Park Dale Lane Elementary School

My son had a wonderful K year here. The small class size allows for truly personalized learning, as well as great social emotional development support. I appreciate that I know he is learning from 2 trained teachers as opposed to parent volunteers public schools often depend on to supplement the 1 classroom teachers. In addition to typical curriculum, the kids have daily specialists including art, music, Spanish, PE, library, gardening and drama. They have monthly field trips and a very active school community with tons of opportunities for parent/family involvement. And there is a big focus as well on social emotional learning. I have not seen any issues with bullying, problems with disruptions in the class, etc. Recently we ran into a few 4th graders that are the K's reading buddy class and the "big kids" were so sweet talking to and playing with my son and his friends. It really epitomizes what we have seen - it is just a great student body and small enough it really feels like a community. I have seen comments about the administration being bad but that hasn't been my experience. I have always gotten responses to any email or call and they do a good job communicating. And I love that the teachers make themselves available for parents to reach out directly. The principal even stands outside every morning greeting all the students by name!

I am writing this review purely as a heads up to any parents of neurodivergent and/or special needs kids thinking of St John. We are heavily involved in the church and it was our hope to send our son to St John School. We invested lots of time and resources to making this happen. Our son has mild autism and adhd, which we were honest about up front. After three days of kindergarten, they told us they did not have resources for him and we were forced to unenrolled him. I am thankful this happened after three days instead of three months, however, we were led to believe they had resources to accommodate him. They boast about their learning specialists program on their website and have awards for inclusion displayed in the front office. Thankfully, we were refunded some tuition, but spent over $1000 in fees and uniforms and put in a lot of emotional effort making connections with other families. If your child has a diagnosis or IEP of any kind, I encourage you to keep your options open and ask a lot of questions. We are now happily enrolled in Encinitas Public Schools.