Rocky Mountain Deaf School

We left at the end of the 2018-2019 school year. After years of an overall positive experience, things changed fast and even before the worst of it happened I had resolved myself to looking for a new school for our kids. It all started when they placed my twice exceptional child in a class with a brand new teacher - she had never taught before and knew nothing practical or legal about special education or GT kids and it showed. She was gone nearly every Friday out of town for a wedding. My daughter experienced bullying and instead of handling it the principal said of the bully “she will get hers eventually.” Not what anyone likes to hear from school leadership. There was a weird push to participate in the Leader In Me program which is a child version of a self help course used by corporate professionals. There was PTA drama where the group was split in two and made it impossible for those of us trying to help students actually do our part. I tried to stay out of it and ended up getting yanked in by one of the most conniving parents involved. When I stood up for myself, my kids and I were shunned. Which was fine, because we were already done there. A shame that a school that experienced such an incredible turnaround and Renaissance period was so short lived and ruined within only six years. I feel as though the pandemic played a small role - we saw the writing on the wall well before Covid happened. Covid merely accelerated the inevitable. Everything so many parents and teachers worked to build is basically gone. Plenty of amazing teachers quit or were pushed out between 2015 and 2020. A friend visited this week to consider the school for her child who will begin kindergarten in August and she was not impressed. The latest rumor is the school is going to be absorbed by another one due to low enrollment. All the people credited with making this school “great” left it behind and have political careers, and still pat themselves on the back for the work they did there. Well the work didn’t hold up, so that should tell you something.

Hi! I’m an alumni from this school. My personal recommendation? Don’t send your children here.From kindergarten to fifth grade I attended Governor’s Ranch Elementary, and I am genuinely traumatized from those years. From the age of 6 until I was around 10(?) I believe? I felt alienated and abandoned by both the peers, and the teachers who were supposed to protect and support me. The teachers, in my experience, were awful to children with disabilities if those disabilities happened to fly under the radar, and many of them talked down to me and other students in their class for not understanding concepts. My social skills never developed because nobody would talk to me. The teachers are cliquey, so because my mom said one wrong thing, none of the teachers children talked to me. And none of them really liked me either. Nobody stepped in, and I will never recover from the lasting trauma this school left me. If I do, it will take many years of my life. I developed severe depression before I even knew what that word meant.Do not send your kids here.

Couldn't have had a worse experience. Reluctant to leave the full review until my kid is finally completely out of the school later in the year at which point I will come back and leave a comprehensive review. But would be doing a disservice to parents considering it now for their kids for next year. Run like a business where the kids are the product! Much more to come...