This school is truly amazing. Every child is known. Each child has value and purpose within the…read moreschool. I'm disappointed to see a bad review from 7 years ago. I can confidently say that St. Alphonsus is nothing like that review. It's gone through many changes including a new principal and vice principal who are deeply committed to the well-being and growth of the school. St. Alphonsus has a half-day preschool class and two full-day preschool classes which shows how much this school is growing! St. Al's is diverse and welcoming of all religions and family dynamics. There have been many positive changes over the years leading to the beautiful school it has become!

So glad that we found this small school with a big heart! I cannot say enough about the welcoming…read morecommunity and focus on academics and merits. The diverse and community is also great and a welcome change from our prior Seattle public school experience. Our kids have all liked their experience here and the academic and service focus is also a plus.

One star because zero isn't an option, this is the reason I hate living in this neighborhood. Not…read moreonly do the parents of kids attending this school suck at driving and my kid can't walk to their school anymore because they've almost been hit over 10 times by students and parents alike but the students are terrible drivers and incredibly disrespectful of the community around them. Typically when you live next to a school sure there are some annoying things but you get the benefits of community spaces and groups. Not with this private religious school, all you get is knowing a catholic person somewhere is rich and no you can't use their field or gym. I want to move out of the neighborhood I've loved for 10 years because of this school. The staff I've contacted about this are incredibly rude. The students I have seen doing some incredibly questionable projects over the years. All in all, Blanchet makes this Seattle neighborhood absolute garbage.

I have to agree with previous reviews that the staff of this school features some serious duds…read more While many of the teachers are great, some of them lack the motivation to not be complete doofuses, one teacher in particular comes to mind who is seriously lacking in intelligence, and overall personality.

I visited this church for the first time. The building cool and old school at the same time. The…read moreworship music and preaching were solid. This is a wonderful church to visit or call home.

A beautiful community of people seeking to love God and love the city. Great programs for adults,…read moreyouth and families. Solid biblical grounding for teaching, worship, and community life. I would highly recommend this church for anyone seeking a church home that is centered around Christ!

I've visited this Catholic church in Ballard several times; as a Catholic it's a bit of a strange…read moreidea to "review a parish," but I'll try to share some helpful information for other potential visitors. Mass centers around broken, wounded and imperfect people (us) from all backgrounds coming together to receive the one thing that can heal them and thus bring them closer to God and the rest of humanity -- Communion. Having said this, I'll dispense with some basic facts about my experiences there. First things first: the Mass itself is celebrated with great reverence and respect. Altar boys assist the priest(s) throughout the celebration, and the choir and organ music is very well done. The organist(s) in particular seems to be very accomplished. The liturgy is orderly from beginning to end; all of the details seem to be attended to properly. The priest(s) are sincere in their homilies, and quite gracious if you speak with them before or after Mass. Considering many of the surrounding parishes which seem to have been built or remodeled according to the atrocious architectural ideas of the 70s, this church is actually quite beautiful from the inside. It has large stained glass windows, the tabernacle and a large crucifix are front and center, the main altar is made of marble, as are the side altars for St. Mary and St. Joseph, they have a pretty impressive set of the Stations of the Cross (always nice for Lent), and the organ is truly beautiful in design and sound. On the other hand, the outside of the church building is not much to look at; the pinkish-tan trim color is in pretty poor taste (at least to me). The current pastor is from the Philippines; he's been very warm and friendly when I've spoken with him. Also by my experience he is a very good confessor (shhh..., or he'll get too busy for the rest of us). According to the parish bulletin there are many active sub-communities; seniors, youth, etc. One challenge for this parish is that the parishioners need to take it upon themselves to be a bit more warm and welcoming; specifically prior to and after Mass. If you like to visit, worship, and disappear after Mass without having to ever meet new people, this would be a positive instead of a negative. They do host coffee and doughnut hour following the Sunday morning Masses, but it seems poorly attended compared to how many people attend Mass. Another challenge is that while visiting you need to try to sit in the front third of the church if you want to have a hope of hearing clearly what is being spoken from the sanctuary throughout Mass. The same space that makes this church sound angelic when the choir is singing, makes the readings, homilies and prayers very difficult to understand much of the time. Sitting toward the front remedies much (but not all) of this. Like many local parishes they don't seem to offer Confession very frequently, just one period on Saturday afternoons; it would be nice if they offered it prior to or after each weekend Mass, but they do not. They do have a very nice Eucharistic Adoration chapel available for prayer during the week, but it's only open on Tuesdays and Fridays. This makes it difficult to drop by for impromptu visits when life gets overwhelming, but I suppose it is fortunate to have the chapel available at all. It seems that their parish school is thought of quite highly by families whose children attend. Overall there is a lot of good to say about this place; it's well worth a visit if you're in the Ballard area and need to go to Mass. Just don't expect to be bowled over by smiling greeters who want to shake your hand; it won't be that "kind" of an experience. Expect to participate in a Mass that is well celebrated and reverent, accompanied my some beautiful organ music; and try to sit toward the front. And pray for the rest of us while you're there. Cheers

