Rappahannock County Elementary School

I have had the same experience as the previous parent, as my child was in a very high performing Fairfax County school for kindergarten and first grade, before moving to Rappahannock County. She is now in 7th grade at RCES (the county is too small for a middle school!), and is very happy and successful. Her SOL grades are about as high as they can be, and she has a lot of expanded opportunities with the well-run gifted program. Also, the school has an excellent Farm-to-Table program, and has just renovated the courtyard to include experimental areas for plants and insects, as well as a new pottery kiln. They have also just built a new STEM/STEAM lab. The school is looking great! Our new superintendent is a real jewel.

We relocated from Prince William county and sadly she had slipped through the system. RCES identified her needs and now she is doing wonderfully. I would never take her out of this school. I have kids in both schools and its been a God send.

I absolutely love this school. Our twins attend RES (presently in kindergarten), and I am impressed by the personal attention my children are both receiving and the quality of the education. Our kids are learning to read in kindergarten, have music, phys-ed and Spanish classes each week. We get outstanding DAILY written communication from the teachers, and since our children ride the bus to school we have become completely comfortable with the extremely thorough and safe bus rider management system that RES has to make sure our kids get on the correct bus safely at the end of school. RES has many activity programs including a great 4H after school program which our twins have joined even in kindergarten.Our children actually started working with RES staff even before they started kindergarten. They were attending a pre-school (CCLC) for three years before they started RES this year. The pre-school recommended speech therapy for the twins and speech therapists from RES worked with them weekly from that point on. Excellent school, small town values and great people. We're extremely lucky to have this gem in our little community.

RCES is an extremely poor school. They cannot pass safe water tests. Now the playground doesn't even stand up to safety codes. Parent/Teacher communication is EXTREMELY poor. Our son is in the third grade, is failing his SOL's, then got stuck with a pregnant teacher who is not even going to be there to teach for the first 2 months of the school year! His entire 3rd grade class is being taught by multiple substitute teachers in the pregnant teacher's absence. So no big surprise when our son came home with poor scores on his first interim report. We are extremely dissatisfied with the education provided by this school. It is a babysitting service for children of farmers, AT BEST. Based on the school's SOL scores, this school rates in the LOWEST 5% of schools in the state of Virginia. If you do not care about your child's education, send them to RCES! We are trying our hardest to get our son out of this school system!!!