Bess T Shepherd Elementary School

Don't send your child here if they are special needs they will lie to you and tell you they follow IEPs meanwhile expecting you to be on call at any given time to "tell your child to do their work please" what's the point of my child getting an education with people trained in the field if they can't follow a simple iep OR offer special needs transportation they can't give a simple answer on how to provide it for my child. This school is horrible my children have never had the terrible grades they currently have until now . Disgraceful. School board needs to investigate why they can only provide education to non-special education children. My children also don't feel safe as they keep witnessing children jump each-other and assault each-other. It's disturbing this is how they handle their students.

I have been so blessed to have my children there. They have grown so much academically and actually enjoy going to school everyday! Highly recommend!

We were initially very impressed with the admissions process and start of the school year. It quickly deteriorated from there. It was not a good fit for our pre-k child who had difficulty adjusting to a new environment and structure. He has a new life changing medical diagnosis, changed schools and a baby brother born 2 weeks after school started. So difficulty adjusting is expected…he’s also a four year old boy. He had some disruptive behaviors during learning time that we agreed were problematic and very understanding of their frustration that very clearly came across. We worked on changes at home but adjustments on the schools end were not made or at least we don’t know if they were. Instead of helping us find a better fit for him or even giving us a heads up we were called into the school at 1:45 and told he could no longer return but they would stop our payments, as if that was our concern. After being kicked out I met with the head of school, principal & VP and recommended a counselor for future students and the head of school said, “we’re not going to do that”. I also expressed having to start anxiety medications due to the number of emails and pressure from the school to which the head of school replied, “sometimes people need medicine”. I cannot speak for the higher grades but if your child has difficulty adjusting or special needs I would not recommend their program. It’s very cookie cutter and if you don’t meet their standards it’s obvious it’s your problem, not theirs and the resolution is purely on your end, not a team effort. The way they spoke to me about my child made me believe something was wrong with my child. He went to a new school and we’ve had no issues. There was a trigger at Grace that they didn’t seem to care about or help figure out to try to fix the problem. Again, we were made to feel it was my child’s fault. I’m incredibly disappointed in the “grace” we were given and received, especially for a Christian school. It was clearly not a good fit for my little guy. I can only hope future families have a better experience and something was learned from this. I will give credit where it is due and say We were not disappointed in the curriculum. I can speak positively on their desire for children to learn.

We saw issues with teachers not able to teach the classes they are in. We ended up getting a tutor for one class who coincidentally graduated from Boyd. We did not have any administrators or teachers show up to sports. We also saw staff lie about students and when confronted, play the victim game. I believe in absolute truth as a Christian but this school believes in whatever makes itself look good. We didn’t see any of this at first but after a few years it was very clear.

My daughter has been a student at St.Nicholas school for 6 years. We would not take her anywhere else. This school teaches each child individually. She is so much more advanced educationally and socially then other children her age that do not attend St. Nicholas. She has learned to be independent, and accountable. We would highly recommend this school for your child. You will never regret it.