Coyote Ridge Elementary School

I’m a parent of a student at Cottonwood Plains and we’re very happy with the school. The teachers are dedicated and always look out for the kids. Communication with parents is good. It’s a place where he feels safe and motivated.

My child has been a student at Laurene Edmondson for K-5 years. The staff is amazing.

Both of our children attended McGraw from kindergarten through sixth grade, and we couldn’t have asked for a better experience. It was clear that every teacher truly loved their job and cared deeply for our daughters — they still enjoy going back to visit! McGraw did an excellent job preparing them for middle and high school, both academically and in building their self-confidence.The school provided countless opportunities for them to explore their academic interests and develop the confidence to share their learning with others. We also loved the strong sense of community, fostered through events like International Night, the spring dance, music performances, and a wide variety of after-school clubs — including running, Legos, robotics, chess, art, and band.Simply put, McGraw loved our kids — and we loved McGraw.

They have done a great job supporting my daughter on an IEP for Autism

We are starting our 2nd year here and we absolutely love it. We were a bit nervous about the school because it's a 30-minute drive for us, but after last year, we know we'll continue to make the drive for the next 5 years so both our children can go! We watched our daughter grow from a child who could never entertain herself into an extremely imaginative, confident, self-directed person who takes great pride in the "work" she does - at school and at home. To answer the concerns I've read in other reviews... Re: phone not getting answered... It's true. No one is on staff purely for administration, so every teacher is focused on what they're supposed to be doing - teaching. If you really need to get ahold of them, they say to keep calling (they'll notice and realize it's an emergency,) or text. I've found both of these suggestions to work just fine. Teachers being instructed "not to talk about the child's day": they actually talk about this in the handbook. The Montessori approach respects children as fully-formed human beings and the teachers believe it's rude to talk *about* someone right in front of them. If there's anything you need to know - they'll call or write a note.

My son is in Mrs. Purdue's Pre-K 4 class this year. This has been one of the best decisions we have made for our son. He has only been there for about 2 months but he has learned so much already. They have learned phonics, cursive handwriting, several songs, and proper classroom behavior. He loves going to school. He even loves the after school program with Mrs. Ackers. I can't believe this is one of the most affordable preschools in Fort Collins! It's definitely worth more than what I pay!

We cannot in good conscience recommend this school, especially the primary program, to families. We absolutely love our lower elementary teacher, which was the one bright spot at this school. We’d heard some horror stories from other families about the administration, but honestly our love of the Montessori method blinded us to some glaring issues at this school (we transferred from a wonderful out of state AMI program), and we’d hoped we’d be the exception at this school.Our horror story started with the police being called on our primary aged child, because him and another child decided to “explore their body parts” (as experts note is common especially among the 3-6 age range) but it did not stop there. The school continued to escalate the issue after concerns were brought up on how the issue was being addressed and showed little empathy or understanding towards the families who had shared to the school that their response had been extremely traumatizing. We brought in a childhood therapist to the school to help the school better handle developmentally normal behaviors for this age group. The feedback we received from this licensed medical professional was she only received arguments from the school about their credentials to diagnose “concerning” behaviors. This is in line with the sort of complaints we were hearing from other parents, that ANY behavioral concerns were treated with a completely inappropriate response and parents who’ve brought up concerns to the administration were treated with a dismissive and almost passive aggressive attitude from the head of school. This has resulted in a rather high turnover rate in recent years in both students and staff.