I never write reviews but for my children's sake and perhaps your children, I'm willing to take the time to do this and detail our experience over 3 years at Wedgeworth.
First and foremost, the one star applies to school admin only and not to the teachers and teaching quality. We applied to Wedgeworth for our son to attend kindergarten. Since it was a first come/first serve basis, we were able to enroll him with no problem even though we lived out of district. Right away we found the admin staff extremely rude, specifically the office manager (Veronica) who does not have the proper temperament when it comes to dealing with busy office work. At first we thought no big deal, maybe she had a bad day. However over time we realized not only does her not have a bubble personality like school office manager should have, she just comes off as rude when speaking to parents and to kids too. She might not feel this way because she was always busy rushing around like a chicken with a head cut off and very ineffective. I get it you have a lot of kids to deal with, but calm down a take a deep breath because your anxiety level is off the chart.
Secondly the principal, Dr. Cho, is also on the same page with the office manager. At first we thought she just has a 'tiger mom' personality but again, she's loud/obnoxious and her social etiquette is just not there. A couple of examples: When we first started there, of course we wanted to know about after school care options so after one of the initial kinder round up meetings I approached her with this question, but her response to me was 'we don't deal with that, you have to contact SSI (which is the outsourced company that provides after school care). Her attitude not only came off as arrogant but was plain rude. Again, I didn't think much of it but overtime I learned many parents feel the same way about her. Also, whenever she conducts online meetings, they were always extremely hectic and useless. Very often her email communications will contain wrong information, just something that you wouldn't expect from a principal. One time my wife and I felt 'threatened' by her and office manager because we needed to request days off for our children's church retreat. We were told we might get a letter from the district and also will need to have a sit down with higher up persons if we missed days from school. We were discouraged from taking any days off since day 1 and I understand public school receives funding based on attendance, but this infringes on our religious rights so we ended up going to the district office and spoke to someone else who said it's legally permitted for us to have religious days off as outlined in the district's handbook. She made a call to the school office and it was fine. Again, not well handled and left another bad taste in our month.
Fast forward to post pandemic, like many others we sent our child to school and endured difficult times. When it's time for our daughter to enroll for kindergarten we did the same thing and submitted the application. The process was again hectic because the office manager simply cannot handle any stressful situation. We were under the impression that she'd be accepted because she has a sibling already enrolled, and also we were told that she was accepted and her enrollment was also confirmed on school district's ARIES site. However sometime in March I got a call from the office manager informing me that they do not have a spot for her because school's 'impacted'. I asked her what exactly does that mean? She simply said there is no space for your child because we need to accommodate others in our district. Needless to say I was extremely frustrated because now we have to scramble to find a school. Dr. Cho even told me that they do not officially 'confirm' enrollment until summer in which was NEVER explained during any one of her hectic online meetings which she claimed she did so I felt I was either lied to or misled/misinformed. Of course she doesn't admit to any of those so what else could I have said?
That was the last straw that broke the camel's back. We decided to invest in a private school not because of the teacher or the teaching quality offered at Wedgeworth was poor. It's simply the office politics and how we were treated/communicated with that's not acceptable. I've spoken to many parents and none of them had such experiences with their schools so either we were overreacting or this is not normal. My guess is that prior to school was granted a new building, they enrolled as many students as possible to make the numbers look great and therefore get more funding. Once they get what they wanted then all bets are off to what our needs are. Kudos to the administrators who put together this plan but I resent the fact that kids nowadays are treated like a number/commodity used to get more funding. This isn't just a Wedgeworth issue but rather for the entire public education. read more
