[Michellina]

We were hoping to send our little ones to public school in Middletown but it seems those elementary schools are not so great....should I send them to private school in Middletown or just move to West Hartford or Glastonbury for the public schools? Anyone out there have any experience recently with these school systems?

[willow wind]

Depends on where you live in Middletown. Wesley School, which serves the Wesleyan Hills area, is reportedly very good. However, I think it's only K-5.

I really don't know of any quality private schools in the area at the grade school level. Mercy High School
( girls, grades 9-12 ) and Xavier High schools ( boys, grades 9-12) are available if you don't mind Catholic schools. Don't have to be Catholic to attend. Those are the only good private high schools I know in the city.

[JayCT]

The elementary schools in Middletown have mixed performance on the Connecticut Mastery Tests. Farm Hill, Moody and Wesley seem to perform the best so I would think your children could get a good education at one of them without much issues. As noted by willow wind there are no private elementary schools in Middletown (at least that I know of) other than the Catholic schools. Many people in Middletown will send their kids to Catholic schools but some will wait until the middle school level before doing so. The website below will provide you with information on all public schools in Connecticut.

Only you can decide if moving to Glastonbury or West Hartford would be worth it for you. Both of these towns have excellent school systems but home prices in these towns are a lot higher than Middletown. Our kids are in Glastonbury schools and we are very pleased with their education. About our only complaint is that the high school is kind of large (2300 students) IMHO. Still the teachers are good, the curriculum is excellent and the resources wonderful. ONe thing to note though it that if your kids are in sports it will be very hard to get onto the high school teams unless they excel at it or you are able to play the politics and get them on a team. Jay

[marylandmom2011]

Hi,

My family moved to CT last summer. Have you checked out the Independant Day School in Middletown? It seemed nice when I toured it.

We chose Glastonbury which is a cute little town. I have two children in public Elementary school. Here is my two cents.

Positives: Glastonbury has very nice public schools. The kids are nice, the teachers seemed qualified to teach the curriculum. I like the reading and spelling program. They have some nice after school events and many parents that are involved in school activities. Clean, everyone seems to have a positive attitude.

Negatives :They have a computer lab but do not formally teach keyboarding or computer skills. Science program is very weak, my son is in 4th grade and they studied plants for two months without one real plant, not even a seed disection. There G & T program is weak and not higher level thinking just excelerated curriculum. The student body is very homogenous so I think they make the school programs pretty much one size fits all. There is no out of the box thinking towards education, nothing cutting edge or progressive, no real excitement, report cards have no personalization, class size is 24 for my children.

We came from a private school situation and the public school does not come close to duplicating that type of envirnoment.

Hope this helps. I wish I had toured and spent more time investigating the different public school systems before we moved.

[AMSS]

"Excelerated"?

[JayCT]

Originally Posted by marylandmom2011

Hi,

My family moved to CT last summer. Have you checked out the Independant Day School in Middletown? It seemed nice when I toured it.

We chose Glastonbury which is a cute little town. I have two children in public Elementary school. Here is my two cents.

Positives: Glastonbury has very nice public schools. The kids are nice, the teachers seemed qualified to teach the curriculum. I like the reading and spelling program. They have some nice after school events and many parents that are involved in school activities. Clean, everyone seems to have a positive attitude.

Negatives :They have a computer lab but do not formally teach keyboarding or computer skills. Science program is very weak, my son is in 4th grade and they studied plants for two months without one real plant, not even a seed disection. There G & T program is weak and not higher level thinking just excelerated curriculum. The student body is very homogenous so I think they make the school programs pretty much one size fits all. There is no out of the box thinking towards education, nothing cutting edge or progressive, no real excitement, report cards have no personalization, class size is 24 for my children.

We came from a private school situation and the public school does not come close to duplicating that type of envirnoment.

Hope this helps. I wish I had toured and spent more time investigating the different public school systems before we moved.

It sounds like you are comparing Glastonbury public schools to a very good but small (and expensive) private school which is not entirely fair. I am guessing your son is at Eastbury School which is the one class in town that has such a large size. My kids never had more than 21 (most were under 20) and even then each class had para's assisting the teachers. I believe this is what they are doing there too. This was a very well discussed and publicized issue in town because 24 kids is the largest the school system allows and the school board was being pushed to add a teacher.

By 4th grade keyboarding and computer skils are already taught to the kids. Your son may have missed it since he is new to the school. I know there are outside programs to teach kids this. You may look that up. I do not agree about the science program being weak. I know my kids had plants to grow and disected and mounted seeds when they were in elementary school. They had major projects to do each semester and there was a very large and well attended Science Fair each year.

I am not sure what G & T is so I cannot comment on it.

We always received personal messages on our kids report cards and met with the teachers a couple of times a year to discuss our child's performance each semester. We were also able to contact the teacher at anytime we had questions or concerns and I think all but one were VERY good at getting back to us and addressing our concerns. I am not sure how much personal you need it to be.

As for thinking out of the box, I am not sure what you expect. My kids had some very interesting programs each year in their school. Immigration Day comes to mind where the kids dress up as immigrants coming to this country and are greeted by foreign speaking people and they have to figure out how to get through. They invite parents, grandparents or other relatives and friends to participate. It was great fun for the kids and they learned a lot.

And your comment on the school being homogenous, your son is definitely not attending the school my did. My kids were exposed to all different types of kids from all different backgrounds at Naubuc School. Their friends included kids from Israel, Poland, India, Iraq, Great Britain, Italy, Central America, plus others. There were blacks, Asians, hispanics as well. And they ranged from people living in public housing to well off upper middle class. I am not sure what you expected moving to a very affluent part of an affluent town. Jay

[kidyankee764]

Originally Posted by JayCT

I am not sure what G & T is so I cannot comment on it.

I think the poster means Gifted and Talented.

[marylandmom2011]

Hi,

Honestly I am trying to give the OP a snapshot from my experience. The public schools are very nice, as I said. They have a great book fair, a wonderful library and the teachers seem fine.

My child in first grade has had no formal training on the computer in Glastonbury. He has been to the computer lab once this year. In Maryland he went to public school for kindergarten and they had computer class once a week, it was considered a "special".

My kids go to Nayaug and their class sizes are 24 and 22. They are proposing a huge budget cut for next year that could increase all class sizes at the school. I know this because the PTO is trying to gain parent support to have the budget cut rejected.

My child in 4th grade really did not have any plants during science. The report cards have no personal summary. Honestly I could go on and "defend" my comments but why.......I am not trying to put down the school system just give my impression and experience.

And I agree the teachers are responsive and will return calls and emails quickly. They will try to resolve problems.

Thank you.

[JayCT]

I am not questioning your reasons for posting just offering my view. I have a coworker with kids at the same school (they might even be in the same grade levels, I can't remember right now) so I will ask him their experiences. The budget cut proposed in not huge. It is $800,000 on a $90+ million budget. Its true impact is not really clear but I think the PTO's are blowing it out of proportion a bit. The budget is still significantly higher than last years so it is not like they are cutting things drastically. Jay

[parentologist]

Mooreland Hill in Kensington, near New Britain, is a K-9 private school with a good reputation. It's about 15 min from Middletown. BUT, if I were you, I'd move to a town with good public schools for the social benefits for your children, and the family. If you drive your kids to a private school, there will be challenges to getting together with friends. If you move to a town with good public schools, they will have neighborhood friends that they can walk to. West Hartford has good public schools, with an accelerated math program and a Quest G&T program that is creative, but you have to look carefully at which school you're zoned for. Most of them are fine, but two on the southeast side of town are having some demographic issues. Avon, Farmington, and Simsbury are also good.