shockingly ineffective. As someone told friends decads ago, "Many people here send their kids here until 8th grade; then seek alternatives." 20/20 hindsight--would NOT bring children to this school system. Since administrators are beholden to BOE/community expectations, magnet and private schools are super alternatives.

My oldest child has serious mental health and behavioral concerns. When he was in 1st grade he threatened other kids in the cafeteria saying he was going to "pull the fire alarm and kill his teacher and burn down the school". Not only did they not report this incident, they covered it up! I had to call 211 to get it documented myself and they did not punish my child, or even have the guidance counselor talk to him. They also did not bother to put this in his records and blamed this on him being "off of his meds" when in fact he was on MORE medication but was having it administered at home instead since they started lying and saying his behavior was improved when he started taking them at schoolEven though this was not the case. This is NOT the district for you if your child has behavioral concerns or mental health issues

Our three children attended BIS from 2013 to 2020 and had excellent experiences. The new principal for 2021-22 is an inspiring educator and empathetic leader.