Burns Park Elementary School

Excellent, caring teachers led by an amazing principal. The place gets even better every year.

We appreciate the continuous feedback and thought from our new principal. He seems inspired and passionate about his job. However, I was not impressed by the lackluster teaching and involvement of my daughter's classroom teacher. The students had a few writing projects over the year, and I was absolutely appalled at the level of writing that was considered acceptable. I was expecting to get honest feedback on the improvements that were needed in my daughter's writing, but it was not even mentioned on report cards. In my mind, the role of a teacher is take a student's current capabilities, and grow and expand on them. This was not done. Any growth or expanding in thought process and understanding seemed to be done at home. "They aren't making us do that at school," or, "as long as we wrote enough words, it's fine," seemed to be common phrases out of my daughter's mouth. Standards for personal best need to be much higher. Teachers need to help their students learn, grow, and be able to take helpful criticism on a regular basis. That is what learning is all about.

Accessible and enlightened new principal (Chuck Hatt) has an excellent grasp of the needs of the students and everyone in the community that influences those students. Not only does he practice the common sense and compassion gained from many decades of teaching experience, he is a highly-trained, national expert in the area of literacies curriculum which he has implemented all over the Ann Arbor schools with dramatic, measurable success. Although much is written and implied about the "snobbishness" of families in this world, in my observation, they go above and beyond to make BP an inclusive, kind world for their children and for the children of people they don't know from poorer neighborhoods across town.

I guess unsatisfactory is the most appropriate choice because we left, as in literally changed schools. It's fine school on paper, but no more so than half a dozen of the other A2 schools that cluster at the top in terms of test scores. What really put us off was the culture. There are deep socioeconomic divisions between the contiguous and non-contiguous families and that translates into de facto segregation just below the surface, which we felt added a subtle but unpleasant tension. As for the less subtle, I'm afraid we saw a bit too much of the petty, provincial snobbery North Burns Park and the Hills are famous for. Think Mean Girls. Now imagine their kids are in your kid's class. We met notable exceptions, but they were just that. So yeah--we're quite finished with Buns Pahk. (Be sure to say that through a clenched underbite, with an affected transatlantic flair.)