Horizon Middle School

i have found that this school, at least for the K-1st grade area is lacking in so many ways. the teaching staff have no idea what they are doing with early childhood development or educations, and expect 5 year olds to not have energy and to just sit down, shut up, and focus all day. as an adult i can barely sit through a meeting at work, and they expect these kids to do it all day. it has been 100% proven that sitting all day is not good for kids, and they need to be more hands on and interactive in order to learn, and the schools still seem to push the sit down and shut up or you are a bad kid who needs to be drugged narrative. My first son who went there got the same treatment, and now he is in middle school and doing fine aka he grew up. now they are saying the same exact thing about my youngest. i talked to other parents and they are getting the same emails, especially the little boys. the staff here lie constantly, and their punishments are extremely inappropriate for their age group with no thought on the child's psyche or social growth and development. i would say that their middle school is decent, but overall, the early childhood stuff is extremely terrible.

Very boring I have social anxiety and I feel like im forced to talk to people my third grade teacher I’m not going to name wasn’t the nicest my second and fourth grade teachers are nice and the outside is very unwelcoming and boring

This is a great school with many amazing long time teaching staff. I am so glad I sent my kiddos here! The great schools rating is not accurate for how fantastic a school this is. I’ve learned you cannot look at the rating to pick a school. My children are supported here and love to learn which is the biggest win. I feel like it’s a regular school similar to what I went to growing up before teachers started teaching according to standardized tests. They let kids be kids here and the teachers are great! The student body is diverse - all races and income levels which I feel is healthy to expose my child to. One of my kiddos is on an IEP and I cannot say enough wonderful things about the IEP support staff. My child is catching up! My son’s teacher told me her kids will go to school here. I know a principal of another school that sends his children here. I heard the after school care program is probably the best in the district/state. I have met with the new principal and she is a lovely lady that has made lots of amazing changes to the school like an extra recess for kiddos (helps them learn better after getting all the wiggles out and very needed for my adhd kiddo). The specials teachers are all great too.

I have 2 children that went to this school since 2019. They have always had wonderful teachers there who are supportive of their learning, but we found a lot of these teachers were leaving and there was a lot of turnover in the earlier years. This past year 24-25 there was a new principal that started at this school and she has been amazing compared to the previous principal. She engages with the community, parents, and students and I think she will really revive this school. The school is a title 1 school with all of the challenges that this brings, so I'm sad to see that some areas they don't have as much funding for like a full time music teacher. I really hope that this doesn't get worse in the future given the real potential to eliminate the DoE and the funding that this brings to the school.The biggest criticism I have is that it took a while to get my 2nd child on a specialized learning plan as she has some struggles with encoding/decoding and this doesn't show up in her overall test scores because she is gifted in other areas. So it took a while to get this taken care of, because you have to dig deeper at her reading scores and evaluations to get to that. Fortunately we got the attention of the new principal and her teacher and were able to get her on the right path.

We've been impressed with school and all that it has to offer. Specifically, our son is excited about going each day, has countless activities planned, and is staying curious. Couldn't ask for a better fit.