4 Holly Knoll
Pinehurst, NC 28374

My experience with this school is horrible. My son is EC with an IEP that no one follows. The school administration, teachers, and staff are abysmal with parent communication, racial bias, and consistency in standards. My student is not the only one with this experience. Teachers and administration blowing off conferences and waiting until testing time to care about grades. The standards here are not what I expect out of any school.

In an effort to provide an open and honest review, I'll start with the good... The school is safe and clean, the new building opening next school year is massive and state-of-the-art, the majority of the teachers are great, and Principal communication is good (robocalls daily). Now the not-so-good... Our children spent several years at this school, made many friends and great memories. As the years progressed, we noticed changes in regards to the education and discipline approaches. Discipline issues ruled the classrooms each year (with little/no consequences for bad behavior). Kids who are middle or high performing are left completely unchallenged. The teachers are overwhelmed with nonstop digital assessments and teaching just to meet the EOG testing requirements to pass the students at the end of the year. As we started to pay more attention to what our children were (not) learning, we realized they weren't being challenged at all and decided to move to a local charter school. Many of the teachers are amazing and loving, but they are not empowered with the ability to effectively discipline or provide any structured curriculum to help the students advance beyond the status quo, or even get to grade level in many cases. Additionally, the school focuses heavily on social-emotional learning in order to guide student emotions in a certain way psychologically. It's nonstop... What color of emotion are you feeling today? Take an emotion survey today that will go to a 3rd party for analysis. Tell the school counselor how you feel today. It started to seem like assessing and documenting student feelings was more important than student academics/learning.MCS needs an overhaul, because it's not just PES but other district schools too. Perhaps MCS should get back to focusing on academic excellence, or more children will leave the traditional public school system and go to charter or private.

I’m very concerned about how this school is handling behavior and student safety. My daughter no longer feels safe or comfortable in class because disruptive and bullying behavior is often ignored. It’s clear that teachers are hesitant to address certain students’ actions, and that hesitation seems to stem from fear of being labeled as racist — since most of the teachers are white and many of the students causing issues are Black.This has created an environment where inappropriate behavior is tolerated, and students who want to learn are the ones who suffer. No teacher should feel afraid to enforce rules fairly, and no student should feel unsafe or distracted because the classroom is out of control.I hope the faculty address these issues soon.