The Sae School

SAE is a good private school depending on the teacher. This was my child's second year at SAE and the first year (kindergarten) was GREAT! His teachers were knowledgeable about the subject-matter, and effectively communicated my child's individual needs.
This school year was not GREAT! As a parent paying over a $1K a month for tuition, we hope to receive great service regardless of the classroom teacher. Unfortunately, my experience with a teacher at SAE changed my perspective about the school. This new teacher, literally, sat arms folded, frowning, rolled her eyes, and sucked her teeth at me during a meeting because I asked her questions about how to support my child. Later, I learned that she felt offended by my questions, but that’s hardly an excuse to mistreat a parent. Despite my experience with this first grade teacher, the principal's guidance and support was appreciated. He is the reason I decided to finish the 21-22 school year. I do believe that this new teacher’s lack of effective communication skills negatively impacted my ability to support and prepare my child at home. Initially, I thought, oh! it's still a COVID year, but the communication with her never improved. So, due to this experience, and a few other operational concerns I experienced, I decided that this will be my child's last year at The SAE School.
On a good note, my child liked his peers, the school staff, and his teachers. Like the name of the school (Science/Art/Engineering) my child was engaged in project-based learning activities. If you are looking for a good private school for your child, give it a try it may work for you, I do recommend it. It was simply not a good fit for me.

This was a difficult review to write. Sending my child to the SAE school was like trading quality of experience for quality of education. I cannot fault the school on the academic front, our child did great. They learned easily, were always engaged and happy to go to school. It's fair to say the school operates like a private school that thinks it is a public school. When paying for tuition - you expect a certain level of professionalism, organization, customer service, consistency, etc. That is where things fall flat at SAE. In fact, consistency is the biggest challenge.

For example - extracurricular programs appear and disappear ( cheerleading, cup stacking, martial arts - to mention a few). Policies are often implemented inconsistently leading to distrust as a parent. Communication is a challenge - lead times are often too short or the school uses facebook as a primary communication method. Communications are not archived anywhere either.

They do not have a technology curriculum. They use technology in some of their processes but there are many platforms - so as a parent you find yourself having to log into numerous systems just to get the information you need. It was very evident that operational policies were implemented inconsistently too.

We found ourselves constantly trying to weigh the academic benefits vs the operational deficits when deciding if this was the right place for us.

They have good class size ratios and a warm inviting environment for the children.