North Street School

Our son had an overall positive experience at the school. Actual learning varies a lot from one teacher to the next.

I feel so fortunate that our daughter attended this school (Kindergarten). If I could, I would rate it 11/10. Going into K she had some (but not much) exposure to reading and writing at her Pre-K, now she genuinely loves books, makes up her own strories and writes them into her diary. She also hugely advanced in math (adding and subtracting two digit numbers, some simple multiplication). What is also amazing is that she actually loves going to school and positively thrives at the NSS. I think her teacher, Ms. Cappiali is exemplary. Huge shout out to her. The principal gives a very good and professional impression, and all school-related communication that we received from the principal and the PTA was effective and to the point. Here are some concerns that we had going to NSS vs our actual experience: 1) concern: we worried that the school has a huge % of white American kids (given the school district population) and no diversity at all so being first generation immigrants we would not blend in... Our experience: in our class we had kids from Argentina, France, Russia + made friends with other Eastern European and Turkish families from the school. Apparently there are many expat families in the neighborhood. At our bus stop during morning drop off, I counted that 5/12 kids had American parents. 2) we were worried that the school has little socioeconomic diversity - mostly rich kids sneering at their not so rich peers... wrong again! I do not consider our family rich, and it was never even a topic of conversation during the entire year that “such and such kid has such and such toy, brags about his/her birthday party etc”. We never felt that our daughter perceived any issues of that kind (maybe K is too early for that though). 3) this being a top rated public school, we worried that kids have a lot of tests and mindless homework - again, never had that issue. To the contrary, I feel that my daughter was adequately challenged. Additionally I would like to specifically mention how well did our teacher manage a brewing conflict with another kid. I am not sure I would call it bullying, but one boy was being difficult (taunting our daughter and others, not being nice), and our teacher managed it extremely professionally and effectively from behind the scenes. Not only the situation was defused, but our daughter also felt empowered and learned about speaking up.

This is a terrible school that does not support practices against bullying. Better to stay away from this school!

Glad we our out of there. One of the worst experiences of my life with educators and administrators.