Willowbrook ElementarySchool

Both of my children attended Mary Mae Jones for K-4. They were very happy there and I knew that they were in a safe learning environment with caring teachers and administrators. The staff at MMJ is amazing; dedicated to doing what is best for students. My children learned what they were supposed to learn and benefited greatly from The Leader in Me program at Mary Mae Jones.

It cant't accommodate all parents to school events. Events are per class basis rather than school level.Due to small cafeteria , lunch times varies a lot.One of my kids has lunch at 10.30 while other has at 12.35.Teachers just do their duty rather than with interest.I dont see equality with few of staff members.

My daughter is at RBMS and it seems like a perfect transition from elementary to junior high. The staff are very engaged and supportive. They communicate well with parents and the other branches of school district. Very excited for my two younger sons to attend RBMS in a few years,

My family loves the structure this school provides. My kids are thriving, learning, and growing. We are very happy with the education they are being provided. We have a very gifted child, as well as a child who has a learning disability. And we feel like both of their needs are being met.

Due to COVID, my daughter has attended her 7th, and her 8th grade school years online. 7th grade was ran by her local school, I wasn't real happy with their structure. For 8th grade, I enrolled her into Arkansas Connections Academy. Arkansas Connections Academy is one of the best schools I have been involved with, for my daughter and even the schools I went to as a kid. Although it is an online school, and it takes me, as a coach, to spend 3-4 hours a day to coach my daughter, the teachers and staff are exceptionally helpful. They are alway there for you, to help with anything you need, not just the assignments, but with taking out time to answer questions, more than once if needed, and sending reminders for what is expected of each assignment and project. The school has social events, as in field trips, and a social media platform for parents and teachers to communicate outside of school. My daughter had weekly dyslexia classes, 30 minutes a day. She attended her classrooms for an hour each day, where all the children have the opportunity to interact as a classroom. Each day had a different class. They also have an hour each day to talk to a particular teacher, if they need help or with questions. My daughter and I both decided she will be attending Arkansas Connections Academy next year for 9th grade.

Big picture, I really did not care for Bentonville ISD as a whole. One minute we have a no homework policy and the next minute we have a mandatory homework policy? I got so many emails from the school (an annoying amount of emails if I’m honest) but I always felt blindsided by these massive policy changes because they wouldn’t announce them. There were so many big changes up there that I would have to piece together to figure out what happened because they didn’t let us know! Bottom line for me is, I pay taxes and I am trusting you with my child, so I find deception on any level intolerable on this topic.As far as Osage Creek Elementary specifically, we did not have the best experience at this school. I found that many of the staff were enabling and reinforcing bad behaviors in children. The number of times I heard the phrase: "everyone makes mistakes" was very frustrating. Yes everybody makes mistakes but if we aren't going to LEARN from them how will we stop making the same mistakes? I saw my child regress in multiple areas while at this school. Just for contrast, every summer my child would participate in a summer program locally. We would see IMMENSE growth in so many areas every single summer. When the fall would come back around though, we were back to the regression within a few weeks back at Osage Creek Elementary.I definitely saw issues around bullying at this school as well. I’m not talking about just cracking silly harmless jokes at each other. No. More the flavor where the kids pick a target and ALL of them pile on the target constantly. To me this is an administration problem setting a bad culture. Some teachers up there are amazing so I do not want to minimize the teachers who are doing a fantastic job. This school is not all bad by any means! Just one example: Coach Bell really cares, he always went above and beyond at his job and I appreciate that so much as a parent. Many of the staff were this way, but if you are researching moving to Bentonville you deserve to know what is really going on at the schools so you can make an informed decision about what is right for you and your family.