Grissom Elementary School

Two words describe this school, overcrowded dump! If you send your child here you can expect overcrowded classrooms taught by a bunch of hormonal women. There’s only one male teacher in the building. The principal appears to hire based on perceived gender roles. He can always find a male to hire for the security, custodian and PE teacher jobs, but not for the teaching positions. You can expect mountains of homework because the teachers can’t teach with over 40 kids in a class so they send the work home for you to teach your child. You can expect the gym to function as the lunchroom, auditorium, polling place, etc and on gym days your child will come home smelling like funky lunchroom food. You can expect your child to be hit on, cursed out and called names by the other students and nothing will be done about it. Overall, it’s a terrible place to have to go to school everyday. Good luck and enjoy!

When I initially enrolled my child in this school it had a rating of 8 of 10 on this website, but now it's 6 of 10 and that's about accurate. My experience started out alright but went downhill fast. First of all the school is in desperate need of some new innovative ideas and leadership. The principal is a old fossil that really needs to just retire already. He is old with a "old school" way of thinking and that's holding the school back from reaching its full potential. His main focus is attendance and the school rating, all he cares about is what the school appears to be rather than what it actually is. Well let me tell you that there are 42 students in the 3rd grade class and how can students really learn like that? This is the reason why sooooooo much homework is sent home because the teachers aren't teaching, they're just highly paid baby sitters. The teaching formula at this school is for the teachers to collect the pay check while the parents are doing the teaching at home with the insane amounts of homework. If you're thinking of enrolling your child at this school DON'T! You might as well enroll them in K-12 virtual school and teach them at home because that's what you're going to end up doing anyway. The research shows that parents are very happy with the virtual school model, check it out at k12.com. I'm currently exploring other options for my child because CPS will be gutted like the Detroit public school system very soon. As a matter of fact Chicago will be Detroit sooner or later.

Overcrowded classrooms and the only form of punishment seems to be mass consequences leading to unnecessary amounts of homework! Teachers make NO EFFORT to punish only the bad kids!

Grissom is a great school. We have a lot to offer our students. We are looking to boost parent involvement!