72 Spring St
Swanzey, NH 03446

This is a great school that provides a caring environment with a team model. Their concentration on literacy is very impressive where there is reading and writing in all subjects.

My son has been in this school system long enough to know that this school does not have my childs needs or care in their best interest. Things will occur at this school to or involving my child and I will not be contacted or informed. It is usually my child directly telling me something happened or his mother tells me she got a text. This is absolutely unacceptable.

The lack of demographic information about the success of low-income and disabled students is very telling. As someone from both of these communities, my experience at Gilsum Elementary (before it was a STEAM academy) was repressive and invalidating. In 1st grade I was being evaluated for autism and receiving 1:1 time with the counselor, but when she moved and they hired a new counselor, this was brought to a halt, because she “didn’t want to.” Despite being bullied for a variety of manifestations of my income and learning differences throughout my time at Gilsum (and Sullivan, per the school system at the time) it was quite literally never addressed. Whenever I brought it up I was told it was “just a misunderstanding,” and several times I even got in trouble for standing up for myself. The curriculum was often mind-numbingly boring for me because I was very book smart. However, I almost never completed homework due to my home life and executive dysfunction. This red flag was ignored, and a teachers aid who followed my class for several years consistently bullied me for being so far ahead of the class and my lack of social skills. My younger sister and I were very much failed by this school system. I’m sure many of the teachers are different by now, so I will leave my poor experiences with them out. I did have several wonderful teachers, and my younger sister and older brother thoroughly enjoyed having Adrienne Noel (current principal) as a teacher (I never had her). Because the very biased counselor I dealt with has left, I will leave you by pointing out that the number of kids per counselor is double the state average. At-risk kids will continue to get left behind until this is resolved.

Awful, gave me some of the worst years of my life

Only thing I would change when I was a parent of students there was parents being able to be more involved in the activities and experiences the other scho ols offer their parents. I think it really takes away a really great bonding opportunity between the child and parents and a great learning experience from the parents too to see things from a whole new angle.