Victory Academy

I wouldn’t recommend it. My daughter is being bullied, and unfortunately, the teachers either can’t or won’t step in to stop it.

Shady Hill is a good school, but it is not for everyone. We chose to enroll through school choice because of the school’s strong reputation, positive reviews, recommendations from friends, and long-standing record of academic success.However, we quickly learned that communication with parents is not one of the school’s strengths, especially when it comes to children who may be struggling. As active and involved parents, we repeatedly expressed that we wanted to work as a team because the ultimate goal is for our child to succeed. Despite this, social workers became involved and our child was sent to speak with a psychologist without our prior knowledge or communication.We were often told that someone would call us back, yet follow-up rarely happened, even when we attempted to contact the school ourselves through phone calls or ClassDojo messages.Additionally, throughout third grade, teachers rarely contacted us regarding behavioral concerns or struggles our child may have been having. Instead, comments were allegedly made to our child such as, “I hope the kids at the other school actually like you.” When our child attempted to apologize and take accountability for behavior, those apologies were reportedly dismissed with statements that staff were “too busy” to listen.Another disappointing experience involved Field Day. We were never informed that parents were allowed to attend and cheer on their children. As a result, our child came home upset that we were not there while many other students’ parents attended. Had we been informed, we absolutely would have participated.In our opinion, Shady Hill can feel like an exclusive-type school at times. When a child is facing challenges, transparent communication and genuine partnership with parents are essential, and unfortunately that was not our experience.

This school likes to advertise and preach they “meet the child where they are “ and that couldn’t be further from the truth. The teachers in most cases are below average and lack in communication. The entire school has communication issues starting at the front desk. The front desk lady is extremely rude , the head of the school is condescending and demeaning, the head of lower division and upper both have zero clue what is going on in the classrooms . There have been several instances where there needed to be communication with the parents and the parents were told not to communicate with each other or ask questions . In fact they will threaten you that it is against contract to talk to other parents about anything . If your child does not meet their standards as far as grades (I’m talking not failing but not As) they will find a reason to get rid of you to keep their reputation . This school costs entirely too much money to threaten parents that their child will not be allowed to return when the parent and child both work extremely hard to meet their expectations . I couldn’t be more disappointed with a school & want to save other parents from going through this . I have seen my confident girl go from happy & proud to sad and saying “I know I’m not as good of a reader as the other kids but I try really hard”. If we could remove our child from this school now we would but they threaten that we are in a contract for payments and will still be responsible for 100%. So we will continue through the year and then not return . I do not recommend this school

This place is absolutely terrible!! Send your child to a public school instead!

don’t send ur kids, horrible athletics, and they’ve run the school into the ground

My daughter has been at OCA since VPK. When she finished VPK, she could read. Now she's in second grade. Her GPA is 4.00 and she's always excelled on national tests. On the negative side, I think they're sometimes disorganized and don't have a good, engaging program for gifted children.