Pelham Bay

This school was honestly a terrible experience for me. The building felt dirty and poorly taken care of, and there were constant cleanliness issues that made it uncomfortable to even be there. The food was really bad, and it felt like nobody cared.It also felt like students with money were treated better, and if you weren't white , you were ignored or judged. As a proud hispanic, I often felt uncomfortable and unsupported.There are barely any sports or activities, so there’s nothing exciting or motivating about the school. Overall, it felt unfair, stressful, and unwelcoming. I wouldn’t recommend this school to anyone looking for a positive or inclusive environment.

Our time at GAI was pretty nice. We came to GAI during a bit of a tough time, and they welcomed us with open arms. GAI administration and staff really do their best in terms of ensuring the safety of students and educating them.However, I am personally not a fan of their “class mom” model. Let me explain. When we first arrived at GAI, we were not made aware of this practice, and it was only when the class mom needed to collect money from parents that she introduced herself to us—to collect funds. It was a bit awkward. After some time, I understood that this was simply how they ran things there, so I wasn’t bothered by it.However, what did bother me was the fact that oftentimes the class mom would put herself in charge of ensuring that the children bonded with one another and went out to fun places and activities during the weekends or school breaks. But when it came to those things, the class mom would never write to me to invite my child to hang out with the other children. Instead, she would continuously borderline harass me only when she needed to collect funds, and she would do it in a way that felt belittling.In the group message, she would write, “Received from…” so that everyone knew who donated and who didn’t. Then she would start to threaten, “Well, I just want to make sure that you know your child’s name won’t be included if I don’t receive your donation.”Additionally, some parents acted as though their children were too good to hang out with certain other children, so they would proceed to ostracize the group of children they deemed unworthy or unfit to be around their children. Yet, they were never too shy to write to those same children’s parents when they needed a donation or wanted the parent to take on a school role.Maybe this was just the middle school experience for me, because the school itself is great. This was just a bad set of parents to have to deal with, and it’s a shame.Needless to say, we’ve moved on, but I do recommend this school to others if you can ignore the other parents. I wish I could have, but it became too abusive, and therefore our decision was to leave.