Excellent teachers, staff and PTA. With a bond passing for close to $200M in 2013, a new high school set to break ground in 2017, and improvements and realignment at TMS and Tahoma Jr High, residents in Maple Valley have a lot to look forward to. I would add, as the father of two asian american boys, I was very impressed with how the school, parents, and educators nurtured diversity. While not a very diverse school, our children always felt welcomed and never experienced racial tension.
This school is horrible. Overcrowded, teachers don't have time to grade the homework, they have the kids do it and my kid tells me you can scribble any old thing on a piece of paper and it is considered finished homework, not even graded so you can check knowledge before test time. If you aren't in their little click of people the coach knows, dont' bother trying out for sports no matter how good you are. One more thing, they invite the parents for conference night but here's the stipuation, you get 5 minutes with the teacher and some of them aren't even available because they teach at other schools as well. I don't know why people are moving to Maple Valley for the school district. They don't seems to care how your child performs and teachers spend a lot of time telling their personal stories about hutning, traveling, etc, not at all related to the cirriculumn. I'm lookiing at alternatives for my child's education.
Positive things: Almost nothing Negative things: To much homework, they don't give you homework to do and to learn and gain knowledge from instead they give homework to prepare yourself for jobs where you have lots of work. They do a poor job at punishment to. People how get caught with drugs can end up with punishments not that much worse than someone who threw a pencil in class. Also, the learning is not good. In history you do nothing related to background knowledge of the country. You actually do language arts in history and acting in language arts. They could have better ways at teaching us the things that actually matter. Another thing is that the teacher tend to swear a lot and show so called educational videos (we actually watched the Simpsons in science class) that swear. And then they get mad at the students for saying one (bad word). There's even teachers that pictures of there awards with guns in there class. Many schools have a higher quality and I have no clue how they are supposed to be a good school.
This has got to be the worst school in the district. If your kids not a straight A and not in sports. They will not like you and they will treat you bad. If your kid is enrolled in Special Education they will not follow your child's IEP. They will try to talk you into taking that out of their IEP. If they don't follow your child's IEP, you as a parent have a right to get them sued. To avoid all of this, do NOT send your kids to this school. Homeschool your kids or put them in private school if necessary.
This school has a very bad staff and strict rules. After lunch everyday they make the students help clean up. Isn't that the janitors job? And since this school has a bad overcrowding problem, some students might not get the classes they need or want due to them being full.
This is probably the worst school I have ever been to. Parents and teachers/staff members may not know what goes on around the students but as a student I know for sure what this school is all about. I highly recommend you do not send your child to this school especially if your child is anything other than white. Most of the teachers teaching methods are horrible and you cannot learn clrearly. It's no wonder the test scores are getting lower each year! So I just want to say this school is extremely discriminatory! Please save you child and do not send them to this school!