Skyland

Our family has spent a total of 5 years at Columbine. With a very heavy heart, I am transferring them this year. While the community and many of the families we have met at the school have been great, the school seriously lacks in leadership. Our early years at the school were phenomenal. The ECE-2nd grade teachers really supported our children. However, the 3rd-5th grade curriculum is seriously lacking, and are not setting the kids up to be prepared for middle school. This is largely in part due to lack of accountability for the upper grade teachers and a serious failure in leadership of the school. Leadership has enabled and supported the lack of educational standards and even applauding the failure. Their only focus has been on closing the gap between black/brown and white students. So while we are a very progressive family and believe the gap should be closed, their sole focus and approach on this has seriously and negatively impacted the rest of the school. And it has shown through school ratings and testing over the last 4 years which have steadily declined. Which I find ludicrous as the school’s performance was on an upward trajectory when we first entered the school. The school’s decline in academic achievement is tied to the most recent principal. Many of the upper classroom parents I know have been paying for outside tutors to supplement the school’s educational gap. In addition to this, in our years, there have been multiple incidents of some parents being violent, bringing guns to school and threatening other parents. My family witnessed one father threaten another with a knife at school drop off. One parent brought a gun to school, and the principal allows that parent back on school grounds. It was my sincere hope to send my children to our neighborhood school and to keep them with the same community through their elementary school years. But I have to do what’s right for my children and we are moving them. I just wish I would have chosen a different school to begin with and implore other families who value consistency to consider this before sending their children as their needs will not be met through their child’s entire elementary education. We, like many families, were amazed by the ECE-1st grade experience and now feel like we’re stuck at the school, and the experience beyond those years are deeply disappointing. We are now scrambling to make sure our kids get what they need.