Breck School

Do not come to Breck for Upper School only. They do not do a good job of assimilating new students. Policies are rigid and grading is all over the map. Facilities are excellent, but the culture of the school is problematic on many levels. There are better options.

Lots of teachers joined during the last few years, without much quality control. Many of them are simply bad. Some of them barely have a degree in community college. Some make tons of mistakes in their classes and handouts and are very good at confusing students. The school principal needs to be replaced. If you are on financial aid and in lower school, most likely you will be assigned a relatively weak teacher. If your kids are gifted, then most likely they will be treated like a headache instead of a treasure. It is not worth the tuition you pay. We want to move out.

Equally disturbing is the lack of generational heterogeneity on The Breck School Board. There are plenty of viable Board candidates amongst the high-accomplished, enthusiastic young Breck alumni who are generationally in touch with the vast majority of parents of current Breck students. Alternatively, the Breck Board needs to look no further than its remarkable Head of Upper School. Granting an impactful voice on the Board that is representative or, at the very least, inclusive of these alternative generational viewpoints is critical to the future success of the school.The self-serving, hollow manner in which The Breck School is endeavoring to address its diversity and inclusion shortcomings is indeed concerning. The school and its students would be far better served by meaningful, substantive action rather than public relations posturing. Search committees should be formed to identify, recruit, and hire indigenous faculty, educators of color, conservatives, and others holding distinctive viewpoints. Those experiencing intolerance, discrimination, or who are under-represented in the Breck community should have a responsive and accommodating support network that emboldens, rather than deters, them to share their experiences and marginality, and the Board should actively seek to generationally diversify its composition. The Breck School has a long and extensive track record of success. However, as the award-winning author Jim Collins writes in his well-researched and cogent analysis, How the Mighty Fall, hubris from success is often the first sign of the demise of once great organizations.

Haughty wannabes. Blake is far better academically and socially.

This story is a few years old, but one of the college counselors drove several hours (out of state) to make an appeal on behalf of a student who had been on the waiting list at a small liberal arts college. That's so far above and beyond, but I've seen teachers "go there" for kids on a regular basis. There's a lot of wealth at the school, but wealth does not equal undue influence. This is a school that told the Boy Scouts it would no longer sponsor a chapter because of its homophobia, and the school is on the right side of inclusiveness. There are plenty of chances for positive parental involvement and the school is proactive when dealing with social and academic issues to the extent that it is appropriate. We looked at several other private schools and made the right choice. All schools have issues and imperfections; Breck deals with its issues rather than wishing them away or pretending they don't exist.