PAIDEIA ACADEMY SOUTHSIDE CAMPUS IS HORRIBLE!

I choose Paideia Academy Southside campus because all the public schools were closing and I thought they would be better, but it turned out to be worse. I had a kid in the kindergarten and in the 8th grade. The kindergarten teacher was good but (she left )and my kid didn't learn anything else after that. My older kid transferred from public school with good grades and started getting bad grades at Paideia.

So I go the school to see why, I sat in the back of the classroom to obeserve, the teacher just sat at the desk and talked to another teacher the whole hour. The kids sat in groups and just laughed and played, walked around. A student even got up to leave and came back in the room with shorts on. The teacher would get up sometimes and say work on your projects. But she was not teaching anything. The students were loud and rowdy and the teacher did not tell the kids to sit down. I went to the office to talk to the principal but he wasn't there, so I had to leave a message, for him to call me later. He called me later and told me the reason why the class was unruly was because he wasn't there, and he apologized for the situation. My kid got an A on the next report, but how could he go from an F to an A, come on now. How are you grading students if there's no teaching going on. They are just passing and failing students they don't care. They don't even have books, everybody had to share a book (The principal left after that year)

The secretay is rude, fat and lazy, if you call and ask her something, she acts like she doesn't know anything. I've come up to the school on many ocassions and she doesn't want to move her fat butt from the desk. She didn't want to make a copy for me, just lazy.

Paideia Academy is horribe, the owners are just getting rich off our kids and not teaching them anything. Please close it down ASAP!

When will it end. Summer school is well; let's be polite, and say crazy. Not enough "teachers" although they really should not to be called teachers because they are not certified. No Principal at north campus she quit the last day of school.
Great teacher from north campus also quit, fired teachers they don't like.... on and on

Funny, smart and caring children attend this school.
Caring and hard working teachers work at this school.

A lot of adults work hard to try to get this school up and running, to be an assest not only to the students that attend, but for the good of our city.

A lot of people put a lot of heart into this school to make it a positive, viable option for our children.

The Paideia Academy could be a great school.

But it is not.

Despite the hard work of most of the adults, no improvement can be made with the current administration. The woman in charge, Ms. Brenda Johnson Pruitt has many issues, which would make her an EXCELLENT office manager... but a HORRIBLE school administrator.

First - Her entire focus is making money. Now, I realize that money is needed to run a school. I suppose it is my wish that she would allow the BUSINESS MANAGER to pay more attention to the business side and for Brenda Johnson Pruitt to pay more attention to making the school a better place. I find her preoccupation with the amount of money brought in a little suspect.

Second - She keeps the principles hands completely tied. I would call her a control freak... or perhaps even an ego, power-hungry maniac... but let's try to keep it a little more civil and call her a "micromanager" This trait in her robs the principles from most of their power... and leaves little to none for the classroom teachers. Once the students realize that the teachers (and even the principles) have extremely little power, respect is greatly lost. It makes classroom managment near impossible. This classroom management problem is made worse when there are fist fights in the classroom, the students are reported to the office with a referral, and then the teacher is reprimended and students sent back to class.

Third - Ms. Brenda Johnson Pruitt would also be an EXCELLENT Public Relations person. I'll give it to her... she talks a GREAT GAME. The woman is an EXCELLENT speaker. But she DOES NOT back up her words in the least way. The first time you hear her goals, hopes and promises you are filled with excitement. The second time... optimism. The third time... faint hope. But eventually you realize how fake and unsincere all of her words are.

I'll admit that she is probably a very intellegent woman and could take a business very far. HOWEVER, as I have stated she makes a HORRIBLE SCHOOL ADMINISTRATOR. She is just not the type of person fit to run a school. I belive that she should realize this about herself. I know that I can do a lot of things very well, but I would make a horrible accountant. There is nothing wrong with this... but it WOULD be wrong if I continued to screw up people's taxes year after year. It is the same thing with her. I believe that she should recognize that this is just not the place for her and move on with pride... instead of getting tossed out like I hope and pray she eventually will be when the state/rolla finally recognize that she is a major part of the problem with Paideia.

Can't say enough good things about the great turn arournd this team has made. A few years ago (under different operators) we thought we would lose our neighborhood school. Now, we have a neighborbood school we can be proud of! Thanks you.

We initially came to Paideia Academy (formerly St. Louis Charter Academy) from a parochial school, hoping to give our children a good education in a diverse environment. Initially, we had very high hopes for our years here. In the past 4 years, we have become increasingly disappointed.

Bullying went on for an entire year (our son was the target). Two weeks before school ended, the teacher was removed from the classroom. He learned nothing that year, other than the school was not safe.

