Van Allen Park

A wonderful school with a great staff

Find another school for the sake of your child and yourself. There is better education on YouTube than here. They do not take discipline and bullying seriously. Save your child the horror and abuse (mental, emotional and physical) they will go through and maintain your sanity. The teachers will not do anything but tell your kids to ignore and over look them being bullied, the assistant principle will just butter you up so you can go home, you’ll never see the principal and let’s not even mention the superintendent that is technically nonexistent until court is mentioned and one of his employee’s says something.

I am beyond disappointed with Menands School. The level of disorganization and lack of accountability here is unbelievable. Communication with parents is practically nonexistent—important updates are either sent last minute or not at all. The staff acts dismissive instead of supportive, and concerns are brushed off instead of addressed.The administration seems completely out of touch with what students actually need. Discipline is inconsistent, favoritism is obvious, and the environment feels more toxic than educational. Kids should feel safe, respected, and encouraged at school, but instead, it feels like they’re just being pushed through the system. Menands school has failed to address multiple issues related to bullying sexual harassment. Menands School has gone so far downhill it’s shocking. What used to be a decent, community-focused school has completely downgraded in every way. The quality of education has slipped, the staff seems overwhelmed and uninterested, and the administration is more concerned with appearances than actually solving problems. I do not recommend this school.

I debated quite a long time about whether I should write a review about our experience at Woodland Hill (WH). After talking to so many other parents that experienced and are experiencing similar issues as we did. I would feel remiss to not help another family trying to make a difficult decision to either put in or remove their child from WH.They do not give you a good idea where your child is academically. There are very few points of contact from the teachers. They send home 2 very vague progress reports a year with "WH language" by which I mean they tend to use words that are very neutral or ambiguous. The 2 parent teacher conferences throughout the year are very short, and there is little time to discuss. When I was able to meet with the teacher, they would revert to a thing my child said which seemed to divert any attention from the teacher. Every meeting we had they said the same thing, anything else they said was generic and neutral. Multiple parents that I have spoken with that left the school were astonished about how far their child was behind. They were embarrassed to not have noticed it and had to hire tutors. More importantly. There is a MAJOR BULLYING PROBLEM. The concerns that I had brought up to the teachers were about bullying and not academics. Again, these concerns were brushed off with generic language like talking to a politician. We were assured that a specialist was going through every class and urged to wait for that to happen. It was months before that specialist got to our classroom, and nothing changed. Several parents have contacted us with the same issue, asking to get together so that our children can play so they can feel better after being bullied all day in school. For two years my child told me when he walked into the school that he felt "empty inside". They would come home and tell us that it was the worst year of their life. They saw a child from WH and literally ran and hid because of how they had been treated. You can see the school trying to bring in faculty to address this problem. Ironically from my experience, the faculty that were tasked with this were the same faculty that clearly had no experience in child education and were the very faculty that made my child afraid and uncomfortable to walk into the school daily.Leaving the school was the best decision we ever made for our child, and they are finally healing from the years of turmoil by attending there.

Despite a few dedicated teachers, my experience at Doane Stuart was almost entirely negative. I did not feel safe or supported at school and was bullied my entire time there. Rather than help solve the problem, administration suggested I do all schoolwork from home without any guidance (at full tuition) until things worked themselves out. Some version of this situation happened every year I was there until my senior year when they told me it would be easier for me to just not return for the rest of the year. Drugs are also a significant issue at the school which continues to be swept under the rug because retaining full tuition students and donor families is the priority at DS, not safety. Financial instability and the constant turnover of faculty and students led to a very unstable environment and greatly affected the quality of the academics and student life. Families were always assured that there was something better around the corner, but things only seemed to go downhill over the past few years. All of this disorganization and the issues with bullying and drugs left the senior class unprepared for college applications and some people did not apply during their time at DS, but this also went unaddressed. I am grateful for the teachers that supported me, but I would not recommend this school to anyone, especially after recent changes. Students and their needs should be the priority, not public image or profit.