We had a VERY disappointing experience at this school for my daughter's 9th grade school year that I do not want to have happen to any other student or family in the future.
The advantages and disadvantages of being enrolled in an on-line school such as this when you need any help or have important items to discuss with a teacher or the principal can be hit or miss, dependent on the teacher assigned to you, their follow-up skills, and how serious (or not) they take your concerns.
In the online environment, the process is supposed to be whenever you need help, you would email the teacher and they would generally respond within 24 hours by email or phone. For more importer items, the student-teacher would set up a meeting in person, questions would get answered, and the teaches would have fantastic follow-up the rest of the semester. This is the path for success at this school. There were certainly many, if not most, teachers at this school that do a fantastic job following up.
Unfortunately for one of my daughter's classes, we had a perfect storm that resulted in a horrible experience at this school.
The teacher assigned had very poor follow-up throughout the semester to our requests-we constantly had to chase her down all semester for answers to our questions, the math course relies on an automated computer program to print out assignments and is very confusing, and the school uses an automated finals test that shut off 15 minutes before it was supposed to and without any warning.
These are the challenges of an online school. For a regular school, you would see the teacher every day and they would answer your questions in person. For this school, your success is only as good as the teacher's response time and willingness (or not) to help you.
When taking a test at a regular school, the teacher would tell you that you have 30 minutes left then 15 minutes left then the bell would ring and you would know it would be time to turn in your test. But taking an online test, this program had no warning and just shut off 15 minutes sooner than expected.
When we met with the teacher the day after the final to review everything in person and voice all of our concerns, the teacher was poorly prepared, had other people listening in on the meeting that she never identified, humiliated us by having the meeting in an open environment where everyone can hear our conversation (including students) that should have been private
To make matters worse, the teacher had absolutely no proactive solutions to give to us. All the teacher told us is "there is nothing I can do" multiple times.
But even worse, the same teacher had sent my daughter a very disturbing text directly to her on a Saturday a few months prior asking to PICK UP MY DAUGHTER AT OUR HOUSE to go running.
NOT ACCEPTABLE or appropriate request for a high school teacher. My daughter is now traumatized by the experience and doesn't trust teacher's anymore.
Unfortunately, the leadership of this school has very poor follow-up when serious issues are brought to their attention and does not seem to take complaints seriously.
When we had voiced our concerns to the principal earlier in the year about this very disturbing text from the teacher, all the principal did was leave a voice mail and sweep this aside telling us how great that teacher is. The principal never met with us in person and never followed up with us about our concerns after that.
NOT ACCEPTABLE follow-up on such a serious issue!
Net result of all these failures at the school is that my daughter was given a failing grade of a D for the class-(her only D in her life).
The school stresses time management, accountability, responsibility, communication, and perseverance skills on their website however when one of their own teachers and their principal fails to demonstrate any of these attributes themselves, the school, the teacher, and the district take no accountability.
School is about learning.
The lessons provided by Pacific Coast High School are not good life lessons for anyone. read more