I really wanted to like Fairview. It was reasonably priced, directly on the way to my work, and I…read morewanted my daughters to get a Christian education there. We had a tour of the facility and were enamored of it before we were accepted. One of our daughters was in the Pre-K class, the other in preschool, and they went there nearly a full year. The teachers themselves were great. We loved them, they seemed very good at their jobs. The facilities were also good. The kids get a lot of opportunities to do some really cool stuff, and there are frequent field trips. The initial downside was that their communication skills were terrible. Emails from the administration wouldn't distinguish that the school part was closed (but not the childcare facility) for holidays. Our youngest wasn't potty trained (we tried!) before she started, and they refused to let her stay in pull-ups, so we ended up going through as many as four sets of clothes per day. The staff was terrible at telling us if we were running low on clothes and I ended up having to leave work mid-afternoon one day because my daughter was out of clean clothes. A fund-raiser we signed up for was pizza lunches every Wednesday. It was advertised as "skip making a lunch once a week", but when I stopped sending in lunches, I got an email from them telling me I wasn't meeting the state requirements on lunches and needed to supplement the pizza meals. We raised the discrepancy between the promises on the fundraiser promo-sheet and the reality with the childcare center's director, only to see the exact same flier used the next semester. The worst part of the experience was the early-morning drop-off. Before 8am, all of the children (regardless of age) were placed in the same room. Washington State laws require that in mixed groups, you use the age of the youngest child to determine required ratios. There were 2 year olds in with 5+ year olds, and the required ratio of 1 teacher for every 7 students was almost always violated during this time, or nearly violated. There was usually 2-3 teachers for 20+ children, and it was very chaotic. My girls ended up hating being left in the morning, and we ended up spending 5-15 minutes consoling them before feeling comfortable leaving them. The final straw that made us take the girls out was the morning we arrived and there was only 1 teacher for 16+ 2-4 year olds in the room. Older kids were taking toys from the younger, boys were rough-housing in the corner, the room was pure chaos. After waiting 5 minutes for another teacher to show up, I ended up having to go to the school principle to get more staff in the room before I felt comfortable leaving my daughters there. When I complained about the teacher ratios and having to track down extra staff, I was given a non-apology and told that if my daughters had difficult with the early-morning hour that I should bring them into school at a later time of the day. We took the girls out of Fairview shortly after that. It pains me to have to write up a review such as this one, but I don't think it's fair for any of the future parents considering this school to not have some insights into the problems that we had to deal with there.

