Terrible experience, do not recommend. 强力不推荐的一所学校, 校长歧视讲中文的家长,小孩有任何问题都推给家长
We are a Chinese-American family who've spent a number of years living in Shanghai. In 2022, after experiencing a rather traumatic 3 month-long lockdown in Shanghai where my 5 year old daughter was not only kept out of school, but locked in our apartment for over 3 weeks, we decided to come to Seattle for the summer so she could regain some normalcy in her life.
So this is a 5 year old who not only had been out of the school routine for almost 4 months, but also in a new country and in a new classroom environment with a non-native language. I think any reasonable person would agree that she'd have some problems settling in, and that a close collaborative approach with the parents might be required.
However what we experienced at Bel-red was the complete opposite. The school simply sent our daughter home early every time they encountered a problem. They also changed the teacher every week so there was no easy way for my daughter to even settle in. Yes, she did have problems, and the behaviors needed improvement, but on the occasions she had problems previously at her school in Shanghai, never once did our teacher simply shrug her shoulders and send the child home. She had strategies and actions to deal with the child, and talked to us (in private) at pickup so we could understand.
Being sent home happened 3 times in 7 days, including one time when she didn't want to go outside to play because she was tired. This is absolutely absurd, sending a kid home because she don't want to go outside and play? Isn't a simple solution just to have her sit with another teacher for 20 minutes to do some reading?
We tried to be respectful initially, but the last time she was sent home, the principal talked to us about her issue directly in front of the school entrance, where multiple parents were doing drop off and could hear everything. She then turned our child around and said she couldn't come in today, this is also visible to other parents. I could not imagine a more unprofessional and inappropriate manner to handle the situation.
The final straw was the principal Sue and her terrible attitude. Never once did she offer any helpful advice on how we could help our child at home after our 3 month long traumatic experience. Every time I mentioned that my daughter might be having trouble adjusting due to all the changes, she displayed zero interest.
But the most offensive thing was that from the first time she sent my daughter home early because she didn't want to play outside, Sue said things to us like : "Take your child home and just keep her at home. Here in America there are rules", or "Where will you send her next school year? Because we're full. Be careful of the public schools in the US, she'll just spiral". "You know, here in America things are different, we don't tolerate this".
So just because I spoke to her in Chinese and we mentioned we had come from Shanghai, she assumed that we don't understand there are rules and she can bully us????? Would she have spoken like this if I spoke English to her? Are there no rules for children in Shanghai??? It horrifies me to think that a school principal would discriminately talk to parents who they believe have newly arrived at a country and treat their child in such an irresponsible way by throwing all the problems back in the parents faces. What sort of educational institution could this sort of principal lead? I see many Chinese speaking grandparents doing pick up/drop off, and who probably don't know they can go onto Google or Yelp to write reviews describing episodes like these, who don't know they can complain to the education board. Does this principal also speak in such an offensive and disrespectful manner to them?
All in all, unless you have a perfectly behaved child and enjoys having a principal who will likely be rude to any family members who speak Chinese, I DO NOT RECOMMEND this school. read more