Park West School

While I understand many families have positive experiences at this school, our experience was unfortunately quite different. In our experience & opinion we found the principal's professionalism to be lacking. She dismissed our concerns about our child being bullied & shared negative & inaccurate information about our child both verbally and in writing with other parents. She also disclosed inappropriate information to me about the other students including grades, behavioral issues, mental health and personal details. It's our feeling the principal displayed clear disdain for our child & our family, which we feel was evident in her interactions with us & others. We heard from a few parents who felt the principal was intentionally creating division.Furthermore, it's our opinion & belief there was negligent supervision regarding the bullying our child endured. There were instances when our child came home with bruises and ice packs from the school nurse due to being struck by another student. The principal failed to notify us when our child was injured the last time & ignored the part of our emails that sought information about it. When we inquired about the verbal bulling we were told, "We don't do anything about that in in jr. high." This contradicts the school handbook, which states that all bullying is to be taken seriously. The principal's dismissive tone & admission that she hadn't taken our concerns seriously didn't help the situation (in our opinion). The bullying escalated to the point where our child received text messages that the Archdiocese advised us to report to the police (these messages were received immediately after we left the school). Despite this, the Archdiocese supported the decision to allow those who participated in this inappropriate behavior to remain in school while our family was asked to leave for "other" reasons. The Archdiocese acknowledged that both sharing student information & allowing bullying are against the law, & is why they would not explain why the students they told us to report to the police were allowed to remain & our family had to leave. We also observed other instances of what we perceived as maltreatment, such as unfair academic advantages given to certain students and inconsistent disciplinary actions. Such as allowing a student who threatened gun violence with police involvement to remain in school & return the following year to graduate while others are asked to leave for far less serious infractions.

Very cliquey school. They make a lot of important decisions without ever consulting parents who are paying tuition. If you are looking for a legalistic, average school, this is it.