One of the best schools in NYS....do I need to say any further!!…read more The school was founded in 1950, serving close to 10,000 kids on a 250 acre campus running on a $177 million annual budget.

i've been here for summer camp. It is an all girls summer camp and it's absolutely amazing. They…read morehave different electives that you can sign up for and you can request to be with different friends that you wanna be with. They have showcase every two weeks on a Friday the last day and the dancers and singers perform and much more!

My mom went here and she really loved it! Beautiful campus to visit! Emma Willard is in a great…read morelocation and so easy to access. I am glad to see the places where my mom used to utilize daily.

I have known the school for fifty years. Darrow gave me the space, support and opportunity to…read morediscover so many skills I never knew I had. Darrow taught me to think analytically, communicate effectively and collaborate as often as possible. There is a "safeness" that exists at Darrow that allows a student to try anything. If a student fails, he will be caught. To me there is more pride in failure than never having tried. I failed many times while at Darrow. Was I negatively judged? No. Did I try something else? I did. As a consequence, I am still trying new things. Some I'm good at. Others, not so much. But thanks to Darrow I keep on trying.

We lived in a town with one of the highest-ranked school systems nationally, yet our son was not…read moreengaged. Then we discovered Darrow: a stunningly beautiful setting in the Berkshire foothills, a warm and welcoming community, and a collaborative process that turns students into partners in the education process. It transformed our son into an outgoing, enthusiastic and accomplished student and it made his extra-curricular interests blossom. The "Mountainside" is more than a school - it's the foundation for a lifetime of achievement.

I have my kids enrolled here and this school is one of the beat I've seen. We moved into this…read moredistrict because of it. All the teachers care about the kids and teach them very well. The principals are always available if needed. The new additions to the school are beautiful. The gyms and track are in excellent condition if not new. If your in this district consider yourself one of the lucky ones.

File under bee. We had a cousin who died in charming Niskayuna, New York. Due to the current…read moreAdministration's total screw up of the airlines industry, we took Amtrak with its 10% Military / Veterans Discount, with a bus transfer from the Schenectady, NY train station, to and from for the funeral. While there, we visited the very high-quality ranked Niskayuna High School. The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go. -- Dr. Seuss Did you know that Niskayuna High School Library has honey bees that have made it their home since 2016? I didn't until my recent visit. This review focuses on my discovery of and visit to the Niskayuna High School Library Honey Bee Interpretive Center. Science teacher Paul Scott's first task was to get approval to bring a beehive into the school. "Make sure you start with the people who are most likely to be affected by it," advises Scott, who first consulted the school nurse about allergy concerns and the grounds crew before obtaining permission from the principal. Thousands of honeybees busy themselves inside the school's observation hive, built and installed by Scott and another teacher in 2016. People who don't want to interact with the bees aren't forced to as the location of the hive was no afterthought: The media center, with its large windows overlooking an enclosed courtyard, is a prime and safe location for students to watch bees exit and enter the hive through the pipe that connects the hive to the outdoors. And it's a hub of activity at the school. You might think, what do bees eat there? Don't worry, bees can fly up to 5 miles from their hive to collect food, but there are plenty of trees and other plants blooming throughout the city. Each beehive could have up to 60 thousand bees, and while many are out foraging for food, about 2/3 of the colony stays home to clean, care for the young, make honey, guard the hive, and take care of the queen bee. Donna McAndrews, the school's library media specialist, developed a "bee corner" around the hive, displaying books and informational posters related to bees. What happens when a bee moves to a new hive? They have a house-swarming party! That was proudly told to me by one of the students there. The library staff is friendly, professional, helpful, smart, family-friendly, and disabled-friendly. "What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic." -Dr. Carl Sagan, Cosmos "I'm tired of that stupid phrase, "the birds and the bees" which is supposed to represent "the facts of life" or the beginnings of the sex instruction of the young. Why for heaven's sake, has anyone ever tried to explain sex by talking about the birds and the bees? What have the birds and the bees to do with it? IT'S THE BEES AND THE FLOWERS. Will you get that through your head? IT'S THE BEES AND THE FLOWERS. The bee travels to one flower and picks up pollen from the stamens. The pollen contains the male sex cells of the plant. The bee then travels to another flower (of the same species) and the pollen brushes off onto the pistil, which contains the female sex cells of the plant. ... Now in the human being ... we don't rely on bees to do it for us." -- Dr. Isaac Asimov, US Army Veteran, scientist and Grand Master science fiction author P.S. Don't message me because in spite of my several complaints to yelp, for years now I am unable to open up any messages in yelp to me :-(

It's that time of year... concerts!…read more All my kids went to Niskayuna Schools and now my grandkids are going here. Located in a small town/suburb of Schenectady New York and is ranked very high in the state. Go Niskayuna Warriors!

