Madison Elementary School

We have two kids attend Garfield, five years apart in age, and love the school!

I love this school. They are reasonable, understanding and care about kids’ learning, and they listen to parent concerns. We want to move to have a larger lot but I’m really struggling with the idea of moving my child from this school.

The problem here is that the big donors get the best treatment for their kids. I felt discriminated for not being part of the church, for not donating and volunteering enough.i find the school very cliquey and always felt some parents and kids were left out.if you go there, make sure you have plenty of money and are being part of the church . Be aware of the space you’re gonna get for your child, as what they offer is not great!

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.