West Side Elementary School

The school has punished my child for reporting a physical threat made by another child. This heavy handed level of enforcement to groom children not to report harm is unacceptable. Its poor decisoning by the very inexperienced Principal. We are filing legal action.

Our experience at this school has been extremely disappointing, and the primary issue has been ineffective leadership—particularly at the middle school head and head of school level. Communication from administration has been a consistent problem. In our experience, emails to the middle school leadership often go unanswered, making it very difficult to address even basic concerns. On multiple occasions, the only way to get a response has been to go to the school in person without an appointment. Even then, concerns have felt dismissed rather than taken seriously.This lack of responsiveness and follow-through creates frustration for families and does not reflect the level of partnership you would expect from a school.More broadly, there appears to be a lack of accountability at the top. Instead of addressing ongoing concerns, leadership seems to reinforce the current approach, despite clear issues with communication and responsiveness.We have also observed signs of low staff morale and turnover, which further raises concerns about the overall school environment and leadership effectiveness.While there are teachers who care deeply about students, strong leadership is essential to support both faculty and families—and that is currently lacking. More and more of the strong teachers are moving on to better schools. The ones that are left are ones that seem to receive the most complaints from students and teachers. Based on our experience, I would not recommend this school to other families unless there are meaningful improvements in communication, accountability, and leadership.