Reston Montessori School

I would give this school negative stars if I could. My son recently attended Reston Montessori for 3 months in Spring 2013 to determine it was a good fit for him. We determined it was not. I question the integrity and ability of the staff — especially the upper school teacher and the academic therapist. They barely did math or science and I think I spent more time talking to the upper school teacher about her health issue than how my son was performing in the class. In my opinion, she seems disorganized and not very brighter herself. I don’t think my son received much instruction. My son also has dyslexia, and one of the reasons we chose the school was chose the school was because they have an academic therapist on staff who could work with him. Although she said she could work with him 3 times a week, it turned out to be more sporadic –down to 1 time a week– which isn’t good for dyslexics. So, we just continued doing the reading program that we were doing at home. Also the academic therapist told me that there are kids that are probably dyslexic in the school, but they haven’t told the parents. So if you are a parent at the school, make sure you truly understand how your child is doing because these people may not tell you.
My son did have an easy transition to the school, got along with all the kids and didn’t have any issues. His report card showed good marks in everything — behavior and academics. (although reading, writing and spelling were lower due to his dyslexia). However, the teacher told me my son could read better than some of the other kids in the class that were older. And, she was telling me not to worry about the reading since it seemed that my son was doing fine. She told me he was more advanced in math and if he went there the next year he’d be with the older kids in a higher math level.
When we moved and decided to apply and enroll my son in another private school that went up to 12^th grade and had great supports for dyselxics, as well as sports, the upper school teacher wrote a teacher recommendation that ranked my son in most things in the «fair» and «poor» categories for my son. This was very different from his report card and everything she told me about my son. For instance she gave him a «3» for Works Independently (which means developmentally appropriate), but then gave him a «Poor» on his recommendation. She also did this for several other areas. She also put in the recommendation that my son worked with the academic therapist– making it sound like she worked with him all the time — which wasn’t the case since she wasn’t available. Also, she gave my son a low ranking for «integrity». She also wrote in «Okay», just above «not trustworthy». However, her daughter is in the class and the teacher even told me that her daughter sneaked down stairs at their home and peaked at everyone’s grades and then teased my son about his grade. If anyone has integrity issues, she should look inside her own home. There was no explanation about why she questioned my son’s integrity and there was never any communication about this while he was in school.
We think that the teacher’s actions are in retaliation for us not returning — she lost several kids and now only has a class of 9 — which is a large amount of tuition money.
I sent an e-​mail to the school to ask for clarification and to talk about the discrepancies between the report card and my the teacher recommendation. I made a chart showing all the discrepancies. I got a response from the director saying they will not discuss the recommendation and to communicate with their attorney. In the e-​mail from the director they said that on the recommendation that the teacher wrote that she her evaluation was based on a short period of time. If that was the case, she still could have evaluated him consistently — as she did in the report card. The discrepancies do not make sense.
So, please learn from my experience — this is not a school that has your child’s or family’s interest at heart. They are not nice people. If they were, they’d take the time to talk to us and give us an explanation.
Another thing the school seems unclean, especially the bathrooms.