Pepper Ridge Elementary School

Great School- the learning and ownership of students is AMAZING!

Spalding elementary was one of the biggest mistakes we made as parents sending our children here. They say they are a STEM school however over the course of the year my son did two stem assignments ( one was once a week for a couple weeks) When he asked why they don’t do more stem, he was told that was for the older children. Come to find out the older children for fourth and fifth graders also did not do much STEM. They are advertising the last week of STEM activities, they will do more STEM in the last week of school than they have done the entire year combined. If you were choosing Spalding elementary because it is a stem school, I would recommend finding a different school. Not only was it not a stem school as it was advertised and we believed, but there were major issues with the school itself. My child’s teacher has also told the students several times to “not snitch” about things that happen. This has been said so many times that my child has said they don’t want to tell me things because the teacher says “don’t snitch”. This is the worst thing to teach a child. We should encourage them to tell an adult if teacher if something makes them uncomfortable, hurts or if something bad happened. This is inexcusable. There were also instances where my child was physically hurt by another child. We noticed it when he had large scratch marks and bruises on him. At no point during the day was I called or notified by the teacher. When we called the teacher, we were told that she said she did everything she thought was right, and that she had taken care of it during the day but again my child was physically injured and assaulted by another student and no call was made. The parent should at least be notified of the situation, this happened on at least two occurrences.My child also told me that a student got a bloody lip during class with that same sub. The teacher would not allow the child to go to the nurse and actually got mad at them for bleeding. Told them to take care of it themselves. Not only should this not be a school of choice for West Ada it should not be a school choice for any parent. I would not recommend sending any child here at all.

The staff pretend they’re in high school themselves with their constant gossiping. They clearly don’t pay attention to who can overhear them, and the principal is particularly guilty. There are a handful of great teachers mixed in with several who treat their classroom as thought they’re looking for social media likes.

I went to the Village for middle school and it was absolutely horrible. They are supposed to be a seven healthy habits school however they do not encompass these beliefs. They do not ever remind people about events and they don't care about the students. The school never deals with misbehaving students which creates a toxic learning environment. Overall don't send your kids here unless you don't want your kids to learn anything and to learn that their actions don't have consequences.

My child was mistreated and bullied at this school. His teacher ruined his kindergarten experience by being negative and treating him poorly from the 2nd day of school. The principal has no regard of anyones feelings and after attempts to try to meet with her to fix the issues, we were told it was the teachers choice on what to do. We ended up pulling him out 3 months into school because he cried and begged not to go to school. He has always liked school before going here. The teachers do not use positive reinforcement. Other kids have been told they are bad. The safe school assistant does not even allow kids to talk at lunch and she thinks having a 5 year old sign a contract about recess rules is how to help them learn. What kids need is to be encouraged to make great choices and to be praised for making good choices.My son is at a different school in West Ada now and it is night and day how he is thriving and how the school staff is so positive or friendly.