Hartridge Academy

My child went from Pre-K through grade 5 at this school, so we are VERY familiar with how it functions. When my child started Pre-K, Hartridge was an excellent school! But over the years, we had witnessed it's unfortunate decline. The small class sizes have balloned, leaving little time for students who are struggling with a concept to fully grasp it before the teacher must move on. There is still the weekly tutoring, but this past year, the school was well into the second term before the tutoring slots were even assigned! The year was almost half over before I was even given the chance to speak with my child's teacher!

We were never allowed to purchase school supplies for our child. Instead, we were asked to pay a $50 fee at the beginning of the year to allow the school to purchase supplies. The issue with this is, in February, my child's class was still using the same worn out crayons and eraser-less pencils from last year. Other schools deal the individual supplies brought in by students, why is this so difficult for Hartridge? By allowing the parents to purchase their own supplies, it allows them to take advantage of all of those specials that the stores run at back to school time and get supplies for the entire year for much less than $50.

Please don't misunderstand my post. This is still a wonderful school with caring teachers. It is just not the same school that it once was. Basically, what you have here is a "good" school that was once a "great" school.

My daughter loves this school.

I disagree with the above statement. This is my childrens second year and they have taken many great field trips. Some examples last year they say the movie Earth, they went to a science/nature exploration park, and use their bus to go to the public library biweekly as well as to the sport complex for atheletic activities. This is a school that has small classes, interactive activities, individual tutoring assigned to ALL children each week and invite the parents to be a part of that time. I have been very pleased with the well rounded education and award winning stories that they have read.

This is clearly a school that does allow children to be children!  Their idea of a field trip is taking the school bus to Publix and lining the children up in a straight line for parent pickup (so that they can receive funding from the state for the bus).