McGraw Elementary School

Went to this school when I was younger. Teachers were rude and 100% picked favorites. Gym teacher was utterly disrespectful to both me and my brother. Most teachers didn't take certain matters seriously and allowed me to be harassed almost the entire time I attended. There were students that would physically harm others, including myself and teachers overlooked it constantly. There was a time that I was being physically harassed to the point that I ended up resorting to self defense. The kid never got in trouble but I got written up for it. The school was fun at first but as I got older, it slowly got worse. I'm a junior in high-school now, and I don't imagine this school has changed much since I left. Nobody is aware of this since they aren't currently attending that school like these children are. I can only hope that kids don't go through the same treatment that I, along with many other children did.

We have already seen one of our children thrive after several years at Johnson, and we're excited our younger son will start in the Fall. Every school in PSD is great but there is something special about the warmth and energy of this school.

I went to this school for four years, and every year has been a new, great experience. The PBLs are great, and there are so many nice teachers. Olander is definitely a school I would recommend.

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.