White Rock Elementary School

So far it has been excellent. The leadership and teachers do a good job of communicating with parents.

WRE was a great experience for both my children.

The school is large but it does not feel large. The kids all get to know each other and care for each other. The teachers are very good and care for the kids. The neighborhood feel is wonderful. It is a throwback to a small town neighborhood school. Academics are very good and the kids are well prepared for middle school. This is a very good school.

Prepare for your child to be ostracized, overlooked, lost in the shuffle, and generally left out. Everyone seems to ignore terrible behavior from the "cool kids," and bullying runs rampant. You just have to have the right parents and nobody cares. If you don't find your way into one of the parent cliques (How much do you LOVE youth sports? Did you go to Baylor?), you won't fit in at WRE. Like to party? The PTA auction is for you, as are basically all of the Dad's Club events, as are all parties sold at the auction. Want activities for your child? Good luck. The school had ZERO extracurricular activities until the 2016-17 school year, and still has almost none, and the ones it has are limited availability. It's shocking that a school with such a great reputation does so little for its kids. Have a child with a learning disability? Save the effort and go private, RISD doesn't care. Pros: Lots of parental involvement. High income parents mean kids who are prepared for school and do well on standardized tests. Parents of kids with learning disabilities largely go private due to lack of support and this keeps the test scores up. Cons: Because it used to be a good school, and because test scores are high, people keep coming, and coming, and coming. The school is already too big but they're expanding the school by about 1/3 to hold well over 1000 kids. Advice if you want to go to an RISD school: Get into Moss Haven before it gets huge and becomes WRE 2.0, or go to Lake Highlands or Merriman Park, which have more diverse populations.