@Korab –
I can’t concentrate on this thread since you added that photo to your profile!!
;)…
Regarding the cultures of schools… During this year, we started visiting several schools. I want to say “Thank you!!” — Several of the parents here on CC have been so generous with their time to respond on the threads & via PM.
We had some specific concerns about a few schools that we are considering for next year’s applications and I sent a PM to the parents of students at each school we know on CC. Many thanks for your honesty and for sharing your experiences!!!
– On another note: DD has been following schools on Instagram;) - some students, also–she is getting a sense of the culture from their posts on social media. I’m not saying this is good or bad, just interesting. She noted that After several months of following a certain school’s official Instagram site " not the type of kids I could hang out with - they don’t look happy"
I’m a SheepMama: kinda like everything about our school… @-) I just really, really wished it was closer!
Hopefully the honeymoon will last four years!
Is negativity the only truth???
I looked back through the posts and while certain phrases popped up repeatedly, I think there was a lot of differentiation. And in all frankness, as I think ChoatieMom mentioned, it’s really splitting hairs. The devil is in the details.
There is no Nirvana (gasp!). I don’t care where your kid goes, sooner or later you will disagree with a policy, an action of the administration (or inaction), whatever. What happened to XX’s kid may be quite different from what happens to your kid. Maybe two years ago the school did ________ but guess what? Next year the problem will be ___________.
Personally, I see no reason to air dirty laundry unless there is a pervasive ongoing problem that is not being addressed, such as cultures of sexual abuse that have to come to light in recent years.
I appreciate @HMom16 's honesty about what sounds like a very difficult situation. I have 2 friends whose kids had to leave schools which are very well thought of on these boards for mental health reasons. In both cases, the kids were excelling academically, but the constant undercurrent of competition just took its toll . In one case, the school not only handled it very badly, but aggravated the problem. In spite of that, I would – and do – recommend these schools to prospective students because I have known many, many students who have thrived there. There is no pervasive problem, so what’s the point of belaboring these stories?
As @alooknac points out, it is almost impossible to go through 4 years and not encounter a situation someone (maybe even you) was not happy with how it was handled. But these are often complicated situations with substantial histories, and the rules have their own context. And what is one person’s positive is another’s negative.
I think this is one of the reasons that it’s important, as a parent, to be happy with the choice your kid makes. It’s hard to go through 4 years if you don’t trust the school and its values. - Which is also why most parents end up fans of wherever their kids went; the trust, for them, was well-founded.
Do you think that some schools have a culture driven from its traditions, board, & faculty of competitiveness and silence? If you have a problem , hold it in & suck it up? Never criticize the school, never report? Do schools convey a message " You’re lucky to be here, so don’t complain about anything". Or “You’re lucky to get FA, so don’t complain”? The only time our prep school communicates with us is when they do fundraising! Just curious, do any of your students’ schools have parent organizations that enable you to plan events or go to campus more frequently?
Here’s the link for Andover’s parent organization:
The reason it is important to answer questions about how schools deal with mental health is because mental health is important! I think we can all consume what we read with a bit of sophistication and so, on an anonymous board, we should feel free to talk about serious issues with candor.
High powered students like these are at risk for anxiety and depression to begin with. Let’s be honest with one another about how schools deal with mental health the same way we would if a child had diabetes.
The more mental health issues get swept under the rug, the more people suffer in silence. I for one want to know that if my kid gets depressed or anxious or worse the school is equipt to handle it.
Can anyone speak to different schools that have handled issues like this well? Maybe a friend of your child’s ?
“Just curious, do any of your students’ schools have parent organizations that enable you to plan events or go to campus more frequently?”
Peddie has an active parent organization and the meetings are streamed/recorded so that those further away can hear what has been discussed. The last meeting included a wonderful speaker brought in to discuss mental health in teens.
(When asking about health centers on revisit day, definitely ask about how issues with mental health are handled too!)
Additionally, parents are always welcome to attend arts exhibits/performances, athletic meets, etc.
Here is a link to the SPS Parent Aasociation: https://www.sps.edu/page/parents/parents-association. Parents receive monthly communications through the parent newsletter. There is a parent get-together the night before Family Weekend. I’ve communicated with or met face-to-face with the parents of most of my DD’s friends. Parents receive formal advisor reports each trimester, and informal communication at least monthly. The last advisor report also included my DD’s answers to questions about adjusting, roommate, friends and social life, mental health, academic difficulty, likes and dislikes, coping strategies, and goals. Parents also receive formal reports from each teacher every trimester.
As for mental health, as I posted on another thread, I think it’s very important to read the school’s health policy and description of services. I would question the fit of a school that doesn’t provide reasonable counseling and mental health services as well as various lengths of approved health leave. (Back to what @HMom16 shared, short home leaves for either mental or physical health reasons are allowed at SPS.) I would also expect to see collaborative problem-solving on health-related issues such as drug or alcohol use, unhealthy eating patterns, time management, and academic difficulties. I would also expect the school to prioritize student health and safety over by allowing students to come forward and share concerns about high-risk behavior (both their own or that of peers) without fear of disciplinary response.
@bc12345 – Several years ago I consulted with school in the greater NE area. One school that stands out to me as the full package of being a great academic school that is proactive and responsive to emotional well-being is Millbrook. No- I don’t work there & no kids there, but know several graduates. Very impressed with their HM (welcomes parental communication). & faculty-- plus the school’s program includes a variety of experiences that IMHO foster responsibility & well being in teens. So impressed that I suggested the school to friends for their kids. At that time, I also found that schools with programs that serve students with learning differences and/or seeking out a non- traditional program where sensitive to addressing the emotional issues that students experience I’ve worked with Hyde, Forman, Kildonan & Landmark. More recently, had an experience when a student’s phone/account was hacked & this students (and parents) were so distressed. The school was immediately on the case-- staff went out of their way to assist. Excellent response for security & safety. They were prepared. The school’s response also served as a learning experience for the student on how to manage such a situation & not to panic! I know there are many fine programs that I didn’t mention ( sorry) , but I can only speak to the ones where I had actual contact. You can PM me if you want more info.
