5 Payson Ct
Madison, WI 53719

Coming from a junior at Memorial, This school is heavily restricted and pure learning-focused. This school treats us like we are five year olds. Only clean music, no free time, and no games unless it says “EDUCATION” in big bold letters and is recommended by at least 500 moms on Facebook. This place also loves to suck every penny out of you, by putting unnecessary charges on your school bill and lunch bill, and making lunches equivalent to the price of a bag of chips and soda at Disneyland, with the quality of the garbage juice slurry at the bottom of your trash can. , Would not recommend this school if you want your child to have a fun experience here.

The school is total Chaos. I've stopped in on numerous occasions to see dozens of 1st, 2nd, 3rd grade kids milling around in the hallways unsupervised. I've seen fights break out with no adult to stop them, kids jumping off of furniture, throwing hard objects. The problem is there's a few very poor neighborhoods nearby, so there are a lot of disadvantaged kids. Which is fine... but the school administration refuses to staff for that. After numerous complaints, meetings will all levels of the administration and a community petition signed by dozens of parents they finally hired 1, part time person. That's it. The problems persist, there is little to no communication with the families and it's only a matter of time before a child is seriously injured here. The principle is completely clueless and doesn't even seem to think unsupervised 7yr olds is a bad thing.

My kids have done really well learning, but my son has been lost 3 times now by the school in 3 months and one time we weren’t even told it happened. I also have witnessed 2 other children being lost as well with other teachers locating the children. They used to have an 8 rating and are now down to 6 and I get it. Some teachers are really organized and amazing with the kids…other teachers are struggling and it shows. I’m happy with my kids progress but overall not a great experience. All of the events at this school are chaotic and seem disorganized, which we expect a little bit at an elementary. A lot of communication is last minute..maybe the day before telling us to dress the kids up special. The office staff has repetitively refused to walk my kids to class when they were confused where to go. Good luck!