Canterbury Cmns #35
Epping, NH 03042

This is a great, small, school in a terrific district. The culture of the school is incredible - all ages play together on the playground, kids are supportive of one another, competition is kept to a minimum and the focus is on each child reaching for their potential. As a parent I would love to see more happen after school so that there were additional enrichment programs available. But we have the best art teacher, best music teacher, gym twice a week, playground every day, and terrific leadership.

Regardless of how many times parents and students have complained to the school about bullying, no progress is ever made. It’s very disappointing that the school claims to stand against bullying but never lives up to the ideals they teach. The bullying in Oyster River has only been exacerbating, especially since the now-Assistant Superintendent came to the ORHS community as principal. Over these years, we’ve seen a multitude of grave repercussions due to the administration’s neglect of ensuring the safety and well-being of the students, including a student taking their own life and another incident in which a student got a serious concussion from being assaulted by a bully in the cafeteria. Even worse, the school often mishandles the situation and imposes heavier penalties to the victim than the provoker, giving way to bullies causing further harm, and destroys all evidence of the incident to hide their incompetence as authorities. The fact that Oyster River is still a highly ranked school in the state is absurd. It is necessary that the Assistant Superintendent of the school district be removed from her position, in the interest of the students' safety.

We're moving out of the Oyster River School District so that our 4th grader won't have to go to ORMS. Homework, when it is assigned, is ineffective, particularly in language classes. Even academically gifted students who go from ORMS to private schools have to take remedial language classes to catch up. There are some great teachers, but there are also teachers who should have retired a long time ago. One year, they removed desks from the foreign language classes because it was the only way to get the kids to listen to the teachers. Students openly talk about teachers who are pervs, but say that there's no point in going to the principal because he thinks it's a he-said-she-said thing and won't do anything about kids and teachers who are sexual harassers. Bullying is also a huge problem at ORMS, and on the buses, and they don't seem to have any policies to deal with it.