Trip Elementary School

My oldest daughter just graduated 5th grade at Trip, she started there in 1st; my youngest finished 1st grade, started in kindergarten. Trip was a stellar school, so much so that both my daughters attended Trip with a permissive transfer their last year. Unfortunately, this last year was not what we were used to. Trip made a lot of changes, staff and policy, and these changes were not positive. The teachers and front office staff continued to be awesome. Ms Maunder really stood out as the best teacher at that school. She helped my daughter's confidence so much that she now is in ap classes. They changed everything about being a room parent and now no one wants to do it and the poor teachers are stuck planning parties themselves. 

Almost everything at that school is so beyond disorganized, its dangerous. For example, Gwinnett County had a tornado warning this year during school hours. I saw the warning before I left the house to pick up my girls in car riders and didn't think anything of it. It wasn't until the kids were due to come out to the cars that I received a text and email from the school stating the children would be held until after the warning, 30 mins late. I have a toddler that I'm currently potty training so I got out of my car and went the front to use the facilities only to find the front doors locked. This means that every parent and child in the vehicles waiting out the warning for their children were locked out of the safety of the school in the event of an actual tornado. They put the entire school on lockdown first. 

Another example of their disorganization was the 5th grade field trip to the coca cola factory. The kids were scheduled to be back at the school at 2pm. At 1:46 my daughter texted me that they were still waiting on the buses. The kids didn't get back to the school until about 3pm, 15 minutes after dismissal. Outside, car riders was complete mayhem. You had some parents parking, administrators trying their best to let us all know what was going on, some cars were pulling u turns in the middle of traffic, other cars were coming in the wrong way and blocking everyone else. The buses were delayed 15 minutes, which I'm sure every school those buses serviced felt. We never received explanation nor did we ever get an apology. At the end of the year, I guess Dr Walker got sick of returning emails because mine went completely unanswered. 

My girls still did wonderfully thanks to the teachers but this school is in an unfortunate tailspin. During Dr Walker's "commencement speech" to the exiting 5th graders she made no sense at times, other times she made comments only directed at the female students that left the boys looking at each other like they didn't mean as much to the dear Dr.The speech was obviously not organized and she clearly was out of her element. 

There was also a near fight in the car riders line this year, two moms screaming at each other for all to witness along with threats of calling the police all because someone cut off someone else. A lot of the parents are rude, don't care about the other students, leave all the room parenting to the few that are willing and then complain about the way we do it. They come to the school dressed highly inappropriately, park in the fire lanes to check out or in their children, they come into the car riders line driving the wrong way, cut each other off and then start near fist fights in front of my 2 year old. Administrators ignore all of this and it will never stop if these parents aren't held accountable. That has been Dr Walkers tag line this year, holding parents and students accountable. A very nice thought, where is the execution?

I am glad I got my first grader out of there when I did.

The faculty and staff are very caring and responsive to the students and parents. They display high expectations of their students and they rise to these expectations. They also have great achievement scores.