Meadow Lane Elementary School

Where can I begin? My older son attended this school from preschool to the middle of first grade. I am beyond dissatisfied with them on several levels.
Our Meadow Lane experience started with the preschool. They weren’t great, but not terrible either. The preschool teachers were somewhat dense, but usually nice and I liked that they engaged the children in learning based play (as a preschool should). I disliked that they misspelled things on almost every pamphlet or poster that was created by them, and used awful grammar as well. They’d often spell things with apostrophes where they weren’t needed and were fans of unnecessary quotation marks. The misspelled words were a little much also. I know, I know, it’s PRESCHOOL, and none of the kids were even old enough to notice, but still, these are TEACHERS. Have some standards! I am not picking on them for nothing, either; this was consistent and downright embarrassing.
Now, onto kindergarten. The teacher was cold, very short, and seemed preoccupied. I am not an overly involved parent. I worked during this time, more than most single parents, but I still wanted to be involved and know what was going on with my child’s school. One day I asked if I could come in the class for a quick second and look at it (15 minutes BEFORE the school day had begun), the teacher coolly told me that she required 24 hours notice before a parent enters the class room. This was unnerving to me, to say the least. I got somewhat upset, but remained polite and calm and told her I understood but that I wouldn’t stay and just wanted a peek at the room (and to be honest I wanted to speak with her for a minute also, I was a nervous mom and this was my first child in public school). I was met with a firm ‘No’. I almost cried because I was so caught off guard! I worked extremely long hours and was overwhelmed at being a newly single parent and felt like I was so out of control of this situation. The woman was not very warm or reassuring at all. I signed up to go on one of the class field trips and she sent a note home saying that all of the positions by parents had been filled and I could not go. This was also very frustrating and being in such a fragile state of mind during this time, made me very upset. I accepted it though, what else could I do?
Over the next few months I was notified that my son had been repeatedly reprimanded in her class for being disruptive. I am not being biased when i say my son is well behaved. He has never had issues before or since this teacher. He was continually being sent to the chair for misbehaving children. When I brought it up to her at the parent teacher conference that he may have been acting up somewhat because I had just started working 16 hour days four days a week and his father had recently left our household and had no contact, she seemed disinterested and very cold. Almost bitchy. I was so frustrated. If I had the means to I would have switched his school right there.
The principal vehemently denied him switching classes, but seemed like a nice lady. She did not want to switch him, which I should have probably pushed harder for, in retrospect.
First grade we had no issues, he was doing well in class and better all around. But it was during this time that I learned some very disturbing things. The year prior a teacher had allowed her husband into the classroom and he allegedly looked up pornography on the school computers in the classroom. He also took photos of some of the female children. This man was a local CHP officer and ended up being arrested on other really serious charges. But that teacher remains there to this day. Yet I was not allowed inside of my own child’s kindergarten classroom for FIVE minutes. Ridiculous.
During that year a teacher was fired for bringing meth, marijuana and alcohol to school. Awesome.
I was finally able to better my financial situation and move to an area where my child could go to a better school, and he’s been doing amazing there (Turtle Bay in Redding). I would never, ever recommend this school to anyone for any reason.