The building is secure and you need to get permission to enter the building. I have been her in the…read morepast a few times, with the first time being to inquire about taxes and the next time to enroll my son to school. This time I Nneeded to get some books for my son who talkes virtual classes and this is where I was asked to go to. The lady at front desk was friendly.

the school lunch tastes like a$$, my teacher always takes her shoes off and makes the class smell…read morelike feet, but good thing i stole her shoes and im selling them on ebay. (unfortunatly they were the backup pair) and did i mention i cant even describe what the food they serve us is? it looks like pig slop. we have fire drills so much that kids dont take it seriously might not survive an actual emergency. this school sucks.

Why is this even a place? I dont like it here at all, see they dont even teach me how to spell…read more"dont"!

I transferred here in my junior year of high school in 2013 looking for a better education. I went…read moreto the public high school, Northampton High. I felt like it too easy and not enough of a challenge. It was hard for me to concentrate and take school seriously being around so many students who were burnt out and didn't care about trying. I wanted the teachers to push the students more and have higher expectations of them. I'm not a person who's really into academics, but I feel like so many students were slipping through the cracks. So I made the decision to apply to the Academy At Charlemont to try to take charge of my life and make a better future for myself. I had to write an essay in order to apply to the school. I liked this idea, because I feel like it showed that the school was selective with who they accept. This reassured me making me think they were a serious school that also had a loving, warm, accepting community and I'd make friends easily. I also thought all my strengths would be valued and cared for, but all of this I was wrong. For the social aspect of it, it was painful and confusing. When I visited, I was assigned a buddy who was in my grade that I'd be transferring into. I really loved that idea and my buddy was so sweet to me. She wrote me a little note after saying she was so excited to have another friend to sing with her and for us to become friends. But I was wrong, because when I arrived there she had no interest in me. It almost made me think that she was obligated by the school to do that. I kept blaming myself thinking there was something wrong with me. This school had dances each month, so I thought that would be a good way to ease into the social scene. But most of the times I was ignored. A lot of the students were uptight, focused on the propel they've gone to school with for years, killed themselves over academics, didn't know how to relax, and just weren't open to meeting new people. I was hoping things would get better, and they did for a little while. But a lot of times I felt left out, different, and not given a fair chance for my classmates to get to know me. Academically, this school shot me down and made me feel stupid every day. They threatened to hold me back if I didn't get my grades up, and I was always one to do pretty well in school. Teachers accused me of not trying hard enough and whenever I started to make progress and get material, they didn't acknowledge that and just said I needed to try harder. They would move so fast with their curriculum that I couldn't keep up no matter how hard I worked. I failed my finals and that's when I decided to leave. Any talents I did have were diminished and not taken seriously. They had a creative writing class and I love writing, but my writing got bashed on even there. I gradually became really depressed and didn't want to go back. I also went on a ski trip there and was really excited about it. But I got stuck on a mountain since the people I was going with said it was easy, but then couldn't keep up with them. I got yelled at by the teacher who took us on the trip, bad mouthed about behind my back by him, and scolded by the director all saying it was my fault and I kept this teacher up all night. They were shaming and cruel and don't know how to deal with problems, even though I profusely apologized. This school has ridiculously unrealistic high expectations for students to be this perfect person who doesn't mess up, is always polite, takes initiate, does community service, etc. They only accept one kind of intelligence and since I didn't exactly didn't into that box, they were taken back by it. Long story short, this school is great for the cookie cutter kid who learns fast and doesn't make mistakes. But if you struggle in anyway, I would keep looking for another school.

This is an excellent school if you have an academic child who isn't super dynamic. If your kid…read moreisn't going to fit into the country pumpkin pie vibe it's not great. Some of the teachers are remarkably good. The three heads of school are pretty good too. People talk about diversity a lot these days. If you're not white, you're going to feel out of place. Not because people are seriously racist, just because you'll stick out and be a novelty. And all the well intentioned special treatment will feel a little oppressive.