Cos Cob School

My children have thrived here. I believe the student body diversity, teachers and parents have combined to make it the best elementary school in town.

All three of my children have attended Cos Cob school and I am sad that this will be my last year as a CCS parent. My children are 8, 13 and 19, so I have many years of attending parent teacher meetings, events and open houses. I have nothing but praise for this school. It prepared my two oldest for successful middle school years, as well as instill in them a love of learning.

This used to be one of the best elementary schools in town but has decline sharply in the past few years mostly due to administration change. Principal left for greener pastures and a temp came in. She held down the fort but nothing advanced. New principal (Gene Schmidt) is a lovely guy but not a strong leader. The best teachers have left or are leaving and the worst hang around looking clearly disgruntled with their job leading to a clear divide in the school. The community has fallen off as the school efforts have stopped - its not that parents are discouraged but no more feather awards for being good, no more mascot and team, and it shows. The parents have disengaged too and May Fair and fundraiser has embarrassingly low participation. We have seen drops in test scores, parent and student satisfaction, physical condition, etc. Gene is nice but seems to be just riding along for the end of his career and improving the school is not the goal. Problems are not addressed substantively - they will say the right things and look at it, but nothing really changes. It was a 9/10 school and is now perhaps a 6.

Love Cos Cob Elemntary. I have had 3 children go through Cos Cob (one still there in 4th grade). All 3 went through the gifted ALP program, one had a 504 plan. Overall, it's an impressive school with a wonderful hometown community feeling - something from a bygone era. I loved raising my kids in this i environment. The teachers are warm and caring and enthusiastic about their jobs and the kids. Over the years we did run into a teacher or two that was not a great fit with one of our kids, but I honestly cannot say any teacher was bad. I did have some concerns with the ALP program - overall it's great and I awas thrilled that it offered a very challenging course for my kids. I would, however, have liked to see more organization in its administration. Often assignments were very confusing and expectations were for the kids to figure things out, as if they were far older and more mature than they really were. Still, I thought they got so much out of the program I would still do it again.