If you value your child's emotional well-being, in my view, this is not the school to send them to. After spending 4 years at CVA, I finally have all 3 of my kids out of there, and it's been the best decision ever, and I can see the difference. I can safely say that having someone teach my kids Quran & Arabic covers any advantages this school may have had over non-Islamic schools, in my opinion. But the disadvantages of sending my kids there were, unfortunately, endless, from my perspective, raising concerns over transparency, accountability, and care for children's mental health. And, in my experience as an educator, I found the principal's leadership to be the weakest I have encountered in a school setting.
Transparency:
In May 2025, we received an email from the school notifying parents that the Early Childhood Education has been placed on a 9-month probationary notice. This, according to the e-mail, was for an incident in May 2024 that, as a parent, I knew nothing about. This e-mail was sent before Colorado's Department of Human Services sent parents a letter in the mail, which officially confirmed the licensing situation to parents. While the school e-mail was framed as a move "in the spirit of honesty and accountability," to this day, it's not clear to me what exactly happened, and the e-mail did not specify either. This was very concerning, and it led me to pull out one of my kids, whom we had registered.
Accountability:
From my experience, the school leadership does not value parents' feedback or complaints. Over the past several months, for example, I requested multiple urgent meetings with the leadership to discuss emotional well-being & safety concerns regarding my kids, & all were ignored or deferred. This is not new in my experience. A few years back, my child told me he saw peers engaging in inappropriate behavior in the bathroom. I tried raising this with the leadership, but I never received a response. Let alone, a bathroom in the elementary school, which I would use for my child in pre-K, was often a source of concern from a hygienic standpoint, in my view. Oftentimes, I would find no soap or toilet paper in the bathroom when I would take my little child. When toilet paper was there, it would often be so wet that one couldn't even use it, & it would stay like this for days on end.
Children's mental health:
When a 7-year-old A-student in 2nd grade gets suspended three times in about 2 months, this raises concerns for me over the school's disciplinary approach, especially if he moved from blowing flying kisses to his homeroom teacher to feeling down & hating school. When I met with a senior staff member to discuss how the extreme disciplinary actions, in my view, were not helping, and asked if he could meet with the school counselor, I was told the school had no counselor (yet it was working on expanding buildings). Suffice it to say, the only thing that cheered my son during that phase was when I asked him if he wanted to move to another school. Only then, he beamed, & I realized my child's mental health was compromised in this school from my perspective, & I had him enrolled in another school for the following year.
But to make things worse, before he left & to have him hate the school even further, we were invited to attend a closed event as parents of students who excelled, so that they could be honored. After having honorees all sit in a designated area, the school principal & staff began calling the names of students and handing them certificates, but the names of my child & at least 2 others were never called. I alerted the staff multiple times, & they kept telling us to be patient, & then the principal simply said it was a mistake and proceeded to call the other names. What, in my view, was a dismissive attitude, unwillingness to take responsibility for the oversight at hand and remedy the mistake on the spot was shocking to me, & what struck me further was the lack of attentiveness to the emotional impact on the kids who were omitted despite being invited to receive an award - after all, some of the kids & parents were visibly upset, some cried. These were not things I could have let go, and I called the principal out for it, only to find a board member physically confronting me, putting his hands on me without my consent, & telling me to meet him outside, which I perceived as threatening. Worth mentioning, the board member's child was honored multiple times on the same night, which, to me, raised questions of fairness. The school then restricted my access indefinitely. When I later explained that I'm the only one who can drop off/pick up my remaining kid there, asserted my right to walk my 4yo to his class, & requested the school policy & contract that justifies the indefinite suspension of access, the principal accused me of defiance, disenrolled my child from school, removed him from class, and left him at the front office for us to pick up. read more