Then again, both for students and parents, BS is what you make of it. I have several friends with older students in the same BS as my DD. One of them is a fountain of school-related info and tips, while another one knows practically nothing about the school life. They both have access to the same resources. I am only a parent of a freshman, yet over the past year I’ve been regularly sharing with the latter parent publicly available photos, videos, and printed information about her DC’s plays, musical performances, and academic recognitions. And every time I get the same response, “Oh wow! Where do you find all this? I know DC really likes the school but now I can see why.” Um, just visit the parent portal or follow your school on social media. It’s that simple.
Yeah I guess that’s why I don’t place a lot of faith in anecdotes. Student A may have a terrible experience related to mental health issues while Student B raves about the school’s accommodations. So many variables. I know of things my D’s BS did that if I were that student’s parent I would have been knocking down doors to get a better resolution, but I didn’t take up someone else’s fight.
I know there was a particular issue, an expulsion I think, and the student body rebelled and demanded answers from the administration. Issue more or less resolved, but because of privacy laws, not all details were public, so the school’s basis for action could not be fully evaluated. But they willingly engaged the student body and their concerns.
I NEVER felt my concerns were less valued because of being on FinAid. I lived many many miles away but I went to twice yearly Parent Weekends, attended all the parent meetings and workshops, and tried to meet as many parents as possible. I definitely learned a lot of useful unofficial stuff hanging out with parents.
My D had a wonderful advisor who kept in touch regularly and was very available for not just academic but personal concerns.
Am I singing unadulterated praises? No. This school had its pros and cons like most schools. I do not believe it had any entrenched bad ways. It was always willing to listen to all sides and even reconsider its decisions. As much as possible, controversies were common information.
But most importantly, this school did have a particular personality that allowed my D to thrive in a fabulous way. Yet you could find a 100% opposite review from another parent.
I do think it would be valuable to share “cons.” Remember: One person’s “con” might be another’s “pro.” One parent’s “lack of supervision” is another parent’s “encouraging self reliance.” But it serves no one to merely paraphrase the marketing materials, which all sound remarkably similar!
Quoted from another thread in 2009
"According to a survey done at Phillips Academy Andover, 2% of the students had attempted suicide during the past year, while SADD reported that nationwide 16.9% of high school students had seriously considered attempting suicide for the past year (Welcome to SADD). Not totally the same thing, but that’s the closest I could get.
The survey reported on Phillipian mentioned “In retrospect, our greatest disappointment is that we were unable to compare ourselves to peer boarding schools…”."
I’m sorry I don’t know how to past links here. But if you search boarding school suicide it will come up.
I am not looking for a therapeutic school. But this is real. In the small town I live in we had three suicide attempts in one week last year. None of them were publicly reported. All swept under the rug. Nothing changed in terms of service delivery in the LPS. My kid was not one of them thank God and actually was commended by the principal for being kind to one of the kids who was.
If you read the thread on CC the next poster goes on to say that 2% of Andovers population would be 22 kids.
I am planning to send my kid to Andover and have no worries in this department (above and beyond the worries we all should have as parents). But think about 22 families getting that phone call. I for one believe in doing anything I can to prevent that from happening.
It looks like Andover has risen to the challenge and opened a wellness center that offers an abundance of support for students. I think the more parents voice their support for such additions to these schools the better off all of our kids will be.
I have a close friend who is a psychologist on campus at a major Ivy League school. That school has had a rash of suicides this year. We need to support our high achieving, perfectionistic kids the same way we would any other kid. Perhaps moreso since they are more likely to hide their distress and view it as a mark of failure.
My entire point is that I feel that we need to destigmatize mental health issues for ALL of our kids. It may not be a suicide, maybe it’s an eating disorder or gender issues but all kids deserve support in this area. I feel comfortable knowing that during the teen angst years the 40-60% of humans who will experience an episode of anxiety or depression in their lifetime will be supported, at least by Andover and it sounds like other schools as well.
Well, people share what they have experienced. You can’t blame them for coming short on stuff that you may want to hear but that hasn’t been part of their experience. Most of the responses on this anonymous board are from current and former parents, not board members or paid school representatives. You’re making an assumption that people are hiding something and choosing to paraphrase marketing materials instead. Maybe the negative you’re looking for is not there, or it is relatively uncommon and in this sample you’re not finding many people who have experienced it.
While I can only speak to our experience at Exeter, I believe our experience to be similar to most BS. These schools have decades, sometimes centuries of experience helping guide young people through a complex time of their lives. This is all they do. They do not live in a bubble and take very seriously the challenges all teenagers face. They would not be still operating if they didn’t.
I can unequivocally say that Exeter had treated all of the mental health issues that my kids and their friends have had in a professional and caring way. I won’t go into the particulars, but over the 7 years we have had kids on campus, we have seen almost every type scenario with mental health and kids making stupid decisions (many by our own kids and their closest friends). The biggest barrier to getting kids the help they need at these schools is the kids openness to seeking help, not the schools ability to deliver the care. They also have programs to encourage friends to help advocate for help for other students~ where the kid in trouble will not be disciplined. I could go into all the details on what help Exeter offers, but am pretty confident it would not be a differentiator over the other top BS- as they have similar programs. As a parent spend time asking questions if the school you are considering for your child that you think are most relevant for your situation.
^ +1