Cherry Chase Elementary School

Attended from TK - 1st grade, and each year the teachers got progressively worse with less and less experience. They can't seem to keep the good ones we liked. While math and science were good, my child's English suffered learning when teachers who could not speak clear English themselves without heavy accents. One year, the teacher complained my child was hyperactive, but sat my child alllll the way in the back of the class. The art and music programs were great with winter and spring performances, but that's not enough to justify over $22k / year. Ultimately, I felt I was paying a college tuition for inexperienced teachers and got stuck the majority of the time with teachers who did not have native proficiency in English. If your child doesn't fit their cookie-cutter mold, it's like they don't know how to deal with a simple thing such as hyperactivity. Bullying was also annoying at times by a few spoiled entitled boys. Lastly, the school is sorely lacking in diversity being predominantly Southeast Asian, and I say this as an Asian person myself.

Our experience with Challenger School (Sunnyvale campus) has been deeply disappointing. While the school emphasizes academic rigor, our recent experience raised serious concerns about how student safety, behavioral incidents, and exceptional family situations are handled.There were repeated concerns involving inappropriate behavior toward our child that were known to staff. However, the response remained limited to warnings, without a structured or proactive resolution. This lack of escalation or preventive action was concerning.The situation became even more troubling during a genuine family emergency that required our child to be with us. The school’s approach lacked empathy and flexibility, and decisions felt rigid and disconnected from the realities families sometimes face.Additionally, decisions following the incident were made with limited transparency and without meaningful parent involvement. The overall process felt unilateral, with little opportunity for discussion or consideration of context.As a result, we withdrew our son from Challenger School with immediate effect due to concerns about accountability and unilateral decision-making by the school management.We urge other parents to monitor their children’s well-being closely, as these issues may not be apparent in day-to-day school life. Awareness and proactive communication can help avoid situations like ours.We hope the school reflects on this experience and improves its processes around bullying prevention, incident handling, compassionate handling of family emergencies, and parent communication.