Central Clintonville

Tl;dr - this school may be right for your family if your child has no issues and the parents/guardians are fine with whatever the school chooses to do. The teachers and staff care for the students and, due to the small class sizes, everyone knows one another. There is a small-community feel. This school will not be a good fit for your family if you value clear, consistent communication with teachers, or if you want to collaborate on your child's learning. It will also not be a good fit if you question policies or practices.The long version: Our child went to CA for one year (kindergarten). When we toured, it was fine, but nothing exceptional. Our child has difficulty with transitions and had relatives who attended. They wanted to all go together so we decided to try it out for a year and see how it went. - Our child loved CA. They easily fell into the rhythm of the classes, learned how to read well, and made friends in class. For that, we are thankful.- As parents, we did not appreciate 30-40 minutes of non-educational TV time in class per day. We brought it up to the Board, and they supported the teacher because it "helps with transitions". Our opinion is that students should be learning how to manage transitions in a healthy, social-emotional way, as noted on their website. We're not paying for TV.- The school-wide communication is good, but individually, we had to badger teachers and staff to respond to emails, which sometimes took over 3 months, multiple follow-ups, and usually a CC to the principal (or, in one case, the Dept. of Education and Workforce).- CA loves parent participation if you're volunteering, not if you're asking questions about policies.- The Board is there to maintain status quo. Some families brought up instances of bullying and asked why it wasn't documented, parents weren't informed, and the bully wasn't disciplined according to the handbook. They needed to "maintain confidentiality". Ultimately, nothing was done.- Given our child's happiness, we considered it for 1st grade until we found out that the teacher left and they hadn't hired a new one. We paused on filing our re-enrollment paperwork - you commit to at least 1 month's tuition if you withdraw before July, and we didn't want to do that until someone had been hired. Any follow-up was ignored until we CC'd the DEW.- We started at our local public school this year. We are thankful to CA for helping us appreciate how exceptionally our current school is run.

Students are challenged academically and taught good morals and values along the way. The community of this school is amazing! I am proud to send our children here.