Burr Elementary School

(This review is about my experience in Burr Elementary and its questionable approach on bullying)As a former student at Burr Elementary School all I can say is this left me traumatized at how insecure and vulnerable I felt. I was not only bullied but the staff basically did nothing about it, and even when I told my parents, their complaints did nothing about the situation. My bully and his friend group basically went on with life unpunished for their actions. If you want to know some of the things they said then here’s a list:“Are you fat because your mom’s fat?” -followed by childish laughter-“If your last name is ‘#####’ then burn me!” -more childish laughter-There’s a lot more.My main bully’s mom was completely delusional about her son bullying another kid. And when she confronted me she kept saying how her, precious, smart, amazing son could never bully someone and silenced me when I told her the details.Later on, my principal at the time, called me to the office and lo and behold there was my bully, principal, and teacher. This was basically an intervention to stop the bullying and forced my bully to apologize to me. Clearly this encounter didn’t work and was still bullied for being the fat, ugly, girl with basically no friends.I later on moved to the suburbs and have never come face to face with any of my bullies but as of this year (2023) the bullying has resurged as something else, isolation. My psychiatrist and therapist think I’m lucky to still not have a suicidal mindset, need to hurt myself or others, or doing drugs because of all the bullying and isolation I’ve gone through.I really hope Burr Elementary can do something about its bullying issue that clearly didn’t help me and I hope no other kid has to go through what I did. No one deserves to be bullied for how they look.

School is great in adapting to children's learning styles.

I am a former student here and the school is not about who’s bullying who they just simply ignore the student(s) being bullied then that will keep happening thing is the only people who would even listen we’re my parents. This school was the worst and I’m glad I moved away from this awful place.

I'm going to start with the good. The Friends of Burr and the PTO work really hard to do nice things and put on cool events for the students at Burr. The music program and the after-school classes are good. They also have a nice Japanese language program, but that's about it. Now, the bad. There is a lack of respect for students and parents at this school. Many of the teachers here are stressed out and yell at their students and that is just wrong. The principal is not transparent and implements rules that she does not discuss with the parents. She also treats certain children better than others and punishes students differently. I don't think the students feel welcomed by her. As a parent, I don't feel welcomed by her at all. I feel that the principal is annoyed by most of the parents and I think many of the parents are afraid of saying anything to the principal about her behavior for fear of retaliation on their children. The school is also not diverse. The administration and most of the teachers here are white women, while the support staff are people of color. The principal needs to hire a diverse administrative and teaching staff, reflective of the student body and frankly, the world. It would be nice if there were more male teachers at Burr as well since the number of female teachers far outweighs the number of male teachers. That said, there are many racial issues at this school and instead of the principal addressing them right out, the parents pull their children out of the school and send them elsewhere. The principal never addresses the racial issues at this school and the racial issues continue to play out in the classrooms and on the playground. It makes me sad to write this review, but this is the truth. Here are some things Burr could do better though. One, hire a diverse staff. Two, treat the parents with respect by being transparent. Three, empower students by treating with them respect as well. Give the students some autonomy to make decisions and stop yelling at them. Four, be consistent in the way you treat the student body. Five, update the bathrooms. Six, follow your own rules and be kind. Seven, create a feeling of inclusion amongst the student body and teaching staff. Eight, create a "find a friend area" for recess and encourage students to play with whoever is sitting in that area, always. Nine, a mini-Olympics contest amongst the grades. Ten, balls and other things to play with during recess. You can do it.

My child has attended Burr from K through now 2nd grade. She loves it, and we've also been very happy with the responsiveness of the principal and the staff. We have been extremely impressed as well at how they have prepared and cared for students during remote learning. The curriculum at this age has been pretty traditional (math, reading, spelling), with a nice focus on community and diversity as well as emotional well-being. I wouldn't mind a bit more STEM as my child progresses, but I have no complaints and am overall very satisfied.