This is my son's second year at Fairview, and first year in kindergarten. This school has an…read moreexcellent child care center with the most reasonable prices I've found in Seattle, and the teachers in the child care center genuinely care for the children under their watch. When my son was in the child care center part of the school, he was always excited to get to school in the morning, which is a great feeling if you are a parent, to know that your son loves where he spends the majority of his day. Mrs. Foster was his teacher in the Frog class, and I have nothing but good things to say about her. My review is about the kindergarten program. I chose Fairview partly because of their small class sizes, and when I met Mrs. McGuire, the kindergarten teacher, I was really excited for what was to come. She definitely does not disappoint! My son can be a handful, and Mrs. McGuire is firm but kind in her expectations of her class and doesn't let him get away with his antics. He has absolutely thrived in the environment she has created. She has helped him grow in his love for God, makes learning incredibly fun, and is a loving, invested teacher. Every one of her students loves her! The other great thing about this school is that they have both before and after care on site, due to the fact that they are a child care center as well. This is very helpful as I am not out of work at 3:15 every day. To anyone considering Fairview, I would highly recommend enrolling your child there!

Ok I'm going to balance the bad reviews with some realism. High school is rough for some and can be…read morea difficult time. However, my experience at Ballard grew me into a successful adult and the caring staff and well planned curriculum prepared me to excel at university and beyond. There will always be all sorts in high school, but Ballard did a wonderful job preparing me to be a contributing member of society. If I still lived in Seattle I would send my own kids here.

One of Ballard's fellow students here--just thought I could pitch in my two cents about this place…read more I think it'd be good to get to know this place from a students point of view. I've been going here for two years now, currently in my Sophomore year which has been an interesting journey. I had a few first hard months when I got here because a majority of my friends had gone to Ingraham. I quickly became familiar with the building as it's pretty geometrically shaped and easy to navigate. I had no trouble finding my classes and the "pods" as they call them are very easy to find, same with the classes within this pods. The teachers though, are really a hit or miss. You either get a fantastic teacher who is willing to interact with their students and engage academically as well as socially with them--at the right time of course. Then you can wind up with someone that doesn't have any charisma or, by the looks of it, no motivation to teach at all. I imagine that there is a middle ground somewhere in there but from my experience and others, it seems to be one or the other. The admin, for the most part, are amazing. Extremely helpful and most of the time, can come to a resolution to whatever you're dealing with. My counselor, (which is curated by last name) Mr. Kramer was very helpful when I came in to talk about my classes and succeeding academically. He gave me insight into what could be best for me to do to achieve and I think it's worked out great. Even though I did have a speed bump with one of the VP's, I can still say that the admins are great. Now, it's not really my place to tell someone how this school is by the way the people are because everyone has different personal experiences, but there is one large recurring problem in this place. The drug and alcohol abuse is extremely prominent and is honestly something I hate having to deal with. I know what the adults will say; "it's high school, people will experiment." At the level it's at here, this isn't experimenting. I get when students want to try marijuana or cigarettes but I think it's well past experimentation when you have kids dealing cocaine, meth and other hardcore drugs right outside at the bus stop. Same with the buying and selling of alcohol, it can happen right in front of a faculty and they'll do nothing, at most just give the kid a slap on the wrist. The overall environment of this school is gloomy. I can have fun but at the same time it's just sad. There are classrooms with no windows and the tint of the tungsten lights can just put you to sleep. That is why I enjoy being on the second floor where windows line of the top of the hallways and let some natural light in. Anyways, thanks for reading this if you do.

A great setting for children under age 8 years to play and run and exert energy on cold, winter…read moredays and hot, summer days. Complete with a play structure and climbing options, slides, propellers and space to explore; a ball "field" with goal; an eating area (nut-free facility) and toddler area (for under 2s) with padded floor, rocking chairs and additional bench seating. Free coffee, tea and water during Play Space hours (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday from 10:30am-1:30pm). Bathroom is equipped with changing table and built-in kids toilet seat! The space is shoe-free, but socks are required. Note: due to new "management", as of 26 April 2019, Play Space will be closing and no longer offer free, weekday play! It's still available on weekends for party rentals at $250 for three hours.

Down-to-earth, genuine church with amazing and loving people. My family have built…read moreforever-friendships here, and people have really stepped in when we needed help. Messages are Christ-centered. Part of the Free Methodist Church, which is less progressive than my family would prefer - only real downside. Give it a try!!