Experimental Education Unit

TOPS is a good school, there is a really great band and orchestra program. Also middle school science is really cool the students do actual experiments and they learn a lot. Also there is a Deaf/Hard of Hearing program.

We are in our fourth year as members of the UCDS community and it's been a great fit for our family. Our second grader is happy to go to school, in part because the teachers are really good at making learning fun. Her teachers have done so much to scaffold her emotional self-regulation skills. The school has also helped her a lot with developing pro-social and conversational skills, especially via the oracy curriculum for first and second graders and also lots of ad hoc conversations the teachers facilitate between friends to work through disagreements. The school intentionally gives kids lots of opportunities to get to know other students outside of their primary classrooms. My second grader is extroverted and does well with this aspect of school. It can be a lot for some kids, definitely, but I'm told that by the time they get to fifth grade everyone knows everyone and it's a strong, close-knit group of kids.One highlight for my child was when she got to go to all school meeting. Each kid gets to take a couple turns at some point in the year going to all school meeting, which is a weekly meeting with representatives from each classroom in which they discuss important issues facing the school and faculty help them decide what actions to implement. My kid felt so empowered getting to raise a topic that her classmates had been discussing in their class meetings.The former head of school retired at the end of the 2024 school year. Jen, who was assistant head of school for many years became the head of school, and they brought in Deborah as the new assistant head of school. This leadership change has brought wonderful refreshing energy to the school. They listened to families and are introducing a revised and more robust math curriculum for the third through fifth graders this year. There are now two teachers in each classroom instead of one, which helps the teachers have more bandwidth to support students.

Our daughter has been at U-Coop for Pre-K and we've been super impressed with the program and community. We enrolled our daughter to get her more social exposure as well to transition her to a classroom environment.The teachers are qualified and purposeful, yet friendly and laid back. They started introducing the incoming class to the environment during the application process (yes, it started there - purposeful!) as well as at the start of the year. While Pre-K is "student led", it's clear from the daily communication that the teachers proactively use student-chosen topics as a foothold to engage various "hard" topics like science, reading, and math. The teachers were also super empathetic and helpful when we had some behavioral things happen during the year.The community has also been great. Compared to our past schools, U Coop stands out in how parents willingly engage with each other and welcome new families. As it's a coop, there are plenty of opportunities to engage with the entire school. There are also plenty of regular events (like all school sing on Fridays), special events (like mud fest), as well as parent organized events (like parent meet ups), and an active WhatsApp group for each class for parents to support each other. It's not one size fits all, but there's definitely a lot of options to engage depending on your style and what you can manage. I can also be working full time and not be able to go to all the events and know I'm not being judged.We are super happy here and would highly recommend the school!.