Hathaway Elementary School

The overall experience at Gause Elementary was not a positive one. The environment for my child was not ideal which was starting to effect him emotionally, to the point of him begging to stay home most mornings. A supportive environment is crucial for a child's success and Gause wasn't able to provide that for our son, who at times struggles to focus. The teacher and principal seemed to focus solely on his weaknesses during parent/teacher conferences with very minimal discussion of strengths, which left us feeling discouraged and frustrated. I could not put my child through another year there so we requested a boundary exception to another school, where he is actually thriving and likes to go to school. The new school has great teachers and a principal that actually care and give great support.

Be VERY Wary.......We chose this school for our daughter because of the strong academics, the small class sizes, and the individual attention that she could receive. In hindsight, we realize that we didn't pay enough attention to the social dynamics. To be fair, not every grade has issues in this regard, but the social dynamics in our daughter's classroom (and the two grades ahead of hers) were terrible, with countless mean and hurtful things said and done by the children daily. Multiple complaints by several parents to the principal and the board brought zero changes in this regard. Our daughter, who was targeted because she was "contaminated" because she was not Catholic, and 2 other children in a second grade class of only 8 children were severely bullied by the children of employees and a board member, which is why we believe the principal and the board took no action in this regard. Consequently, both we and one other family had to remove our children before the school year ended. We filed complaints with the Archdiocese, but they have little jurisdiction because this is a Tier 2 school, the only one in the state of WA. In addition to these things, homework is routinely 1.5 hours per night starting in second grade, which is too much. When we inquired about this and the plan to address the social dynamics before re-enrolling our daughter in second grade, Tamar Parker assured us that there would be no more than 45 minutes of homework per night and that they had a plan to address social issues--both of which things were patently false--in order to get us to sign the contract. DO NOT SIGN THE CONTRACT, which says that you will pay the entire tuition amount, even if you remove your child from the school. Despite assurances to the contrary, they routinely legally pursue that money from anyone that leaves for any reason because they are SO financially desperate due to steadily declining enrollment for the last five years for all the reasons cited in this review. As a further consequence of this, fund raising efforts are "off the charts," and you will feel like you have a full-time, unpaid job with all the volunteer hours and other things they ask you to do. Best advice based on our experience=choose a different Catholic school. The benefits definitely do not outweigh the costs, especially if your child ends up being bullied or mistreated as well.

My daughter attends this school, and she really likes the friends and the teachers in this school.Teacher always motivate students and leave reasonable homework for kids to consolidate the knowledge.