Volunteer Comprehensive High School

This is not the worst high school in the world, but if you move here from another town, be prepared to deal with a very inefficient administrative system. Forget about return phone calls, don’t count on them sending things when they say they will (happened several times in different instances throughout the year). Getting registered was a FIASCO. Took two weeks just to get my daughter registered! (One of the issues was they kept waiting for her disciplinary record, only to finally realize she had never had any discipline problems.) Regarding credits, college, records, special programs, you will have to find out information yourself, you will have to guide them, and you will have to follow up. Also, I didn’t have to deal with special education, but a friend did and the administration seemed clueless about needs and rights and what’s available. Speaking about clueless, don’t expect much help developing your kids schedule or financial aid assistance or college advice or with getting transcripts sent. We were spoiled with my daughter’s guidance counselor in NY who was sooo helpful with college stuff — and this guidance counselor (Buddy) was clueless in every sense and no help whatsoever. If it wasn’t for my older’s daughters excellent guidance counselor experience, I would have no idea about fee-​waivers for ACT’s and college applications and a million other things guidance counselors have privy knowledge about. «Buddy» was the worst counselor compared to any counselor my (six) kids have ever had, and I’ve waited until my daughter graduated to complain, although I did request a change in counselor at one time but got a brush-​off response «we’ll see» «it depends» until my daughter asked another counselor who kind of rudely said «I have way too many kids.» If you have kids that go here, follow up on EVERYTHING and research everything yourself, ask other people for their experience. Insist on a counselor other than Buddy as soon as you can. I should have nagged more instead of relying on them to do what any other normal school would do automatically. My kids are now 27, 25, 22, 20, 18 and 11. I’ve dealt with a lot of school administration departments. Volunteer High School was definitely the most inefficient. As far as education is concerned — meh — my kids have had better, my kids have had worse. It really depends on the teacher and we’ve had good and bad everywhere. I do believe this school has a good ROTC program and it’s my understanding they have a decent vocational «track» kids can take. The graduation ceremony was the best cause it was outside on the football field, short and fun! This school did have a lot of snow days, which we often laughed at (especially being from ski-​country in NY), but the windy-​hilly roads a lot of students live on do get very icy, so often it was understandable, other times it was ridiculous. But hey — a day off is a good thing for a lot of people. Kids are in school too much anyhow. I don’t think you have to worry about your kids getting killed at this school or anything, and there’s drugs here like there is everywhere else. Oh, one good thing that’s nice is that police direct the traffic on the highway when school starts and when school lets out. My advice boils down to this: Get a good grasp on what you need, know you’re rights, don’t depend on them, follow up on everything, and double check everything — and don’t let your child have «Buddy» as a counselor.