Christa McAuliffe School

excellent school with friendly and qualified staff

This principle is the wicked with of the USA and the vice principal is her side kick in every way!

We heard over and over again that this was the best school in Jersey City and we were lucky to send our daughter here. Maybe it is a great school for average students, but if your child needs additional help because of a learning disability or because they happen to be gifted this school is not the place to foster his or her mind. The teachers have HUGE classes to manage. Our child is one of 28 first graders with one teacher in the classroom! The staff as a whole is very defensive and would rather defend their way of doing things than work as a team with a child's parents. If your child needs special accommodation, the school will do only the bare minimum of what is required of them and no more. Children are cooped up with only 2 recesses for the entire week and the schools test scores continue to slip. As an involved parent the word that most often comes to mind with the staff is incompetent. Look at the GreatSchool's rating - it speaks volumes! This school may have been the best in JC at one time but it is a shadow of that today.

I posted a review a few years ago and feel the need to update it. School was great for my child up until third grade, last year. She is special needs, and everything changed for her that year. She is not getting the services she needs to be successful, and as a result she is failling school, acting out and depressed. The curriculum is as unimaginative and dull as it gets, and any children who are gifted or 2E will not be challenged or engaged sufficiently (especially if, due to their special needs, they are not being invited to join extracurriculars). Often my child has done extra credit projects or put her heart into her work and it goes unnoticed. Other parents I know of special ed kids at this school also report the same very negative focus or unresponsiveness to their different learning styles as they enter the higher grades. The staff is patronizing, teachers have not always been personal and friendly, and a lot of the teachers do not even know how to spell... they leave lots of errors on my child's homework, including once misspelling the name of a major continent and ocean in a geography lesson! I am tired of fighting the system here and ready to just move OUT.

PS #28 is a great school. Dr Elder the current prinicpal is very effective and gets things done for the children and the school. Staff seem to really care about the kids. They follow school policies very strictly, therefore you don't see children out of control, or causing disruptions, and any inappropriate behaviour by students is handled appropriately and they involve the parents right away. The PTA could be a little stronger in getting parents involved, but they do reach out. Overall, I would say it's one of the top schools in JC.