North Thurston High School

I am extremely disappointed with Pleasant Glade Elementary School. My experience with this school has been frustrating from start to finish. Communication from staff is inconsistent at best important updates are often missed or sent out at the last minute, leaving parents scrambling.One of my biggest concerns is the lack of attention to student safety and bullying. Incidents don’t always seem to be addressed in a timely or effective manner, and it often feels like concerns are minimized rather than taken seriously. No parent should feel uneasy about their child’s well-being while they’re at school, but unfortunately that’s been my experience here.The level of organization within the school also seems lacking. Policies are unclear and sometimes enforced unevenly, which creates confusion for both students and parents. When I’ve tried to raise concerns, it felt like there was little follow-through or accountability.Additionally, the overall environment did not feel as supportive or attentive as I expected. Students who may need extra help don’t always seem to receive the attention they deserve, and that’s troubling in an educational setting.I really wanted to have a positive experience here, but unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case. I hope the administration takes these concerns seriously and works toward improving communication, consistency, and most importantly, student safety.

My daughter has been attending ORLA for her sophomore year. She feels the environment is fun, engaged, positive and honoring of various learning styles and needs. While we wish it were more ethnically and culturally diverse, we do appreciate the neurodiversity, gender diversity (not just girl/boy), and socioeconomic diversity. This is an interesting blend of alternative school, home school and traditional public school. I love the mission, really addresses a need in the community where kids might otherwise “fall through the cracks”. The class offerings are a good mix of core classes and fun electives like yearbook/media production, pottery, and theater. We have seen our daughter thriving academically and the monthly progress accountability checks seem to help. She is a self-motivated learner and I do wonder how kids who are not self-starters are able to keep up with assignments as it does seem like there may be some wasted instructional time while the class “goofs off” (social time?) and there ends up being a lot of homework time needed at home as a result. But that might not be the case for all kids - mine tends to get caught up in having fun with friends. To be honest, this is tipping the scales for my kiddo in a direction she needed after missing out socially during the pandemic and following years. Overall we are quite happy with our experience here and wish we could have enrolled her earlier and lived closer so we could be more involved in the school community.