Jack Jackter Elementary School

my child has attended CES and has been a student for a few years, the cirriculum is lacking. They do not support shildren with special needs. Furthermore the staff is judgmental and prejudice. I will be removing my child from this school system for home schooling, unfortunately CES is unable to give any individual attention to special needs children due to huge class sizes(over 40 students per class) also classes are an experimental, first and second grade mix? Anotherwords, one teacher is in charge of the education of 20 first and 20 second graders, small class sizes is the key to not having children fall behind in education, unfortunatly CES dosnt under stand this. for the highest tax rate in ct one would expect a higher education standard. Well don't expect it from CES.
--Submitted by a parent

My children attended this system for several years. We were highly dissatisfied with the quality of academics there. We felt that the district places far too much emphasis on test scores (which barely meet state standards which aren't exactly the highest in the country). After reviewing yearly budgets, the district usually makes their choices in favor of showy items while the major content areas remain low. We've decided to homeschool. When our kids came out, they knew little history, geography, or science. My son got connect the dots math in 2nd grade, and my daughter had one paper to write throughout her 4th grade year.
--Submitted by a parent

Although currently under construction JJES is a great elementary school. School staff takes great advantage of the town's assests, such as Cohen park, to make learning come to life. Several subjects are often taught through a single project. This allows children to delve into and perfect the project they are working on while gaining many valuable lessons in areas such as math, science, social studies and english. An excellent example of this is the first grade project on insects that two classes had. While learning about insects they: * learned about the environement and different ecosystems, * improved their reading, writing and computer skills by researching and then writing about the various insects they'd been assigned, * enhanced their public speaking abilities by sharing with others what they learned, and * increased their self-confidence by realizing how much they knew and their ability to share it with their school community and families. The school is great.
--Submitted by Bonnie Stewart, a parent