Skyline 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!

***NOTE*** Santa Fe Montessori will cease to exist after Summer 2015. The Santa Fe Montessori owners have sold the school to a Montessori chain called LePort Schools. The LePort staff just had their "open house" on Saturday (April 18, 2015) to introduce the new faculty and administration which will be running things when the school opens as a LePort School in Fall 2015. So far, so good. It will still be Montessori curriculum, plus LePort offers a "Spanish Immersion" program. I've enrolled my son, and am looking forward to seeing how the new owners & staff run things.

I was a student at SFC from pre-school (when there was a pre-school) to graduating highschool, and while attending the school I was encouraged to take classes for things I wanted to learn about alongside requirements for graduation. I just with they had a better option for fulfilling PE requirements for students who don't participate in sports, like myself, than independent PE or a strength and conditioning class aimed at helping football players, such as an actual class to let you get the PE credits you need to graduate. They also have pretty much no special needs help other than extra time for tests and exams, sitting in the front of class when needed, and ADA required infrastructure. The school definitely needs better help for neurodivergent students such as myself when I was a student. They also need to have a better way of handling mental health. I delt with pretty bad depression and anxiety that I ended up needing to be medicated for while I was there as a student, and if they had some form of counseling for mental health, I wasn't made aware of it.

St. James Academy is a fantastic school that educates the whole child!