Harmony School Of Innovation - Austin

Great School

HSI has been a great experience for our kids. They have thrived at Harmony

We transferred our two children into the Harmony school system 5 years ago. When we did, we were very happy with what they offered compared to the public school we left. There as a commitment to math and science, a great student to teacher ratio (our daughter's kindergarten classes had two teachers and less than 20 students), and as much communication as we could hope for. Teachers working as crossing guards would take a moment to mention what was going on in class, giving pats on the back or course corrections as needed.

As you can tell by the star rating, that has changed. While my older child in high school now is doing well enough, the Harmony School of Innovation has suffered greatly. This year, the 4th grade math teacher sent out a note about how ALL of her students were behind where they needed to be in multiplication and asking us to work on this more at home. Well I can certainly do that, but how did the entire 4th grade class fall behind? It sounds like third grade didn't cover what it should. I mean there is a bottom 10 in any class, and I wouldn't want my child there. But, if the whole class is behind, it doesn't sound like a student issue.

Then, I get a similar story from the Language Arts teacher about writing. Everyone scored low on their assessment. Once again, if every student is behind, who is at fault? This didn't show up in the third grade scoring or requests.

Then there was Social Studies. With no warning before hand, I find that my daughter had a failing grade. The progress report at the mid point showed a B, and now she is failing. When I asked what happened, I was told there were only 5 assignments and she failed to turn in 3 of them. Other parents I was speaking with reported the same problem. How do you have "several students" failing to turn in more than half their work and NOT contact parents? I asked the teacher what I could do to correct this. His response was that it was all in class work, and so it wasn't something he or I could address. It was something my daughter needs to fix herself (only paraphrasing to leave out names. That is very nearly a word for word quote). Seriously? How was that working out. I asked him if maybe he should try something a little different. He responded that "if 45-50 of my 85 students had this problem, I would see the need to change something." You think? There is that Miyagi quote "There is no such thing as bad student, only bad teacher" (itself based on a Buddhist proverb about blaming a lettuce seed for failing to grow). So don't tell me there is nothing either the teacher or the parent can do to help my child do better in school.

I realize there is only so much they can say, but it seems to me that something went wrong with their third grade program last year. It is unfortunate, but mistakes do happen. That said, correcting that mistake has been hitting all the wrong notes. They do NOT seem to be involving parents properly. They certainly are not notifying us of issues.

There is the Skyward grade system. In theory, it allows parents to keep up with their children's grades daily, but even the teachers are having trouble understanding it. Some parents never even got the log in information. For those of us that do, the assignments get posted by the teacher late, but the system record a "0" until it gets updated. So your A student's grade frequently drops into the mid 50's until the teacher gets around to posting an update. No cause for alarm, until they really ARE struggling, but there was no prior indication.

In a nutshell, I would wait until that got their program back on track. Look for the student teacher ratio to drop below 15 before considering this school. The school has grown rapidly over the last 5 years, expanding into a new building and they appear to be having trouble keeping staff. Several good teachers have go on to other jobs, and it shows in class sizes and available teachers.