West Reno

Teachers are very involved and seem to love teaching. Have had a great experience here.

My son attended a special education pre-K program at this school and it was an absolute nightmare. His teacher honestly did care and did the best that she could, given how it seems that everything else about this school was working against her. She honestly deserves to work for a better school.Unfortunately, for every good thing I could say about his teacher, I have a bad thing to be said about the TA she was stuck with. This person has no business working with children, she actively hated the kids in the class and would routinely insult and debase them. The other teachers would routinely mock the kids in that class (more than once during drop off and pick up, I heard other teachers referring to the classroom as "the stupid kids class"). Bullying was rampant. There was one incident where my son literally had his face shoved into the ground while teachers just watched.Add to that a general refusal of anyone at the school, other than his teacher, to ever reply to an email or return a phone call (we never once got an update on IEP accommodations), and you'll find that this school is perfect for the parent who wants to just drop off their kid and forget that they exist for the rest of the day, but a horrible choice for everyone else.It was so bad that my son, at 4 years old, learned how to force himself to be sick (not just pretend to be sick, he actually made himself sick) to be able to get sent home so he didn't have to spend more time at the school.This school is the reason that I'm so incredibly grateful that my son was one of the lucky people who got selected in a charter school lottery, because if he didn't, we'd be figuring out a way to home school before submitting him to this school, because I honestly consider willingly sending your kid here to be a form of child abuse.

We’ve had a wonderful experience at Jessie Beck. My son is now in his third year. I love the mix of family backgrounds and school traditions. My kiddo gets strong instruction and there is also time for the arts and just general kid character growth. We chose to buy a house in this zone and are so glad we did!

My son transferred into the SWAS accelerated program in 4th grade. My expectations were low, but not low enough.For my first back to school night, they had a Christian comedian open. I have NEVER been to a back to school night that had an opener (other than a principal giving general directions) and it was very strange. During 4th grade, my son absolutely loved his teacher, but despite being in the accelerated program, he hardly learned anything. There was a child in his class who was violent and would destroy other children's Halloween costumes, attack other kids in the class, throw computers at the wall, and cuss out other children. The parents were continually told this was being managed but when we rolled over into 5th grade, the kid was still there.The teacher for 5th grade spent the majority of the parent's night talking about himself and the extensive education he had. The parents left not really understanding anything but that this man had multiple degrees. I would only find out after my son left that this particular teacher gave him a nickname that he called my son behind his back to the other kids. I was wondering why my son didn't feel comfortable asking this man for help and now I know why. He was belittled and quite frankly bullied by a teacher. His SWAS teacher. Stay FAR away from the SWAS program. They will preach about how much training they have had and all of these theoretical things that sound nice and they will NOT practice. My son had a 504 with the SWAS teacher and he seemed so incredibly sad during the meeting because he did not want to provide accommodations. Sure enough... my son's accommodations were not followed. Now that my son is in middle school, it is becoming apparent how little work he did in SWAS. I feel like keeping him on the main path would have been far better. He spent two years not writing anything and now that he is in the middle school magnet program he is behind. The last 3 months of elementary school they had the kids work on a big science project and nothing else. During set up, the same teacher who called my son nicknames told me how hard his job was and how much he couldn't wait for summer because he was so burnt out and exhausted. I didn't know at that time he was calling my son names behind his back. I am speechless that a teacher would be the one inciting bullying especially at a program that is supposed to celebrate gifted students. Do not come to CRES and stay away from SWAS