Ocean Shore Elementary School

The kids love all of their classes. Teachers and parents are very involved with the education of the kids. I love the small community feel of the school.

This is a "parent participation" school, so volunteering is expected. If you can't, you can pay for your hours, and the school hires classroom aides with those funds. Parent participation means the kids get experiences that the school couldn't afford otherwise -- art class, field trips, extra science, "theme days" and other teacher/volunteer-intensive activities. This is a school for parents who want to be involved with their kids' education and believe in experiential learning. The teachers are phenomenal overall (especially in grades K-5) -- very committed, creative and effective. My kids are enthused about learning at Ocean Shore, and I believe that the values promoted at the school will make them compassionate, involved citizens. They love the school.

There is a strong sense of in-group/out-group at this school. The in-group is gay-friendly (mothers of gay children). if you are not gay yourself, or have a family member who is, you may be mislabeled as anti-gay. I'm not bothered in terms of whether or not one IS gay. I suspect my neighbor's child is gay. So what? Why would a mother become hysterical over the possibility of her son being rejected bec of his orientation? In this day and age? Seriously?

So a few years into this school, I'm happy with the teachers and the 1:1 help my kid has needed. I think the theme days and many field trips fall into the not-worth-it category. The kids get dragged to up ~ 1 field trip a month. Ride in other parents cars rather than buses/vans. I feel like we do an awful lot of driving for a short stay somewhere and half the time the kids are getting yelled at to behave (natural to need to do in any group of kids). I guess they are educational for about an hour ( for a 1-1.5hr drive each way sometimes). Same goes for the theme days. Just silly little activities designed to give parents time to volunteer. I like the parent volunteering in theory. But I'd rather have that time on direct education and not gluing a sparkly decoration to a felt one. Some parents do get to help w/ ed but its more an exception than a rule. If you are helping w/ ed, its only for ~1hr a day and that's rough on working families. There needs to be a lot more oversight on safety of the campus as a whole. The upper grades are well behaved kids, maybe a little bored. From the outside looking in, the PE program and extracurricular are marginal. The families are definitely burned out at the end of the year and older kid families seem bitter. But, my kid is getting educated and happy-ish. so, we'll stay. I am not confident its better anywhere else.