Buford Elementary School

This is my 4th year with a child at Buford Elementary. The class sizes are 20 at most and each kindergarten class had a dedicated parapro. In 1st grade, 2-3 classes share a parapro. The hispanic population is approximately a quarter of the students... you can check any site with those exact numbers. In my experience, there might be 1 ESOL child that really struggles with the English language but it has never been disruptive to learning. The school has a ton of money for resources and staff so the ESOL kids get excellent help and are pretty fluent by the end of kindergarten. In addition, the advanced students get additional in-depth learning in enrichment classes. I volunteer regularly in the class (once a week) and have observed nothing of the previous reviewers description. It is a great school with tons of resources and a small town feel. It makes me wonder if the previous review maybe had a child not accepted into the tuition program and reason for the bad and misleading review. Yes, the school system has a tuition program where you can pay to send your child there if they are selected from a large pool of applicants. It is an interview process in which only the best and brightest are chosen.

This is our 4th year @ Buford Elementary School (BES) and I can tell you that from our experience, the data and information provided is VERY erroneous at best.

Our children have always had a minimum of 24-27 students per teacher/classroom with a minimum of 50% children being of Hispanic ethnicity. The majority does not speak or understand English which leads to distractions, disruptions as well as decreased learning productivity throughout the day. It is also very hard to believe that a school that has such a large percentage of non-English speaking children is able to test as well as they do?

Too many children at BES are promoted to the next grade without meeting basic academic standards!