Fairview Christian School

Our son began attending Fairview in Kindergarten, and this year he will be one of the graduating eighth graders. I can’t say enough about this school and this community. The education he has received has been outstanding. The small class sizes at Fairview, as well as the freedom the faculty has in choosing effective curriculum, enables them to teach these kids as the unique individuals they all are. My son is heading in to high school with such a strong academic, social and moral foundation. When I think about what my middle school experience was like, and I look at the kind of crap going on in most public schools today. .. and then I look at this happy, smart, well-​adjusted kid. .. I love this school.

I have a child in their three’s program and another in second grade. Our experience at this school has been fantastic. After a few years in an overcrowded Seattle public school, Fairview has been a breath of fresh air. The teaching is fantastic and personalized. My bright daughter has been continually challenged not only in her studies but in her relationships with other kids. She is being held accountable to being a good person as well as a good student. The emphasis on science and math has been very encouraging. All the staff is kind, professional and very caring about the success of every student. I highly recommend it.

I really wanted to like Fairview. It was reasonably priced, directly on the way to my work, and I wanted my daughters to get a Christian education there. We had a tour of the facility and were enamored of it before we were accepted. One of our daughters was in the Pre-​K class, the other in preschool, and they went there nearly a full year.
The teachers themselves were great. We loved them, they seemed very good at their jobs. The facilities were also good. The kids get a lot of opportunities to do some really cool stuff, and there are frequent field trips.
The initial downside was that their communication skills were terrible. Emails from the administration wouldn’t distinguish that the school part was closed (but not the childcare facility) for holidays. Our youngest wasn’t potty trained (we tried!) before she started, and they refused to let her stay in pull-​ups, so we ended up going through as many as four sets of clothes per day. The staff was terrible at telling us if we were running low on clothes and I ended up having to leave work mid-​afternoon one day because my daughter was out of clean clothes.
A fund-​raiser we signed up for was pizza lunches every Wednesday. It was advertised as «skip making a lunch once a week», but when I stopped sending in lunches, I got an email from them telling me I wasn’t meeting the state requirements on lunches and needed to supplement the pizza meals. We raised the discrepancy between the promises on the fundraiser promo-​sheet and the reality with the childcare center’s director, only to see the exact same flier used the next semester.
The worst part of the experience was the early-​morning drop-​off. Before 8am, all of the children (regardless of age) were placed in the same room. Washington State laws require that in mixed groups, you use the age of the youngest child to determine required ratios. There were 2 year olds in with 5+ year olds, and the required ratio of 1 teacher for every 7 students was almost always violated during this time, or nearly violated. There was usually 2 – 3 teachers for 20+ children, and it was very chaotic. My girls ended up hating being left in the morning, and we ended up spending 5 – 15 minutes consoling them before feeling comfortable leaving them.
The final straw that made us take the girls out was the morning we arrived and there was only 1 teacher for 16+ 2 – 4 year olds in the room. Older kids were taking toys from the younger, boys were rough-​housing in the corner, the room was pure chaos. After waiting 5 minutes for another teacher to show up, I ended up having to go to the school principle to get more staff in the room before I felt comfortable leaving my daughters there. When I complained about the teacher ratios and having to track down extra staff, I was given a non-​apology and told that if my daughters had difficult with the early-​morning hour that I should bring them into school at a later time of the day.
We took the girls out of Fairview shortly after that.
It pains me to have to write up a review such as this one, but I don’t think it’s fair for any of the future parents considering this school to not have some insights into the problems that we had to deal with there.

This is my sons first year at Fairview and we are more than pleased. I have always had a hard time leaving my child with someone all day and my husband and I couldn’t wait to get him into Fairview. I feel so comfortable and secure leaving him everyday. He adores his teachers Mrs. Brown and Ms. Ranita. I plan on keeping my son at Fairview for as long as I can.