John Gill Elementary School

Orion Alternative and Mandarin Immersion (on John Gill campus) is a gem of 3 communities (John Gill, Orion, MI) coming together around an idea of educating the whole child. My two daughters went there and came out as strong, smart, empathic students. But here is the catch: you get to make this school successful with a lot of opportunity to stay engaged in your child's growth and education. This is where you and your child will make lifelong friends at the yearly campout, the Author Fair or during multicultural days when each class studies a country and present it to the rest of the school. I hope you and your kids will cherish this school and the memories as much as I do.

My son's neighborhood school in kindergarten was Fox Elementary (in BRSSD) but after touring the MI program open house, and speaking with other families at John Gill, we decided to do an inter-district transfer and have been so happy with our decision to attend John Gill. We don't speak Chinese at home however this hasn't been much of a problem for us (except for helping with Chinese homework) and there are several other students in my son's class who come from non-Chinese speaking households so I would say, don't let coming from an English-speaking, or Spanish-speaking background (or any other language) stop you from considering this school. I'm so grateful that this school was an option for us.

We hoped it would be good based on what we saw by comparing it to private schools. Now that my son is almost done with his first year we are extremely pleased and feel lucky to have had such a great experience, both for him academically and for us as parents in a great community. We would stongly recommend this school to friends and family.

Have a K and a 2 here now. This has deeply exceeded our expectations for public school. It's hard to learn about the program and get registered, but once school starts and you get plugged into the information network it's great. The curriculum is much harder than I recall as a kid, and our children are beginning to insult us in Chinese behind our backs, which I choose to believe is mostly endearing.