Saco Transition Program

The principal seems to be a great person who is truly doing her best, and our children have good teachers. However, the school seems to have financial issues. There are constant fundraising drives and the school receives a huge chunk of our taxes and yet we are asked to donate supplies on a monthly basis. The playground is embarrassing and dangerous in spots, and spills partway into an area where cars frequently drive. The PTA appears to function as a social club. Overall I feel they do their best but are up against a variety of issues.

This school says they have small class sizes, differentiate education, and can help kids who need an IEP. They didn’t have any of that. The pre-K class had well over 30 kids in it (with close to 30 coming on a daily basis), so it seemed like most of the day was spent in transitions (waiting for 30 kids to use the bathroom at once). My child was there for 6 months and they never figured out they could already read or do addition and subtraction. There were so many assistants and only one head teacher and they all had different expectations and reactions to behavior. We had an IEP going into the year and they kept saying they wanted to wait for a meeting to set up their own ISP until they knew her better, but they didn’t follow her IEP or agree to a meeting. They kicked us out after I formally requested a meeting because they “have asbestos in their ceiling and (my pre-k child) threw blocks at the ceiling.” No notice, just a call to tell us not to come back the next day. No goodbyes to teachers or classmates, nothing. The teacher even admitted she didn’t believe me when I told her what was needed. Even CDS offering more services didn’t change their mind. My child still has emotional scars from the experience and had months of nightmares. The things that were on her IEP were things that help all kids, like advanced notice about schedule changes, visual supports, and motor breaks. When we switched schools and they followed her IEP she was able to remain at the school without any additional supports than what she was getting at St. James. If you have a child with average intelligence and not a truly gifted child with the asynchronous development that comes with it, this is probably an okay school, but the classroom size is still way too large to really have much instruction time and they didn’t have all of the specials that were advertised like French lessons. Their reading instruction was also not science based. They were teaching the kids to look at the pictures to guess the words.

Excellent school. I will be very sorry to go.