Global Village Academy - Douglas County

My husband and I loved the philosophy, concept, and diversity of GVA- DC. The Spanish immersion was something our son really was interested in since he had been tutored in Spanish prior to attending GVA. We wanted to love the school but were unfortunately very disappointed. Our son was in a kindergarten class with kids who had serious behavioral problems. He was hurt on multiple occasions. There was little to no support for teachers and most of their day was doing behavioral management as opposed to teaching. A majority of our son's day was hanging out and or being on i-pads due to the extreme chaos of the room. The large amount of screen time is disturbing. His Spanish teacher ended up leaving prior to the end of the year. We ended up having to make the awful decision to withdraw our son 2 months before school ended. A sub for the remainder of the year was a huge safety concern for us. A different sub each day who may or may not know Spanish while trying to manage a class with serious behavioral issues was not worth sending him to school for. The children who have behavioral issues need professional help instead of isolating the child that I saw all too often. Since withdrawing our son he started a new school. He is so happy because he is actually learning and is in a positive environment. Our son asked me why we ever sent him to GVA in the first place. The school morale is very low and there is a very high teacher turn over rate. Most teachers are not teacher certified, have very poor classroom management, and are not given the necessary resources/ training needed to be successful. This all transcends down to the quality of education the children are receiving. I think there is this delusion that since GVA offers this innovative immersion model that it is a good school. I just hope if you are considering this school to really do your research and look at more than just the immersion idea , we wish we certainly did. My regret is not transferring our son out sooner. Our son wants to continue learning Spanish and I feel that there are better ways to foster that for him than being an unsafe, negative, and poorly staffed school.