Winnona Park Elementary School

The despite the ways that they can improve, there were proud days, and not so proud days. They do try most of the time to make All children feel wanted, proud and to help them to grow in their learning skills. As a whole this school was good, and their teachers and staff do try. There are many schools that do not.

The school is good if your child is average terms of development and intelligence. If your kid is above neurodivergent in any way, this may not be the place. We're dealing with a highly intelligent child with a processing disorder and having no success in working with the school to make my child's experience a good one.

My child and our family did not have a good experience at Friends. We thought being a quaker school that it would be inclusive and that as parents there would be many opportunities to engage and volunteer. We found the parent committees to be cliquish and difficult to participate even in volunteerism that we signed up for. Generally the school is very disorganized when it comes to events and programming making it difficult for working families to have clear expectations that things would start on time, in the location indicated or at all in some instances. Supervision of children is lacking and safety is a concern specifically in transitions and during after school. There are many times when non-teacher adults are supervising the children. Academically, the children who do well are the children who learn easily and are taught at home otherwise, you will not see progress from your children's academic development (at least in the early grades). The high level leadership Head(s) of school have been smart, kind charismatic and caring. Mid level leadership are ill-equipped for their roles and do not have the skills needed to support teachers and foster a professional environment to work effectively with children and families. Due to the school's decades long issue (pre pandemic) with low enrollment and being a tuition driven institution they do not have the resources that other schools at this price point offer to children. They simply do not have much to offer in the creative arts, performing arts or sports. The facilities both inside and outside are in poor condition and generally are not inspiring. Teacher retention is a problem, as well as teacher attendance, throughout the course of the year each class heavily relies on substitute teachers to fill in for chronically absent teachers. This tells me that there is an issue in the health of the school as healthy schools keep teachers for years and years and they show up to work due to their passion for the work and the sense of accountability to their students. It is not unusual to have a teacher leave midway through the year. Friends has trouble retaining children beyond prek & K when other area options open up within the public or private school systems. In the older grades able attract children for whom other area schools did not work out and for them Friends is a refuge. The families that Friends attracts are lovely and the community, if they can retain them are their best asset

On paper and in theory, the school sounds like a great opportunity especially as the world changes rapidly and children deserve a slower, exploratory pace. However, in practice, the Waldorf School of Atlanta needs stronger and more balanced leadership, checks and balances for accountability, humility and courage when owning imperfections, transparency of expectations for all, and to sum it up: a trauma-informed education environment. While all schools will have inevitable challenges and mismatches, a seemingly progressive private school should be doing better keeping the children’s best interest at heart as it relates to relationship building and repair based on modern interpersonal relational practices, not on antiquated and questionable philosophies from which the school was created.

Much of our lives, we’ve been transplants from one big city to another, however after joining STM, we now feel at home, grounded and thrilled how well our son has progressed in this environment. We feel exceptionally pleased by the progress he’s made and the community feel we’ve experienced. We hope this is a powerful testament and reason for you child/ren to join STM. Simply love it! Thank you and see you soon!