8564 Benbow Merrill Rd, Oak Ridge, NC 27310

I pulled my children from this school and do not recommend it unless you couldn’t care less about what they are actually learning. The classrooms are crowded, having too many students per classroom. The teachers and faculty are ONLY concerned about test scores for “End of Year Grades” (EOG’s). If teachers don’t get high test scores at end-of-year…they are not asked back! The PTO was awful, extremely unwelcoming to new families, no interest in new parent involvement…you need to be fake, stuck up, pretentious, and a gossip queen to join. No thank you. Recesses are few and far between, especially if there is even a chance it might sprinkle outside or get below 50 degrees…the teachers are lazy and don’t want to go outside. They huddle in groups and children get bullied. The district closes the schools in Guilford County with a chance of snow or hard rain, missing several days of school during the school year and the students go to school until almost the end of June to make up days. The car rider line is INSANE. You have to park at 7:15 in the line, a 30 minute wait until they start the line moving for K-5. This isn’t bc of Covid…it is normal. They need to allow students to come into the school at different times by gradesK-2, 3-4, then 4-5, and multi grade families last. We have done this at other schools and it was extremely efficient because of teacher involvement. Not sure why these suggestions go unheard. Many parents complain. You have to get into the car rider line at 1:00 and wait an hour until they let out or your child will get in the huge cluster outside of unorganized chaos, unattended and bullied. Fights break out and the teachers say “they didn’t see it”, so there are no consequences for behavior. One of my children was bullied so badly that I had to get outside professional counseling to help. The school counselor was a joke. The Principal and Vice Principal in particular could not have cared less. As long as their test scores were good, they weren’t interested. I would rather homeschool than send my children back there. Terrible.