July 2021 by Tom L.
We had our kids at Evergreen for four years. Most of the teachers were top notch, the curriculum was great, and the campus was very open and almost like a little college. We made a lot of great parent friendships as well. Ms. Judith, Kathleen, and Debra in PS, PK, and 1st grade were absolutely awesome and did an amazing job with our boys. The school also has great financial resources with very generous families supporting continued investment in the physical plant and new programs.One thing we wished were different might have been the level of competition between the kids to be first or best at everything and the impact that started to have on our oldest (who was beginning to only want to pursue things where he could be #1). I don't think the school encourages that (on the contrary, I think they encourage all the kids to always try) but it could be the natural dynamic of any school that only has gifted children. Some of our friends' kids also encountered challenges around bullying; it wasn't rampant though and could have been the reality of how kids interact at that age. On a related note, our biggest advice is to be aware of the sibling admissions policy. Our youngest was admitted to and attended Evergreen PS or PK and was doing great according to all the teacher evaluations. However, after two tests, his top IQ score was in the 90th percentile and as such was short of the 95th percentile cutoff. We were then told he could not continue to Kindergarten (even though the PK teacher strongly recommended he advance to Kindergarten). It made for a really stressful and emotional year for us and while we respect the School's right to set these kinds of policies, it seemed at odds with the values of community, inclusion, and social and emotional intelligence -- especially since the testing data was very inconsistent and in the gray area.
