Skelly Elementary School

Both of my children were bullied at this school, by teachers and students. The principal refused to address any issues I had.

Montessori is a wonderful form of education and it is effective in creating an environment that allows children to have internal validation in their works. The teachers will work alongside you to help your child. The teachers are very kind however there are some that could use a bit more training. The problem is the administration, they are ill equipped and under educated to keep up with the demands of running a school. There are promises made but no follow through. There is a lack of communication with parents about important matters but overcommunication with things not as urgent. There is a lack by the administration to truly engage families in community participation and heavily dependent on the families to find that community, two community events in an entire school year. In order to be a great leader it comes from the top and that is highly lacking. There is also not a standard of who is allowed to enroll so what ends up happening is you have students who have a higher level of care and those kids take away from other children. If you are interested in this school I would go in with hard questions and really research the quality.

I am writing this review because we had such a negative experience at MHPS. One of the Kindergarten teachers singled out my child and was incredibly mean to them. Years after going to this school, my child still has PTSD from their time with the teacher who fractured their self confidence. Yesterday, out of nowhere they mentioned that they did not understand why this teacher was nice to everyone but them. We could not get them away from this teacher fast enough but unfortunately other schools were full and my child had to wait out the rest of the school year with her. The other teachers in other grades were fantastic but this teacher was truly the cause of nightmares for my KINDERGARTNER. The teacher doted on the other children in the class but singled out mine. Crazy stuff like believing other children without doing due diligence to find out who was telling the truth, favoring certain children but super strict with mine, rewarding children that were advanced, inadvertently punishing kids that were not as fast. Putting pressure on the kids to get through the work as quickly as possible for the sake of test scores and alienating the ones that couldn’t keep up. For my child, this teacher was the leader of the mean girl pack, every bad teacher rolled into one. We were shocked and heartbroken that my child went from a loving experience in younger classes to this super strict setting just the next year. Even worse, the teacher never communicated anything that may be going on and she did not know my child (even in a small class setting,) writing in their report card for several quarters that they couldn’t tie their shoes even though they were tying them in double knots every morning. If I could give a negative star review I would. Shame on any “educator” that treats young children like this. I will never understand why the teacher did not move my child to a different classroom if she did not like them which is such a crazy thing to say about a teacher entrusted with young children. I worry about other children that this teacher may have done this to.