Larimer Ave
Irwin, PA 15642

Disappointing. This school is overloaded with students - typical class sizes of 27 students. Some teachers still care, others seem burned out, intolerant and frustrated with the kids. There are posters lining the hallways about cherishing individuality and zero tolerance toward bullying, but that message doesn't go past the posters. Individuality is not accepted, and seems to be frustrating to the overloaded teachers. Verbal bullying seems to be fairly common. When brought to the teacher and administration's attention, they attack the one being bullied as too sensitive and a provocateur. We had great experiences at Norwin Elementary Schools, but the Intermediate School is mediocre at best.

All Norwin elementary schools have a lottery system set up where you have to “win” full day kindergarten. Some of the kids (I think I remember a 30% statistic) receive half day kindergarten. They make this choice based on which kids get highest the scores on their entry test. Basically, if you’ve sent your kid to a good preschool, get ready to pay for another year of half days. That’s bad enough on it’s own, but because they can’t bus the half day kindergarteners in the middle of the day, all of kindergarten is only allowed one way transportation. You have to pick your kid up from school every day at 3:25pm. The car line takes approximately 20 minutes to sit through. And this isn’t a one time event. Every kid who goes into kindergarten must be picked up, so if you have multiple small kids who are entering kindergarten several years apart, you’ll have to pick them all up each year you have a child enrolled in Kindergarten. It’s prevented me from going back to work for a year longer than I thought I’d have to wait, and I’m not sure what I’ll do when my son goes to Kindergarten. We’re trying to move out of the school district. If you think you’re going to change it, Kindergarten is not compulsory in PA, and bussing is considered a privilege. I’ve already looked up my rights. I don’t have any recourse beyond warning other parents.