1811 Abbey Oak Dr
Vienna, VA 22182

I go to Kilmer Middle School and my teachers are extremely supportive!

This school has a lot of money and resources. It is also an International Baccalaureate school so there is a lot of focus (and celebration of its IB program). However, this school has a pretty toxic and elitist culture where it seems like the overall goal is to make school as unpleasant and unwelcoming as possible. Students are pretty much numbers here and while there are demanding academic standards, god forbid your student has other interests and just wants to graduate from high school and move on. Counselors & administrators push your students to enroll in honors and IB courses then are surprised when your student hates the classes. There is a lot of helicoptering by staff and teachers and yes, they dot the i's and cross the t's in their communications to parents but with the weapon detectors, supposedly 3 bathroom passes if teachers actually grant them during class, staff are aiming to create a school environment that is as close to a correctional facility as possible or at least as unwelcoming and unpleasant for students as possible. If you raise concerns, suddenly you are labeled antisafety. Few counselors really care about helping students and if they have a disability or special need, you're pretty much on your own as they expect you to be like most families there with the financial resources to help them yourself and make up for the school's apathy and gaps. There are the same robotic messages from the Principal about how the school cares and supposedly, there is support available when there are traumatic events. Compared to other high schools in the area, the athletic teams are terrible, mostly due to the apathetic or outright awful coaches (except for track or football). Even my academically focused child who did extremely well in classes (i.e., Adv. IB diploma, top 1% SAT score) hated this place. Like many of his friends, college is fairly easy because there was so much work and testing during high school. While staff (and parents) may value a strong academic program, it would be nice if teenagers could actually also enjoy their high school years with a curriculum with enough rigor that they can move on to college and be challenged - some balance maybe? You'll hear a lot about inclusivity and kindness but you'll see little of the touted "kindness" from staff and admin. The only really "haters" and bullies at the school are a majority of the staff and administrators. Really they only want you to donate time and money and leave them alone.

I'm writing this in the hopes that it provides others with a more nuanced snapshot of one family's recent experience with the school, as most who fill out these forms are either extremely positive or extremely negative. As context, I had two children go through Wolftrap a few years apart, finishing recently. Overall, we had a positive experience and would recommend the school. Huge pluses for us included: *** the amazing levels of parent involvement; truly, the PTA is full of rockstar parents who spend enormous amounts of time and energy creating tons of fun events that really build community, and the teachers get SO MUCH community support*** the staff focus on always doing better; when the school learned that something like 97% of the students met or exceeded the state standards as determined by testing scores, they met to discuss how to get that last 3 percent there, tooThat said, no place is perfect and that was also our experience at Wolftrap. Our major concern with the school was that quiet, well-behaved kids slip through the cracks when they have issues. Both of my children are quiet and generally well-behaved, but both had issues crop up that totally flew under the radar of the staff. One child is extremely gifted in one core subject but they are peer-level in another core subject (which is ok! peer level is ok!)... this meant that my child was not in full-time Advanced Academic Program (AAP) but was also not being challenged in the core subject in which they are extremely gifted. The school eventually agreed to pull my child out for the top level of AAP (Level IV) for the core subject that they are extremely gifted in while keeping them in regular classes for other subjects, but had I not fought for it, I am 100% certain that my child would have slipped through the cracks and not been appropriately challenged. My other child is what the district calls "Twice Exceptional" (2E), which means that they are very smart but also have a disability (such as ADHD, autism, physical disability, etc). My child struggled with their ADHD and completing their work, but did not get the support that they needed because they were not disrupting the class, bullying others, etc. In the end, would another school have actually noticed these issues on their own? As a parent, I'm not really sure. The classrooms are full of a variety of kids and the reality is that if you don't advocate for them, they might not get what they need, wherever that is.