175 Walnut Ave
Spruce Pine, NC 28777

my school is Gouge elementary Bakersville, nc Teachers seems to be wonderful, My children are doing great progress over the last year and very proud of the teachers!!! If you can bye pass a couple of the office women, They seem quite snobby!!

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This is the best school I’ve ever gone to! the teachers and everyone in the staff are extremely nice if you want southern hospitality in a school that’s what it feels like here! I’m a former student that graduated in the class of 2024 and I would recommend this school to anyone! If the rating could go higher than 5 stars I would rate it higher! Also as far as bullying they don’t tolerate bullying here they take care of it right away and sometimes the people that were bullying each other eventually become friends!

If i could give negative stars i would. A kindergartener waa left sitting in the classroom alone..missed his bus ..and of course the school is not at fault..and claims he wasnt alone. Obviously he was or they would have took him to his bus!!

Overall, I would say that I had a positive experience here, but I still feel that there is room for improvement. Would I recommend it? I think it depends on your personal priorities. If you are looking for a place with a flexible class schedule, supportive peers, and want to transfer into a UNC system college I would absolutely recommend this school. There is little to no drama, and most people graduate with their associates degree which can relieve a lot of financial burden. However, the issue I have is the emphasis this school places on rankings which seem to go above the student experience. The school often uses its high test scores and rankings to advertise to its prospective students, yet I find the actual academic opportunities to be questionable. It can sometimes be difficult to get good advice surrounding class registration, and it can be hard to find certain classes which many colleges expect students to have - specifically in STEM. If any prospective students are reading this, I want you to keep in mind that any school can select high performing students through an application process, but that does not necessarily reflect the school’s own academic priorities. Many of the local high schools offer students the same opportunity to earn an associates degree alongside more opportunities like AP courses and a wider range of clubs, but have lower scores because they do not hand pick high achieving students like this school does. I know this is a problem for a lot of schools, but there is a lot of grade inflation here as well. I feel this school has the potential to be a something really amazing for high achieving students from this area, but it needs to focus more on education quality and extracurricular opportunities to help better prepare students for college. The principal is very supportive of students’ academic success when it comes down to it, but I wish she was more open to the inputs from students when it comes to stuff like this.