Alphonsus Academy & Center For The Arts

There are alot of great teachers here- but the school itself and its policies are not focused on what is best for each individual child. My son was the youngest in his class and although he scored well on his IQ test he scored very low on attentional and focus tests - borderline ADD. Although his doctor, teacher and parents clearly identified these issues they would not allow us to hold him back for another year of preschool. The reason I got repeatedly was policy and something about preschool being their most popular program and wanting to keep kids moving along. I would give his teacher 5 stars, she was great. But the inflexible policy and complete inability of that policy to take into account the needs of a specific child was shocking to me. This lack of flexibilty will trickle down. We were not asking for special attention, intervention or any changes in curriculum... just another year for his attention to mature- since he was so young compared to his peers and had such clear issues. In my opinion, this is not a school where differences in learning style, lags in attentional maturity or other issues are taken into account adequately and its definitely not the place if you suspect you may need to hold a child back a year. I would give them one star if his teacher was not so great with him. As we all keep hearing, kindergarten is getting more and more academic and putting a child into a learning environment hes not ready for yet is just setting him up for failure and a dislike of learning.