Plymouth Elementary School

The plus side is that many of the teachers are quite caring and the school is generally safe. Unfortunately, that desire for safety goes way too far here. It's to the point that it resembles a prison rather than a school. They have lots of security measures (most of which don't actually provide any real security) and the administrative and support staff seem to feel that their job is to make sure you never get in the building. I've had the office staff block me from going to scheduled meetings with my child's teacher, because they "had to double check to make sure I could still meet with her". By the time they usually let me through half my meeting time has been wasted. This school seems to have the attitude of "Trust us, now just give us your child and go away".

Their other "safety" measures are equally paranoid and counterproductive. They make children always travel the halls in pairs (even when they are going to the bathroom!). This effectively doubles the amount of time children are out of the classroom. As a result they have reduced the amount of recess and playtime to a ridiculously short 15 minutes a day. However, even that 15 minutes gets further reduced since they have to all stand quietly in a straight line before they are allowed to walk to the playground. Then they have to stand quietly on the playground before they are allowed to go play (not easy to do when the class sizes are nearly 25 kids per teacher!), and the whole process has to be repeated on the return trip before the 15 minutes have elapsed. The result: average playtime at this school is 7-1/2 minutes (yes I timed it). If you think that sounds bad, you have to realize that that's actually the best case scenario. Many days the children get no outdoor recess at all because if the temperature or wind chill is below 40F or there's the slightest hint of rain they prevent the children from going out. At least once last year they cancelled recess because a parent waved to their child on the playground (no I'm not making that up, they even called the police).

This school touts its high PSSA scores, but it's achieved them by relentlessly teaching to the test and going over very basic material ad nauseam. That probably works well for children of below average intelligence, but for average and above average IQ kids this just bores them to tears and eventually makes them hate going to school. This school could really improve if the principal wasn't so afraid of failing her PSSA progress goals, and if they remembered that children learn through play, especially free play where children get to choose what is of interest to them.