Clark Vacant
Belleville, MI 48111

Parents, please think very carefully before sending your children here. Unfortunately, Owen Intermediate has become an environment where failure is tolerated and even enabled by the administration and staff.The level of bullying is staggering, and the principals appear completely uninterested in addressing the incidents, behaviors, and policies in any meaningful way. Instead, you are met with a rehearsed list of excuses pulled from a binder and repeated endlessly. There is no real willingness to engage in honest, productive conversations about bullying or staff accountability.Meanwhile, the students who actually want to learn are paying the price. Classrooms are constantly disrupted by the same group of students whose behavior repeatedly derails lessons. Teachers often cannot even begin or complete a lesson without having to stop and correct the same disruptive behavior over and over again.To make matters worse, there are virtually no meaningful consequences for repeat offenders. The same students fight, disrupt, and bully others, only to receive the same short suspensions—three to five days—again and again. There is no escalation of discipline. After the second or third suspension, expulsion should at least be considered, but that never seems to happen here.Instead, the rest of the student body is forced to continue sharing classrooms and hallways with these same individuals. This exposes them to ongoing bullying, chaos, and stress that no child should have to endure just to get an education. Many students are not learning; they are simply trying to survive the school day.This school used to be known as South Middle School. Growing up in this area, students from North (now McBride) knew South Middle as the place where the “bad kids” ended up. Sadly, it feels like that reputation has never truly changed. The dysfunction has continued from one generation to the next.This entire year has been incredibly disappointing and, frankly, traumatic for our family. We are simply trying to make it through the remainder of the year so we can move on to something better.If you have the option to enroll your child elsewhere, I strongly encourage you to do so. No inconvenience is too great when it comes to protecting your child’s mental health and their love for learning.

As a current student at Belleville high school, I am in my senior year. I have been here for three years now. I would not recommend this school to anybody. I would not even send my future kids to the school. This school is absolutely all out of the place it has no sort of control whatsoever for example, I have Spanish and the teacher in my classroom does not speak Spanish. We do not have a teacher in that classroom who is actively teaching us Spanish but then they expect us to learn it on our own and they tell us look it up on Google as if I can sit there and use Google on my test and I’m a type of student who I need someone to actively teach me. I cannot actively teach myself, especially when it comes to certain subjects. I have different learning styles when it comes to different subjects, and they do not cater to those things. When I try to communicate with administration they act as if I’m speaking Spanish, and I know I’m not speaking Spanish, because if I was, I would not be failing that class right now. They fail to properly communicate with anyone in general. They are so backwards when it comes to everything they pick out the littlest of things. But the football players get caught vaping in the bathroom, get detentions, etc but somehow they get out of every single little thing but let me be in the bathroom vaping or let me sit there and not come to a detention. I’m gonna get suspended and everything but I bet you if I was a football player on the team that would never happen to me. The security guards at the school is absolutely messy like for example if I sit there and I tell the security guard about somebody, they will sit there and go and tell that person exactly what I said and that I said it. This is exactly why I do not go to administration or anybody in the school about anything that I have a problem with because they fail to protect me in the situations. I do not feel safe when i’m at this school. They are not considerate of the fact that people have lives outside of school. I have stuff to do after school such as drivers training, work, watch my siblings, sports and stuff like that, I don’t have the time to go to every single one of these detentions that they give for the smallest of things. Do not send this your child to this school unless you were trying to set them up for failure.

The staff at Edgemont is amazing. All my sons 5 years there we only had 1 teacher that didn't compare to the others. They keep parents involved. I can't say enough. Now the newest principle isn't seen as much as the last one but my son said they seen her a lot so I guess that is what matters. The last principle was always around engaged with students and parents but he moved to the middle school. It's a shame too the students at edgemont loved him. The teachers are just great with the kids and the support staff is top notch. I honestly couldn't of asked for better people for my son to see on a daily basis

the school is great after the reconstruction. I highly recommend it