Horace Mann Elementary

Still a fan three years later!
Our 4^th grader is still doing great. I’m consistently surprised by the great social skills the kids promote at this school. Honestly, I’m not aware of any bullying and while kids do have circles of friends, there are no issues with cliques. The racial diversity adds flavor and not discord.
Testing scores are still misleading, as HMS is an overflow school and so many kids taking the tests aren’t kids that have been attending for years. Of the kids that do attend for years, test scores are much more normalized.
Don’t be afraid to stay downtown — we love it!

I cant stand this school all they do is make my son to be out to be a bully and when he brings it to there attention that he is being bullied its different because they believe the other students. they suspend him for the stupid crap like really bumping to to someone by accident and he gets a ten day suspension then he gets a suspended again for defending him self wtf i talk to the principal dont get me started on that. she called one day to say my son is suspended and pick him up the referral didnt say he was she said she was in meeting that day so didnt know i said really so saying hello to me was ur meeting u were in she was there not in a meeting. i will not give the school the benefit to have my son transferred either nope its ur job to teach them and well if u cant put up with one kid then i dont think teaching is a job for u.

My daughter started kindergarten here last year. She had a wonderful teacher. It was as if one day I was reading books to her and the very next day, she was reading them to me. She learned so much. They also went on great field trips, Children’s Discovery Museum, Happy Hollow, Christmas in the Park. They are in such close proximity to all these great places. And today was her first day here in the 1^st grade. I’m looking foward to the years to come. This school is on it’s way up. And it’s a green school. Big points in my book!

My son went to this Pre-​K last year and we thought it was great. My daughter will probably go when she’s old enough, too.
As a participant, I learned a lot — both about my own son and about how to work with other children. When I started looking into preschools, I wasn’t sure that a parent participation program was for me; some of the places I visted were just way too unstructured for my taste. However, our teacher has quite an organized curriculum each day/​week, and she provided lots of guidance and help to parents who didnt’ necessarily have too much experience working with larger groups of kids.
The activities are pretty unlimited, given that you’ll probably have an interesting mix of families in the program, and everyone has different skills. My son’s year, we had parents from Japan, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Vietnam… I’m sure I’m forgetting a few others. We did gardening, art, music (LOTS of art and music), learned about many national holidays (Tet was cool!), read books in various languages, sampled all sorts of ethnic food — pretty interesting exposure for 4– and 5-​year-​olds.
Due to the school’s location, you have the opportunity to go on some great local field trips. Not only did we do the standard «ride the light rail to the art museum» and «visit with the local firefighters» stuff, but also visited the City Council chambers, met the mayor in his private conference room and such. When the kids got antsy, the teacher might suggest an impromptu walk around the block to collect interesting leaves.
If you have the time to contribute (one morning per week), I really recommend this program.