185 James Loop
Waynesville, NC 28786

This school provides a good experience for diverse learning abilities. The principal is excellent and award winning, and is accessible, available, and takes an interest in each child. Teachers vary in teaching style, but our experience in Kindergarten, First, and Third grades has been excellent. The administrators, counselor, new school psychologist, and teachers are available to meets needs for children with different abilities. There are some truly amazing teachers that have a heart for learning and meeting each child where they are in development. To address some previous reviews, this is a public school so they cannot select one demographic over another. Our experience with Kindergarten was a welcoming class that made the curriculum accessible for children with no preschool or learning background, so I must strongly disagree with two of the other reviews here. I am a parent unaffiliated with any teachers or administrators at Junaluska Elementary. Every experience will vary based on grade, child's learning ability, and teacher, but this school has for the most part been excellent for early primary education.

This was the worst experience of my life. This school and it's teachers failed me my senior year and didn't care. In my final parent teacher conference before I was forced to drop out my parents realized how truly awful, disrespectful, and abusive these teachers were. The principal didn't even bother to show up for this conference and sent an assistant principal who was in training. I had to seek help from previous teachers to make it halfway through my senior year and had other staff members who vouched that I did everything within my power to seek additional help and the only response from the teacher was "you aren't worth helping." That was my final straw, I dropped out, obtained my GED in two weeks and never looked back. Leaving this school was the best decision I've ever made.

Teachers are very good. The only drawback is the kids have to ride Tuscola High School bus...so have to get on bus around 7 in the morning and don't get home until around 4 in the afternoon. The route our kids are on can't seem to keep a good bus driver. Since it snowed, bus won't even come to regular pickup "due to icy roads" even though there has not been any ice on the road for a week now. We are taking our kids out of school and will home-school or virtual school them instead :-(Also if you have a question about the bus you have to contact Tuscola for info. Why doesn't WMS have their own buses...there are like 5-6 in the parking lot?!?