Independence Elementary School

The school does an excellent job at bringing the community together with special events such as Back to School Night, School Carnival, Trunk or Treat, Family Field Day and their Culture Night. The staff really pitches in to make the students and their familes feel welcome. My kids have always had a positive experience here. We are a multicultural family and I have seen many staff members who speak spanish helping other families who need assistance. A very caring school community.

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.

Truly an amazing school. The principal is very involved and is well loved by teachers , students and parents. My children go to school happy and excited. They are learning and thriving both socially and academically. There are a lot of opportunities for parents to be involved and the PTCO is doing any amazing job in organizing fun events for the kids. I couldn’t ask for more.

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.

we have just enjoyed the school so much! We have three kids currently enrolled. Their teachers have been so supportive, they have a great music art and gym program that the kids have really enjoyed! Two thumbs up from our family