We had our two children at Raintree 6 and 8 years, respectively, and while we very excited in the…read morebeginning, I strongly recommend against families using this school now. Raintree seemed wonderful in the beginning, clean facilities, great staff, wonderful food that you could even order to bring home. Our children appeared to be receiving an excellent education, and despite no standardized testing, we were told they were doing wonderfully and we believed it -- eagerly paying tuition to give our girls the best we could, like many other patents. Then, in 2022, the teacher's aid for our youngest daughter's class was accused, and now convicted, of molesting several children in her preschool class. This is a horrible event that can occur anywhere, but it was the school's response that was the damning part. Raintree did not respond as they should have. Imagine if the principal at your child's school found out that an employee was molesting a 3 year old, and when the employee began confessing... the principal advised the molester to stop talking to the police -- because, the owner of Raintree did exactly that. Further, the owners essentially ignored the parents of the victims, and they didn't want to talk with any parents about these events. They did eventually implement changes to policies that should have never existed -- no longer were very young children left alone in dark, curtained rooms for nap time, with a single teacher/aid, and fortunately no longer were aids/assistants allowed to work under the direct supervision of a family member. We asked for further changes, such as cameras and for our children to not be undressed publicly for swimming, and as parents we started a PTO to suggest further improvements for our children's safety, but the administration resisted all of our efforts at changes. The original core group of parents who founded the PTO left active involvement out of frustration, or left Raintree entirely, and the organization quickly became little more than a coordinating unit for volunteer opportunities. (citations to articles confirming details above: https://www2.ljworld.com/.../special-prosecutor.../, https://www2.ljworld.com/.../mothers-testify-about.../, https://www2.ljworld.com/.../recent-filings-shed-more.../) The second reason I would not recommend Raintree to anyone is the academic quality. Several years ago, two of our close friends removed their children (one in 1st, the other in 3rd grade) from Raintree, moving them to the public schools. The public entry testing indicated both children (from different families in different classrooms) were very behind for their grade levels, scoring in the 20 to 30 percentiles in reading and math. At first we still thought our own children were fine, but then we noticed our kids didn't know the math we would have known at that age, they couldn't read a clock, and they were very poor readers when we checked out library books appropriate for their ages. When we had our girls tested, one tested under the 40 percentile in reading, 30s in math, and the other was in the 30 and 20 percentiles, respectively. This was finally what pushed us over the edge, and we left two years ago. Leaving Raintree has been one of the best decisions we have made for our children. We feel our children are far safer in the public schools, the administration at the public schools are far more communicative with us as parents, and the education is much better. After nearly 2 years of hard work by their teachers, and countless hours of at-home tutoring, they are both in 80+ percentiles in every subject. Finally, we don't feel cheated anymore by Raintree. I resent Raintree for making me think we were doing the best thing for our children, and I regret ignoring the many warning signs and "drinking the Koolaide" that this was a good environment for our children. Our children are certainly far happier than they ever were at Raintree -- even they understand that the education in the USD479 schools are superior, and they greatly enjoy the far broader range of afterschool and inschool activities. I am far more impressed with the steps the public schools take to keep our children safe. The staff and administration are fantastic. The one time one of my children was bullied on a Friday, the principal called us Saturday morning, talked over an hour, talked with the families of the "bullying" kids over the weekend, and by Monday everything had been resolved. I advise any family to carefully consider their decision to send a child to Raintree. I strongly suggest you take advantage of the wonderful schools we have available for free (or really supported by our rather high property taxes) and say that $12-15k/year tuition for their future college or trade school education.

We sent our children to Raintree from pre-k through 6th grade. My family is so grateful to have a…read moreschool like Raintree Montessori in our community. We moved to Little Rock, Arkansas for two years when the oldest was in lower elementary. No Montessori school in that city came close in comparison to Raintree Montessori. We are more than satisfied with the education our children received in this caring, inclusive, nurturing, and positive learning environment. Both have graduated from college with honors. Our investment in their early education paid off with both students receiving academic scholarships. There can always be issues no matter the school. We simply work together to solve them, keeping the child's best interest in mind. We liked Raintree so much that I chose to work here. Now I help other families discover this amazing place to educate children.