O'QUINN Schools of Porter Gaud

My oldest child started Memminger in CD-4 and will be graduating from this wonderful school this month. My youngest also started in pre-k, but moved to Buist for 3rd grade--which is not a move I would've opted for except we preferred Buist to our in-district middle school. All that to say, with Memminger becoming a Buist feeder school, the school demographics have shifted dramatically in this time--not necessarily for the better of the community and public, if you ask me, but I digress. What has been the same since we started, is the absolutely amazing, warm, inclusive culture at Memminger--thanks to truly amazing teachers, staff and administrators. This is a place where teachers seem happy and engaged, and everyone knows your child's name, whether they've had them in class or not. Dottie Brown was an amazing principle, and Cheryl Wash has been an exceptional vice and interim principal (who every bit deserved the full-time role, as I'm sure the vast majority of parents and educators would agree, but again, I digress). What you see on scorecards never gives a full picture. If I had used them to guide my decision about where to send my children, rather than my intuition, after visiting the school and getting to know the amazing educators and atmosphere (special shout out to Ms. Inabinet)I may not have sent my children to this wonderful gem of a school. My children both tested as gifted and have high 90th percentiles in iReady thanks in no small part to the excellent education provided by this school and the very dedicated educators. As a parent, I will miss this place tremendously--and I imagine the same is true of my kids.

I have been harassed by teachers and student and even the principal. DO NOT GO HERE

Stiles point has a large number of excellent teachers and our overall experience has been excellent.GreatSchools has a couple of errors or things I think are unfair.1) Security is excellent. Full-time guards are present and access is well controlled.2) GreatSchools marks progress low. This may be true, but it's based on students already performing at the top of the range. As the parent of a G&T student here, I would like to see more done to help overachievers reach their full potential, potentially even advanced classes moving them through additional grade levels without officially advancing them above grade age, but it's difficult to fault the school for being full of high performing students.It's odd to see JI Elementary rated higher here. In terms of raw scores, Stiles Point has a much larger percentage of students achieving at or above grade level than JI does. We've considered whether it would make sense to try to get our child into Buist and decided against it.

This is a wonderful school!! We have have 3 kids enrolled and couldn't ask for a better place for them to get a great education!! Great teachers and principal! I can't say enough good things about the he school and church. I'm a very proud supporter.