3786 Westwood Rd
University Heights, OH 44118

I can’t say enough of how wonderful Gearity elementary school is. The teachers are on top of things, caring about their students, they go above and beyond to not only help the students but they also help the families, specially providing help during times of crisis and with communication. I saw the review about the testing, however, if you look at the student population, they have a lot of non English speaking students and children with disabilities which they offer a lot of support to, those children are tested by the state, when they don’t speak the language! So that has to lower the school testing scores, even though the children are learning really fast and the teachers are spending a lot of time with them and their needs. Doesn’t seem fair that a school is judged for scores they have no way of changing.

Both of my daughters attended school in the CHUH school district. These are excellent schools. Not good. Excellent. My children were given the opportunity to excel academically, and did so: both went on to attended universities with strong national reputations. They took many AP credits with them. In addition to the excellence in the usual academic subjects, the CHUH schools excel in the arts. There is a vocal music program that puts on an annual show that you actually want to go see, not merely suffer through because your kid is in it. The instrumental music department inspired my first daughter to become a music teacher herself. Again, the concert performances are genuinely good, not something to be suffered through. First time parents always express surprise that the concerts were pleasant to listen to. My younger daughter excelled in the visual arts department, with many of her pieces placed in public exhibits where they won a variety of awards. Many of these successes are directly attributable to the high quality of education my children received. I can only wish that I had attended such high quality schools myself as a child. More generally, now speaking as a college professor rather than as a parent, graduates of CHUH are well prepared for college. They do as well or better as students from many private schools. Locally, CHUH is equal or superior to most private schools (e.g., Hathaway Brown). Only Laurel is clearly superior. If you cannot afford that, you would be wasting money to send your children to any other private school in the area. The numerical rating on this website is generated from statistical information that is known to be inherently racist. It basically measures the socio-economic status of the community. CHUH is a mixed community, with both rich and poor residents. Many of the richer residents fear the misleading numerical score and send their children to private school, thus making it a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they all sent their children to the public schools, the score would jump from 2 to 8. This is entirely predictable based on socio-economics. To reiterate: the numerical score measures the socio-economic status of the students it serves. It does not reflect the quality of what the schools do in any meaningful way. (Lies, damned lies, and statistics.) The schools themselves offer an excellent education.

I am a former student of Monticello Middle School (2012-14) and I loved it there. I have made many strong lasting relationships with a group of students there. I feel as if I have received an excellent education while I was there and I dearly wish I could go back. Every child can find there place with group of people. Also there are a plentiful amount of extracurricular activities. Though they could have been a little more creative with the learning process.