200 Baxter Street
Tolland, CT 06084

Not for children with any kind of special needs, they can't handle it!

Just as other Tolland Public Schools, Tolland High School offers a hands-on approach to learning, and is dedicated to educating our children. This is another fantastic school, in a beautiful town that is perfect to raise your family in!

Horrible school system. They routinely violate the rights of special needs students by not providing a free and appropriate public education. Special needs children are segregated and warehoused in self contained classrooms where they languish and fail to make any academic progress. There is no attempt to teach them any social skills or integrate them with their mainstream peers. The school will resort to restraint and locking disabled children in padded rooms without windows if they have behavioral incidents. The school staff deliberately caused our child to have meltdowns when they knew her triggers and deliberately incited her. The school administration including the director of pupil services are arrogant, condescending, and have absolutely no compassion or empathy for disabled children and their parents. Their philosophy is to segregate special needs children and push them through the schools even if they're making no progress at all. Our child is also routinely bullied and the school has failed to prevent other students from teasing her and even throwing basketballs at her head on multiple occasions. I have absolutely nothing positive to say about the school or it's staff and I'm shocked that they can get away with such blatant discrimination. They also had an "extended school year" last summer which was just glorified daycare. Again they warehoused all the special needs students in one classroom and they had our child doing coloring pages all day. Absolutely no academics or any interaction with mainstream peers. My advise to anyone with a special needs child is don't move to Tolland as they will violate your child's rights and fail to educate them. Consider West Hartford, Glastonbury, South Windsor, or even Convetry but avoid Tolland at all costs!

I can’t believe Tom Swanson is still an administrator here. He is woefully unprepared for this position. He is not an advocate for all children. If you have any PPT meetings in this district make sure to audio record them. Those recordings were very beneficial and used by our legal counsel to demonstrate he lacks any veracity. His lack of leadership and child advocacy is a burden on most of the staff. Teachers are overworked and their assessments are often disregarded to push a narrative that is sadly prescribed by the district central office. The Superintendent will always appear to be attentive and empathetic to your complaints yet do something to exert perceived dominance over your parental rights. If your relationship becomes adversarial with the district, audio record all meetings and hire legal counsel to represent your child’s interests.