Buena Vista Elementary

To sum up: racism, and bullying of the students by the staff are normal procedures at Buena Vista Elementary School. Teachers have: no insight about children psychology whatsoever (one would think that with such a career choice...), sloppy tests and corrections, as well as unwillingness to recognize and to correct their mistakes. No matter how competent the administration could be, it is witnessing this abysmal situation, and worse scaring environment for our children, with a feeling of inadequacy and the inability to change it.

Diversity barely exists at Buena Vista Elementary School, which does not reflect the reality of our population in SC, and in the USA in general. Yet the "silent lunch" table (aka the public shaming table: a direct demonstration by the teachers to the children of what bullying is) is always crowded with a large majority, if not 100%, of children of color! Since I could not believe it the first few times I attended lunch there, I randomly went for lunch over a period of time, and took pictures of the children at that table. The fact that the public bullying by the administration/staff is normal procedure is shocking enough. But that this bullying is specifically targeting children of color is simply sickening.
As this was not bad enough, some teachers do not have the skills required to be around children. Would you believe that they graded the Mother's Day gift the children made?! Way to rob the joy of this activity! On top of it, some children got an F. As we all know, when it is graded, the pleasure is gone. But here, the children also felt like they were offering a horrible gift to their Moms. Bless their hearts! One teacher returned the gift to the child who gave it to her for "teachers' appreciation week". How tactful!
On many occasions, there were errors in the tests, both in the directions and in the corrections. Some grades were miscalculated, then entered wrongly in the system, and not corrected even after being pointed out many times.
Fieldtrip day has always been the best day of the year. Children had been so warned about all the punishments that could follow if there was any misbehavior on their part, that some of them did not want to attend the fieldtrip, while others had stomach aches the morning of.
Some of the school claims are not fulfilled such as the "author or illustrator visiting the school yearly, and interacting with students and parents" (May 13th, we are still waiting to meet this great VIP), or "if the spelling test is correct on Monday, the student will not have to test again on Friday" (won't he/she now?! My child had to take every single one of them, every Friday, all year long, despite the obtained good grades on Mondays), and so on.
Dr. Mohr, the principal, is a pleasant person. I would even say competent if only she was free to apply her ideas, and to make the necessary changes in her school.

Being located in the middle of rich, mostly Caucasian neighborhoods paying high taxes, is not enough to make a school a great school.

I have had two of my children at Buena Vista. My daughter was a teacher at Buena Vista and I am now a Kindergarten aide at Buena Vista. I have seen this school from every perspective and can say that This school strives to give the children the best educational experiance avalable. You can trust your child to the professional and devoted teachers and staff of this fine school.