Mandolin, Kirbyville, MO 65679

Kirbyville elementary is a school my children loved and will remember fondly in years to come.Atmosphere: My children attended Kirbyville elementary over four years (2021-2025) and had a wonderful time. They found supportive teachers, good friends, and no real bullying to be found.Accommodation: When one of my children needed speech therapy, this was coordinated through the school at no cost to me. When one of my children struggled with emotional regulation, they coordinated therapy at no cost to me as well (income based).Gifted program: I have a child who is advanced for his age and the school coordinated enrichment programs he excitedly participated in and found fulfilling. When we left the state in 2025, this program was undergoing a transition with the dedicated gifted program coordinator promoting to vice principal. I would be very surprised if the commitment to gifted students does not remain strong under the new leadership.Participation As a general rule, the programs at the elementary level were inclusive rather than exclusive. School plays and musicals cast the entire student body with a focus on giving as many children a chance as possible. Similarly, everyone's art is on display and some even get to be presented in art contests elsewhere.Diversity: In Southwest Missouri the population is predominantly white and this will be reflected in the statistics here. As far as I could tell, the kids were just kids and there was no racial tension to be found within the school. My children did not express any bias or seem to experience any pressure toward bias in their social circles.Academics: I'm putting this one last because the platform already lists scores. I was more than a little surprised to see the below average standardized testing given my own experience with the school. Maybe its the low pressure, non high stakes testing environment that puts learning ahead of teaching to the test. Maybe it's that kids like mine who read at home and have minimal access to screens have an easier time than children from less supportive environments. The content is standardized and my children has no trouble at all transitioning to an out of state curriculum after four years at Kirbyville elementary. Whether advanced or lagging at times, my children each received the support they needed to succeed.I would not hesitate to place a child in Kirbyville elementary again.

I went to this school a few years ago, went to professional therapy and i still have intense trauma from this hellish place. Most of the boys (around 7 of them) kept persistently bullying me bc i have a rather large nose and i had rly bad acne (despite over 80% of them there having worse conditions). I told the counselor and she told me that 'they must have bad lives at home' and to 'give them a chance'. When i did give them a second chance despite hesitant, they just kept harassing me by now calling my name in the middle of class and pretending they didn't say anything when I was working on my work. The art teacher was even crueler. A particular time in the art class, there was a prompt to draw anything we wanted so I drew Twilight Sparkle from my little pony. When she came over and looked at it, she said "no! That's not how you draw a horse! This is how you draw a horse!" And proceeded to literally erase my drawing and drew on top of it with 'correct anatomy' despite me telling her what I was doing. Some other students could draw cartoons too bc she didn't point it out to them. Since then, I've had rly bad anxiety and constant long-term burnout and it's rly hard to maintain long-term relationships of every kind. I would tell the principal every time something bad happened and she said that she'd handle it but there was never any change (the boys kept bullying me, the art teacher kept insulting my art skills (which were decent enough for a middle schooler since i drew a lot). overall i had the worst, traumatic 5 years if my entire life and i nearly killed myself especially in 7th grade bc they kept piling homework on me and i kept failing classes bc nothing was done about the bullying, insulting or my insane homework. I'm soo glad i moved to Branson to finish my education and i hope to never have to see this place or its pple again in my entire life