Newton-Lee Elementary

Last year the school got a new principal with very questionable both personality and professional traits. You can see results of his terrible leadership skills in NLE's significant drop in test results for 2014/15. NLE has several problems to solve now.

1. Mr. Lyons made it clear that teachers were not expected to teach talented students - several families left the school for this particular reason. In fact, even though NLE teachers were encouraged to teach only the minimum (to the test) so that the school could get better scores by focusing on underperforming kids more and completely ignoring smart kids, you can see that this strategy did not work for NLE.

2. Parents at NLE are expected to be silent givers - donations are welcomed, but only if they are monetary or in the form of technology, etc. If a parent dares to voice his or her opinion on how to solve any of the numerous issues, or even if a parent offers much needed real help in the classroom to the teachers who are in fact poorly educated (to the point that teachers don't understand - and often don't care to understand - the material they are expected to teach in elementary school)... well, that would create a disaster situation for the entire family and will definitely affect the child of such parent thanks to Mr. Lyons' desire to degrade families who are unfortunate to be assigned to NLE. There are very few teachers at NLE who understand the situation, but they prefer to keep it to themselves now.

3. Beware: this year, NLE had very low number of full-time teachers. Result? Most of the part-timers there have a bad part-timer attitude - they can care less to invest time and effort into their classrooms and kids.

4. Have you seen bathrooms at NLE? They resemble third-world quality of such facilities in many regards.

5. Finally, if you think that your child should be taught that a great reward for his or her achievement is to ride in a limo with an adult who calls himself a principal (instead of, let's say, perhaps doing something that matters and contributes to the community), then welcome to NLE! Mr. Lyons will make sure that your kids' ideas of rewards are that pathetic.

In short, NLE used to be a nice school with some promise of becoming really good. Not any more.

This school has everything needed to be one of the best ones in the nation: diverse student body, engaged parents, great facility. However, the new principal has created a very unhealthy atmosphere where most of the teachers don't care to be true educators, but instead are encouraged to do very little for their students. If you don't care about quality of your child's academic and social experiences, you will be fine. But if you strive for your kid to actually learn and advance in a positive and encouraging environment, you will be attacked (literally) in front of your own kids and their classmates by teachers and principal for being "too demanding". You will also be asked by the principal for numerous monetary contributions for the "needs of the school".
I feel sorry for the PTO in this school - parents are doing their best to sponsor as much as they can. Yet, the teachers don't care to even learn how to use correctly the various technology purchased for the school.
This school needs a different principal to change attitudes and lead the staff away from this arrogant, negligent, and aggressive culture that has been created here this school year.

It is an amazing school an with up-to-date website and a great PTSO organization