LEAF Charter School

The lack of demographic information about the success of low-income and disabled students is very telling. As someone from both of these communities, my experience at Gilsum Elementary (before it was a STEAM academy) was repressive and invalidating. In 1st grade I was being evaluated for autism and receiving 1:1 time with the counselor, but when she moved and they hired a new counselor, this was brought to a halt, because she “didn’t want to.” Despite being bullied for a variety of manifestations of my income and learning differences throughout my time at Gilsum (and Sullivan, per the school system at the time) it was quite literally never addressed. Whenever I brought it up I was told it was “just a misunderstanding,” and several times I even got in trouble for standing up for myself. The curriculum was often mind-numbingly boring for me because I was very book smart. However, I almost never completed homework due to my home life and executive dysfunction. This red flag was ignored, and a teachers aid who followed my class for several years consistently bullied me for being so far ahead of the class and my lack of social skills. My younger sister and I were very much failed by this school system. I’m sure many of the teachers are different by now, so I will leave my poor experiences with them out. I did have several wonderful teachers, and my younger sister and older brother thoroughly enjoyed having Adrienne Noel (current principal) as a teacher (I never had her). Because the very biased counselor I dealt with has left, I will leave you by pointing out that the number of kids per counselor is double the state average. At-risk kids will continue to get left behind until this is resolved.