Palm Elementary School

This is a horrible school. Stay away from it. Although the principal Beatrice Gray will show herself as a sweet and helpful person, she is in reality a wolf in sheep's clothing. She could care less about your family or mine. She does a horrible job as a principal and don't know how to communicate with parents. When my family had questions about her specific program and their process she declined to answer and forward my questions to the District. Then she didn't show up to this meeting either.The staff tends to give you this attitude of "I'm better than you are", they are not helpful and they make comments about families behind their back. Their secretary Saribel Hernandez is plain awful. She shouldn't be handling any type of communication and her attitude is annoying. My only positive experience was with Lora Roman and one of their teachers, Jennifer Rose-Booth, who was always kind and informative.We requested a transfer to this school because of their international language program. Before we did this I had an interview with the principal to make sure this was the same program for our kids. She sold it to me so so so good that I left that meeting super excited for feeling we had found the perfect program for our kids. She made promises of availability not being a problem and even offered to keep our kids together in the same class if that's what we wished.After the process and assessment, the didn't want to put one of my kids in the language program at all. Of course, at this time, it was too late for us to go to another school offering a similar program because all of them are packed. So we try to ask some question to understand their process and this is when the principal shuts down and declines to even answer questions and send us to the district's office.After pushing it a lot and after having conversations with Saribel, she shows herself extremely nervous to answer certain questions and her answers contradicts all the information that the principal had provided to me in our initial interview. Since my kid (the one who wasn't accepted) has a problem with speech I try to puzzle all the info together and it seems they are discriminating my son because of this. They have caused a horrible emotional distress in my family and they don't even care.

My daughter is just finishing up the 2nd grade and she's in Palm's World Language Program. As far as my 2 year experience: Mrs.Miranda was such a sweet teacher. She was very easy to get along with and whenever I had questions about my daughters learning she took the time to answer me. Mrs. Gallagher: this was her first year teaching and I must say, I am so pleased that Alexis had her this year. She was a very well structured teacher and had the class in control. Overall as a school: I was involved in the PTA and I feel it had its good moments and at times I felt overwhelmed with volunteering. I must say that it makes a big difference when your principal supports your PTA. I saw Mrs. Roman very involved with it and I also saw Mrs. Roman making a great effort to make the atmosphere fun and inviting. I will say however that having your child in a dual language program really requires a lot of connecting with the teachers and finding out where your child needs more practice. Teachers should be more connected with parents on a weekly basis in order to see children really flourish in this program. Smaller Classroom sizes would even benefit in this program because these kids need some more one on one to make sure they are understanding this program (what the words truly mean, ect). Also sending home a weekly report to let us parents know what area our child struggled in or which area she succeed in or both, would help us as parents work with our children. If we aren't aware of this how are we to work with them? How can we help them flourish with the program. If we don't know what they are learning, what they should know: (should they know how to spell all these words you put in thier homework packet of just know how to read them? What's the expection you are grading them on? There is no perfect school, at least not here in Beaumont, lol, but I do feel that us as parents have a voice and schools would not be Aware of our child's needs unless we voice our opinions.

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