Creativity Challenge Community

I recently graduated from Ricks, I was there k-8 (11 years). While I have made lifelong friendships and have genuinely enjoyed my time there, I would not recommend this school to anyone. The academics have been subpar, setting me behind in my highschool experience. Ricks is a school that claims to be kid oriented and have gifted programs, but it is far from. Many of the administrators have no control over the school, and there are little to no “gifted” programs. I have seen some of the smartest students fail because of the lack of focus on students. I highly recommend asking about the teacher turnover, as there have only been a few teachers there for more than 3 years. Their staff is severely underappreciated and as more teachers quit, they are replaced by worse and worse teachers. If you are considering going here, I highly recommend reaching out to current parents of kids who go there. It is likely you will begin to see the never ending amount of problems at this school. As a person with a learning disability I feel my needs were not met and I was not accommodated to the full extent I should have been. As for mental health, this school had no clue what they were doing. In my time at middle school we would occasionally be called for an ”assembly” which consisted of a presentation on mental health and how to reach out if you needed help. I do not know anyone who used the tools they offered us. The presentations were ineffective, and on top of that, my friends and I had no trust in the school psychologist. In my experience, many of the teachers were amazing, they were our true friends and advocates. I loved each one of my teachers, but since I have left, all of them have either quit or plan to in the next few years. The only thing that kept me at this school was the teachers, who are truly superheroes. If you are looking into this school for your child, ask questions. Ask about what admin controls, why there are such small classes, why teachers keep quitting, what their gifted programs are, and how they plan to create a well rounded student.

I am leaving this review of this school because I have had now 2 years to think about my experience here, I came too MSD in 7th grade because my family, brother and I wanted a better education from the public school system we were in. We came across MSD and saw it as a good option to finish middle school for me and a good start for my brother, however we were wrong. MSD preached having all opinions accepted however when my brother and I presented our traditionally conservative beliefs they were shot down and we were told we were wrong. When it came to Issues like Covid 19 Personally I was very restricted in terms of travel even though at this time it was 100% legal in this state to travel to said destination without having the Covid vaccine. Not only was your expression of belief not allowed but it was punished, I will not go into this in respect for the school. The academics were also not good, there were no advanced Classes you could take, everybody was taking the same basic level math English science and history, going more into history, the actual history is said in a liberal way that gave children a bad image of the people that built the world by exaggerating small flaws that they had and making them look like terrible people, George Washington having slaves for example. the teachers would not hold you accountable or record your grades even though Montessori school of Denver advertised preparing you for the adult life. There was absolutely no highschool preparation and no accountability. Montessori had absolutely no phiisical conditioning as the only athletic thing you had to do was play a game outside once every few weeks when you had PE they also taught you that winning doesn’t matter as there was no winners in said games, giving kids the idea that you shouldn’t be competitive and strive to be the best. What I will give this school is that for me personally it taught me to deal with people I didn’t like or agree with which is a valuable skill. Since leaving our family is so much better, my brother is at a new school and thriving like never before. I went back and finished middle school in our district and Had a stellar 8th grade year with a perfect GPA. Since leaving middle school I am now attending a prestigious boarding school and thriving with 2 varsity sports and near perfect grade. Sometimes all kids need to be successful is a new environment

My eldest attended several years ago, and had a wonderful experience in ECE 4s and Kinder. My second child attended for both ECE 3 & 4. Their experience in 3s was great! Ms. Hilary is so kind and patient and caring. Their experience in 4s was... well, it left a lot to be desired. The new principal is trying a mixed age approach for the kids, which sounds great on paper, but by the time my child was at the end of the year in 4s, they were mixed with kids who were just barely 3 1/2, as well as kids who had already been 5 for months. That is a huge difference for children in terms of their development, and we were very disappointed that the class was handled more like daycare than an ECE program. Had we been given the choice to keep our kid in a standard age class we certainly would have done that, and it seems that they have maintained a mix of classroom types. Additionally, the classroom staff experienced a very high amount of turnover, and the second teacher of the year even left 2 weeks before the end of school, without any notice. It felt very inconsistent, and whatever support was extended by the principal was not communicated very well to the parents. However, we know other families who have been very happy throughout, so perhaps we just had an unlucky year. They are very good about forming a community, however, and the pickup/dropoff situation really helps foster friendships among parents as well as the school staff.