Wilsonville

My child did not have a good experience at JLSA, to say the least. Our whole family felt traumatized by the time we left. There is no board of advisors at JLSA, no parents’ association. All decisions are made by the owner. Teacher turnover at the school is constant. Actual teaching and learning does not seem to be a priority. Most of the teachers aren’t actual qualified teachers with any sort of education degree. My child reported that his instructors routinely needed to look up how to solve math problems before they could help him. There aren’t many hours of scheduled instruction per day to begin with, and that instruction is constantly being cancelled. Last June, instruction was cancelled for more than a week to practice a song for graduation. For the ENTIRE DAY, for about eight days, they did nothing but practice this one song.Another frequent reason class instruction is cancelled is when the owner has decided it’s time for another of her lectures on how kids these days are spoiled and don’t respect authority. Her key message, repeated constantly, is that people should never question those in charge. These lectures are usually set off by a parent complaint. When a parent complains (and it seems like there are a lot of parent complaints), the owner’s reaction is to lecture the children on why they shouldn’t be telling their parents negative things about the school.It’s an extremely controlling environment, where all of the students are treated as if they are very mentally impaired, and new rules are added constantly. Last fall, a parent complained about something, and the school’s reaction was to institute a new policy where all of the students were assigned to groups of four, and were ONLY allowed to talk to people in their group during morning walk and lunch, which is the only time they have to socialize with their friends. The groups were pretty obviously designed to separate everyone from their friends.If you have a child on the spectrum and you want your child to feel stigmatized and reminded again and again that they are different and can’t be trusted to do what other kids their age do, this is the school for you. For a while, two of the teachers were flat-out screaming at the kids on a routine basis, even the very young ones, but after a bunch of parent complaints, the criticism and sarcasm and anger started being delivered using teachers’ indoor voices.