Saluda Trail Middle

This review is written for graduating teachers, teachers new to the area, and parents considering STMS as a school of choice. Please pause. Read this, and think carefully before you commit or apply at this school. If you think of the lost city of Atlantis, Saluda Trail Middle School is this in that it was a great school four and five years ago. Under current leadership, it has sunk to the bottom of the ocean.

The promise of a STEAM education is broken. This school’s strength has always been its teachers. Its related arts teachers are some of the best, and they have given everything to this school along with its academic teachers. Saluda Trail is not worth your mental or physical health, or your child’s physical or mental health. The school has tossed more under the rug from student fights to how they’re handled to the fact the kids run the school. Students get away with almost everything from how they mouth off at each other and teachers, and mild to more extreme physical violence. Parents and students hold sway over an administration that gives an excuse to the students’ struggles rather than effectively addressing issues.

This falls at the doorstep of administration not the teachers or the students. Before four to five years ago, Saluda Trail had held onto some of the best teachers in the state. These are teachers who understand classroom management and how to engage students in twenty-first century learning. They are told to examine data, but then leaders are unwilling to examine the true reasons behind the data, including student behavior. Leadership can lay students’ reactions and actions in the teacher’s classroom all it wants, and say, “Have better classroom management.”

Until the entire administration looks in the mirror and Dr. Cook realizes the devastation being caused by current leadership, Saluda Trail will stay at the bottom of the ocean. The school will continue to bleed the excellent teachers the leadership takes for granted. The school will continue to receive a degrading reputation through talk even as the school sweeps fights under the rug. Administration has its favorites, and the rest will go unnoticed or will be silenced while they’re stuck. Save your health. Save your contract. Save your child. Save your family because good teachers’ mental and physical health will take a toll on your family, too. Just like the game, Monopoly, says on the board, “Do not pass go.” If you pass go, you will find yourself needing more than prayers.