Sunset Valley Elementary School

Eden park was a great experience for us. The school has a very community feel. Parents are involved and the staff and administrators are responsive to concerns or needs. If your child needs afterschool care, however, I do not recommend the extended care that they offer. The staff is impersonal and rarely interacts with the kids. The word my son used to describe them is ‘mean’. There are lots of options for afterschool care choose literally any of them other than this one.

Cunningham has amazing teachers and small class sizes. Both the teachers are other students at school functions always seem so positive and accepting of everyone. Both my kids had amazing experiences and Cunningham for the last 4 years.The PEAS garden/farm is an awesome opportunity for learning and life-experience. The PTA is engaged and does a lot for school activities.

A hidden gem in South Austin! Registering at Joslin was the best choice we have made since moving to Austin. The administration is caring and helpful. The PTA goes above and beyond to make Joslin a fun and beautiful campus. The small community is special and incredibly welcoming. My kids have tons of after school enrichment to choose from and every teacher we have had genuinely loves and cares about my child and their success. Aside from english, Students can choose to learn in Spanish or Mandarin… or both! We love this school!

Dedication to excellence and developing every aspect of the whole child not just academics is clear at Odom. The office staff is very helpful and knowledgeable. You get a sense of belonging like a family; genuine care and concern for all students. The teachers have a way to include every student and diversify their teaching to accommodate all the different learning styles that make up their classes. The score of “4” is not reflective of all the great and positive things this school is doing and accomplishing. Your kid will feel welcome, comfortable and at ease to learn. Staff ensure the child’s needs are met beyond academics; honing in on their emotional and mental health as well.

My two daughters attend St. Elmo Elementary. It has a neighborhood feel with very involved teachers. The principal, Mr. Mac is very attentive to any questions or concerns and carries out his vision for improvements to the school promptly. My girls love all of their teachers and look forward to art, music, and PE. The school counselor provides special activities for social and emotional learning that the kids enjoy. Both of my girls are in the ESL Spanish classes, which have been wonderful opportunities to achieve fluency in English and Spanish. If one child needs extra help in an area, it has been provided promptly, and if a child is advanced in another area, the teachers have given the girls extra challenges. We love St. Elmo!

Fantastic small, affordable Christian school in central area of Austin

This is a hard review to write because our children have wonderful friends at AMS. their guides seem to mean well and want to care them. The problems are with the administration, which seems to have some sort of philosophical thing against actually communicating with parents about what is going on with our children. They talk about how they are "open communicators" but in reality when anything is not exactly the way they see it, parents will hit a brick wall trying to get information about what is going on. One of our children was bullied was bullied by a staff members' daughter who was much older than she was, and despite it happening repeatedly, the staff essentially refused to give us any real information about it. We heard the same thing from other parents about this same child and other staff children doing things like kissing younger children without permission, writing curse words on younger children's notebooks and making fun of them because they couldn't read it, and much more. These kinds of things happen at ANY school, but at AMS, the staff simply chooses to not tell parents that are involved. No written reports, no calls, nothing, even though they know about it. Many times parents only find out weeks later when children are anxious and only then, do we get the real story out of the school.They do this with learning issues too. They won't share things like reading assessments with parents, even if our child is behind, leading us to have to figure it out on our own or pay a tutor.Someone shared an internal handbook that finally explained WHY they act like this...It's NOT a religious school but apparently the staff think it's "an educational and spiritual community". it had things in it like telling assistants to "NEVER discuss with anyone outside of the classroom what you observe there"... now I know why I could never get any real information about my child's day.I thought my kids were learning Montessori not stuff like "Who of us, knowing our lover had left hidden a hundred messages, would not search fervently for those messages and read their every word with bated breath? Who of us, having read these messages, would not respond in kind?"... this is about cleaning a classroom! And this: "How do I become enlightened? Wash the dishes, cook the food, sweep the floor, and dust the house. Go not to the master seeking answers; go to watch him tie his shoes." I'm sorry, WHAT? The things they DON'T tell us is mind-boggling.