Thomas Jefferson Elementary School

Extremely high turnover for teachers, staff in general. In the last few years the school has lost more than one of their main teachers each year. Only two good ones remain. Unstable environment and constantly changing plans/layouts. They come up with new ideas each year, test them out, then realize these ideas don’t work, change again, etc. Very disruptive for the students to be in such a constantly changing environment. Controversial ideologies are implemented in the curriculum and parents are not given a choice to opt out. If the parents decide to pull their children due to the controversial curriculum, the school steals their $1500 deposit. Families have to pay a $450 “field trip” fee during enrollment for the next school year. During the school year, they cancel field trips left and right , basically stealing the money that the families paid for the field trips in advance. Refunds are never offered. They “charge” for certain field trips for example the Shedd Aquarium and then end up taking the students on a “Illinois resident free day” to the Shedd, which does not cost the school anything, except for the bus fee. They charged families for an overnight field trip to one of the museums ($85) and notified parents later that the museum was under construction and they could not attend the field trip. Nobody ever got their money back! Instead they hosted a “sleepover “ at the school to compensate. The school is run by an emotionally unstable Head Of School, with an enormous ego, who is not interested in any feedback, constructive criticism.

Holy Family Catholic Academy was the perfect school to prepare me for William Fremd High School. The schools rigorous math curriculum made the transition to high school math seamless, as Holy Family's Honors Geometry course in 8th grade is tailored exactly to the Fremd curriculum. For science, the state-of-the-art middle school science lab provided me with all the resources I needed to develop a strong understanding of scientific concepts, leaving me more than prepared for Honors Biology at Fremd. In English class, I benefited from Holy Family's low student to teacher ratio, which gave me the opportunity to have more one-on-one interactions with my English teachers. From these interactions, my writing has become more concise and I have developed writing skills essential for Honors English at Fremd. Overall, I could not have had a better grammar and middle school experience at Holy Family.