Prep Academy

For years I defended Principal Jenks and gave leadership the benefit of the doubt. Columbine is a complex school serving a diverse community with competing needs, and I believed that deserved patience and grace. I can no longer defend it. When your best teachers leave and you replace them with far less experienced ones, that's indefensible. When the parents who most vocally defended her are now privately saying she needs to go, that's indefensible. At some point the evidence speaks for itself and we've reached the point that Columbine will now take years to recover from this mass exodus of our best teachers. The K-2 teachers at Columbine are wonderful and the data shows it. Or they were — because they're all leaving. After that it gets complicated. Third grade has been a revolving door for years (4 years now of long term subs in the classroom) and 4th and 5th grade are failing kids academically. The root cause isn't the teachers — it's leadership. Chronic instability, high staff turnover, and a culture where raising legitimate concerns gets you managed rather than heard (or for teachers - fired or let go through the budget cuts). If you question anything publicly, all of a sudden, you have the Principal Jenks' supporters privately saying - come on, she's trying her best. Columbine Elementary is a great neighborhood school that deserves far better leadership than it currently has.

I definitely recommend the ECE program at this school. Our three year old daughter attended this school 2023-2024 school year. We were sent there through the Child Find program for continued support for speech delays. Our daughter had separation anxiety as well. Ms. Claudia Valle the main ECE teacher is just absolutely amazing. She has like 30 years of experience and she just knew how to calm our daughter from day one. She helped her tremendously with expressing her needs using words and we feel forever grateful for the kind of support our daughter received at this school. We have been to a private school before that and our daughter was really not seen there. We had our doubts when assigned to this school but wow, how one teacher can change the course of a child’s life and positively influence the developing psyche of a young learner with challenges.

The staff is really disrespectful including the principal she is the worst it seems that instead of caring for there students they only care about just sitting around doing nothing the regulations for this school is a total joke starting with the uniforms the students are there to learn and it seems that principal cates more about how there uniform looks the school overall is terrible specially because the building is so old it seems that as soon as you walk in the school its going to fall down

I totally love the culture in Cole. My children love how teachers treat them. The principal is open to talk if any issue is happening. They are really supportive with their students and families. My kids are reading above grade level. The academic level is getting better everysingle year!!!