DOBBS Rd
Saint augustine, FL 32086

I had two children who were bullied when they went through the pre-k program. The teachers didn't tell me and I had to rely on my student to communicate the information. The second child had speech apraxia and wasn't able to communicate what was going on until he saw the parent of the child who was picking on him and ran over to tell them directly. I especially had issues with my second child - who had speech apraxia and was being mainstreamed for the first time. About 3 weeks into attending the school, he started regressing with potty training and withdrawing from social interactions with peers. When I messaged this to his teacher she ignored my concerns and told me how much the students in his class liked him. She invalidated my issues by not addressing them. These issues escalated until he was on a behavior plan. I never felt like the teachers respected my experiences with him as a parent -- and instead assumed they knew better and that the only valid experiences were the ones they were seeing firsthand in the classroom. I felt like the issues that I had with both sons were never adequately addressed. I met with the principal and when I told him that my pediatrician recommended a therapist for my son's bathroom regression -- the principal responded saying, "Well, therapy never worked for me." I would say this is a environment where issues of mental health are pushed to the side and ignored. I didn't feel like my special education child received the support that he deserved. And as a parent I didn't receive sufficient communication about what was going on in the classroom.

The school provides great accelerated classes, the teachers are very experienced, and a good variety of extracurricular activities.

I currently go to this school now, and I would not recommend it to people who don't like to be stressed out or having to reach and surpass impossible and cruel standards. I do well in school, "A"s and "B"s but that's all they care about. The faculty pays no regard to how things should be done in a timely matter, for example I was trying to switch teachers because my current one can't teach (not that he isn't a great person, he just can't teach) and I found a great teacher who helped me learn better than my current teacher ever could. There was visible improvement in my grade (64-86) and that was all because of the good teacher. I had been going to "math lab" and still are, to improve my grade. I was trying to get out of that class for months, and I reached out to the administration well in advance of the "switching period" to be over. I went to so many fruitless parent-student conferences with my counselors and teachers but when the time came to make me feel like a complete waste of time they sure did. We were told that because it was so late in the year that they couldn't switch me out of the class that I was trying to switch since the beginning of the year. They wasted my time by trying to make it feel like they were going to do something about the situation, but they never were going to change anything ever. They want you to feel like you're doing something but they're just ripping you off.