Pros
It took me a long time to write this review because there is so much I love about this school's mission, the employees, and the children. The salary is great for a teacher and you get a large raise every year, the benefits used to be very good (free healthcare, life insurance, phone, computer). Some of this has changed. The mission is wonderful, to help every child learn. Every teacher working there truly believes in the mission and works hard to make it happen. Co-workers want to be helpful and work with you to meet your goals. The job gives you purpose and you see your rewards every day. Some reviews mention behavior issues, but in my opinion teaching children with behavior issues is actually a very rewarding part of the job. It is silly to go into teaching and complain that students do not behave. The CEO is great and believes in the mission. I think she needs to really set up a mentorship program for her principals because I know she was an amazing principal when she first started this network.
Cons
Teachers - The teachers are underappreciated and treated poorly. If you take any time off you will judged and made to feel guilty. There is not a system in place to allow teachers to be home sick, go to doctor's appointments, stay home with sick children, attend personal or family events, without having a negative impact on your colleagues. You will work a minimum 7:30-5:30, however that include a school day from 7:45-4:15 and staying outside with students until 4:30/4:45. Once a week you will have a meeting until 5:30pm. During the school day you will get 2 hours or so of planning if you teach a gen ed class. If you teach a special you will get 3-5 hours of planning in the entire week. During planning periods you will also be expected to supervise kids that are in trouble, meet with other teachers, supervise lunch periods.. you will not be able to actually do your own work. Your work will be done after 5pm and much of it will be done at home. The schools are lower quality than they used to be. When I began working there 6 years ago, I would only write an amazing review, the kids walked the hallways calmly and were very respectful. Now the kids disrespect even the best teachers because there is a lack of accountability for poor behavior from the administration. As I mention, behavior issues are not a negative thing to me, but a lack of accountability and support from the administration when behavior issues occur is a huge problem. Mentorship used to be very strong, now it is very dependent on which admin you have. Some administrators will only observe and give feedback twice a year, a few will actually come and give feedback each month. I loved this school until the last two years I taught there and stayed because I loved the students and they liked my class. However, this school wants to utilize teachers as long as they are willing to be treated poorly. They no longer communicate well with teachers, I have seen many teachers fired without being warned that the administration was unhappy with their performance and with no attempts to communicate what the issue was. My first year teaching, a teacher quitting was unheard of. In the past year, multiple teachers have quit in the middle of the school year - I would assume based on poor working conditions and unsustainability of the job. Results are not great anymore. The school used to focus on teaching, not testing, and as a result had fantastic test score. Now the school seems to "teach to the test". This network used to have the highest test scores in the city and they used to not stress the test so much. When I left, there was a SIGNIFICANT amount of time devoted to just test prep, rather than teaching valuable life lessons (at least two months of test prep dominating the curriculum) and despite this test scores were going down due to a decrease in overall school quality, management, and teaching. It is a such a shame to a strong school network devaluing their workers and students, and not bothering to identify what is going wrong to address the issue and return to their previous success as an educational institution and as a workplace. You will notice all of the good reviews are from teachers who have taught less than 2 years at the school, perhaps they are new to teaching, or they young and still in the mindset of working their way to the top. Unfortunately, you will still be treated poorly even if you teach at this school for 5,6,7 years - it won't get better.
