W Fallen Leaf Dr
Meridian, ID 83646

Our two daughters were transferred from Chaparral Elementary in the rezoning last year. Our first year at Ponderosa we saw a fairly seamless transference in IEP goals and implementation. I love our teachers and so I say this more as a light criticism of our school district and our State: our teachers are over worked, underpaid, and the number of children to teacher ratio is insane. Based off what little resources these schools have, I'm continually impressed by teacher and staff knowledge of disabilities and their tools and their willingness to apply advice and tools provided by outside counsel and parents. Idaho, please make education a priority. Please. That said, there is a serious bullying problem at this school. My daughter's have come home in tears, with skinned knees, and bruised arms. An email to staff resulted in nothing. No response, either. My daughters both have ASD. It's been horrible. One daughter had a complete mental break down resulting in therapy. DO NOT go to this school if you have kids with disabilities or they are introverted. Fights happen in the school yard. It's a zoo. I believe, based on the positive experiences I've had with the IEP teams at this school, that staff simply don't have the resources to deal with the bullying. We are switching schools this year.

It was a bad experience at SMS with teachers and leaders.

The teachers at this school are horrendous and the school only cares about students passing and not the students actual learning. I have struggled severely in multiple classes, due to teachers not teaching well and not putting out information on teams when they were supposed to. It’s currently the last week in the semester to submit work and one of my teachers still has not graded a test from 2 weeks ago. We currently only have 1 day left to retake that test but that teacher has still yet to put the grade in. The faculty does not care about mental health either. The history/government department is outrageous and I’ve never had a positive experience with any of those teachers, they also don’t give any slack to students with severe health problems. Most of the teachers are brand new as well, causing them to not have any good experience with teaching. For college applications, the advisors started talking to the seniors about this mid first semester of senior year; when most schools start the discussion of this topic junior year. I would not recommend this school to upcoming students.