Communication is sorely lacking. We just found out through casual conversation with a teacher that our son has been receiving occupational therapy for the past several years. We attend every parent-teacher conference. We speak with our children's teachers regularly. Why on earth would this have never been shared?

There are no weekly bulletins or newsletters to keep parents informed. School lunch menus haven't come home since the beginning of the year...but it's not such a big deal since they never stick to it anyway.

Because MAP test scores are low, they push summer school enrollment. However, the administration isn't prepared to answer any questions about curriculum, teachers, activities, or schedule. Instead, they send out notices that children who return their enrollment forms early will be invited to a skating party.

In spite of MAP scores being low, a teacher who did not hold a Math or Science certificate was teaching those classes.

A school-sponsored camping trip seemed like a good idea...until a child is burned and there is no first aid kit and no one knows what to do (cold water? ice? gee - I don't know - let's not do anything!). So I had to meet my son and a teacher halfway between camp and St. Louis to treat his burns. The first aid supplies I sent back with him were never used on my son the rest of the trip (he should have been rebandaged at least twice), and were not returned to me for more than a month in spite of repeated requests. Given that the supervising/planning teacher supposedly has so much camping trip experience, I am puzzled as to why he was so unprepared. Needless to say, when the next overnight trip came up (Chicago), we opted to keep our child home.

There is a lack of consistency in discipline. A child can be suspended for playing in the water in the bathroom, but another child will remain in the classroom after punching another student in the eye.

Class sizes are big, more than 22 children, in spite of the promise of small class sizes. If they can fit another desk in the room, they'll add another kid. Despite what is outlined on their website (which is quite outdated), there are no foreign languages taught. The students do not participate in a yearly science fair. There is no after school care. There are no organized sports teams. There is no drama. Art is little more than semi-supervised coloring time. We have been fed a pack of promises, none of which have been delivered on.

Letters to the administration requesting answers and a return call are ignored. There is no contact information for any of the Board Members or sponsoring organization (University of Missouri - Rolla).

And most recently, gym teacher decided that appropriate discipline for a third-grade child who was misbehaving was to tape his arms to his sides with athletic tape and tape a sign to his chest saying "I will keep my hands to myself." This child was then paraded to several classrooms before being returned to his own room. The school's response? To send a letter home saying that a "teacher placed a student in an uncomfortable situation" and they are "investigating to determine if disciplinary action will be taken."

Charter schools are good in theory. Find one that's better organized and better run than Paideia. I hear Confluence Academy is a good choice.

Edited on 5/9/09:
The Director, Ms Brenda Johnson-Pruitt, is unhappy with my honesty in this review. However, she has not taken any visible actions to correct or even rebut any of the facts or opinions listed above. A new principal has been hired - Mr Brad Mora - and he seems like a nice enough guy with good ideas, but I doubt he'll get to implement much; he'll probably get frustrated soon enough and go somewhere he can actually accomplish things.

Today was just another example of the lack of leadership and effective teaching at Paideia. The middle school kids had been working on a robot for a robotics competition at Rolla (UMR). Today was the competition. Two days ago, the kids had a working robot, although it didn't include the arm/pincher thing that it needed to complete the course. Their science teacher not only blew up one of the motors trying to reprogram something he shouldn't have been messing with, but then he took it apart yesterday and promised to have it rebuilt for the competition today. (Don't even get me started on how inappropriate that was.) When we arrived in Rolla this morning, the robot was still in pieces in a box. He spent the morning working on it, while the competition was supposed to be going on. The kids were getting time docked, minute for minute, because it was supposed to be ready for the start of the competition. My son was crying. I felt so bad for him, because he had been so proud of the work they had done, and to see it in pieces just crushed him.

My dad was w/ us, and he tried to talk to both the Director and Mr Robinson, from the school board. What a joke. Robinson's too racist to listen, and Ms J-P had no idea why we felt the entire situation was all wrong. She kept telling me "We have a right", but couldn't answer "a right to what?" .....We took my son and left. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to take his friends, who had no interest in staying either. (My dad and I were the only parents who went.) They were upset and embarassed and disappointed. All their work for months....for nothing. What a waste of time.

And I fail to understand why Paideia rented a charter bus with TVs and a bathroom to take kids from both campuses to this event.....when they don't have enough books for all the kids in classes and have to share between classes? Talk about priorities being out of whack.

It's such a shame. Paideia had such potential, but Johnson-Pruitt has managed to run it into the ground. Unfortunately, she's great at taking credit, but can't accept responsibility for the consequences of her actions.