1949 Eulas
Mill Creek, TN 37135

This school has a discipline problem. My child routinely comes home telling me about children who are acting out and nothing is done to punish their behavior. She's in 4th grade and says it's distracting to her but nothing is done to punish the student. We are car riders and we never see the administrators outside at drop off or pick-up. My daughter says she never sees them around the building either. I have children at Woodland Middle and Ravenwood and it's a much different situation. I hope that the administration at Sunset starts to handle these behaviors and become more involved, vs. just wait to pass these kids off to the next school.

I did not like this school very much. Many of the teachers were mean, strict, and picked favorites. Most of the students at Sunset Middle were very rude and mean, but did not receive proper punishment. Instead I would see other kids, who haven’t done anything as bad, get punished. There is a lot of injustice and rudeness in this school. I am very grateful for the few real friends I made here and I’m grateful for those few teachers that were good to me and actually helped me learn. I hope next year those teachers stay and the school becomes as good as it once was. Sunset middle ruined my mental health and made me feel worthless because I wasn’t in honors classes, a lot of extra activities, or even just because I wasn’t good at something. This is what I mean by the teachers would pick favorites; they would only be nice and helpful to the students they liked best. And don’t even get me started on the enormous amount of homework we got. I wasn’t even able to do anything outside of school and it was so hard to try and pursue passions of mine bc of the little time I had and this is even worse for people who work slower than others (like me). I’ve been told by so many people the work in high school is not this bad even when you take honors classes. I really hope sunset changes and realizes doing so much homework is not helping us. I am so burnt out from all the work, teachers, and some of the students. Even our graduation was not fun. I didn’t get to see all of my friends and the breakfast wasn’t good. The whole graduation ceremony was sad and boring. I expected to leave middle happy and prideful but felt the complete opposite. There are so many other things that I experienced that made me dislike Sunset Middle School. I am so glad I am leaving and am never coming back.

Unfortunately, with our experience, the teaching at the school has been lacking. There are teachers who work really hard and teach the students the material. With some going the extra mile and making learning fun and engaging for the students. However, most teachers do not teach. They show videos and hand out materials, but do not teach the material to the students. My kid has to learn most everything from us or from instructional videos online. Some teachers will even just sit in the classroom on their phones. One teacher has been out of school for most of the last year and a half. We reached out to the administration and was told that they had family issues. I completely understand; however, the substitute teachers had no materials or instruction so there was no learning during all the time. We also reached out about the lack of teaching in some of the classrooms, but never really got a response. We got an email that it would be looked into, but no follow up. I would also say that the athletics programs are the driver of the school, even to the detriment of education. There are fundraisers for the athletics programs while some classes don't have enough money for basic classroom materials. We moved here because we thought this was a good school. Knowing what I know now, I would have not made this choice. I do feel that the school is safe, or as safe as it could be. The resources officers are always on school grounds and always in plain site. They are also very helpful and engaged with the students. The ratings for this school are very high, but are based on outdated information. The number of students is higher and the teacher to student ration is also higher than reported.This is not a bad school, but it does not meet the rating that most people see and believe it to be.