Amherst Regional Middle School

I love this school! The teachers have been excellent. They are very knowledgeable about their content and make learning enjoyable. I know some people have said that this school is not academically challenging, I could not disagree more! I have found it to be very rigorous. My daughter has been challenged in both honors classes and regular classes.
—Submitted by a parent

The stars are for the teachers. There are some outstanding teachers at this school. Teachers who genuinely care about their students and actively inform parents. Unfortunately the school still has issues with bullying and poor leadership.
—Submitted by a parent

It's a fine school, as far as middle schools go, but they have some incredibly dumb ideas. First, we have the idea of teams. The student body is divided into three teams per grade, with eighty to a hundred students. I don't know if they thought I would be closer to the kids in my team or what, but it didn't work. My team had me and a bunch of kids I didn't know but were all friends with each other from elementary school, and while all my friends were having a good time together on another team, I felt very alone. In the end I did make some friends, but they aren't particularly strong relationships. The other thing they do is make sure everybody understands everything, so teaching is very slow. I would say more but that's all the room I have.
—Submitted by a student

Academically ARMS is very weak. The teachers don't seem to connect with the kids. It's two lost years.
—Submitted by a parent

Academic expectations are pretty low, but you'd be hard pressed to find a decent middle school anywhere, so I guess it's not too bad as far as middle schools go. It doesn't do much to prepare you for ARHS, which in contrast is very challenging. When I was in 7th grade, we were supposed to do a unit on China, but we spent most of the unit doing a project where we invented our own dynasty, so I didn't learn anything about China. Honestly, It's kind of like a giant waiting room that you sit in between elementary school and high school because they can't figure out what to do with you.
—Submitted by a student

My experience in the Amherst Regional Middle School was great. Most of my teachers were always available after school for help. Also my teachers were always helpful during school even though each teacher had almost 100 students each I felt like I got as much help and attention as I needed. There are many rules but it keeps the school runing well. If you have a problem in the school there are always counclers and teachers there for you. The school is planned to make you prepared for highschool like instead of all students having different classes students were put into teams from 80-100 kids so that they can make friends and feel comforatable with the change from going from elemenatary school to middle school. The school offers 6 languages which are french, spanish, latin, german, russian, and chinese. In all ARMS is a great school.
—Submitted by a former student

The Amherst Regional Middle School is an ok school. There have been some student-principal issues in the school so I'd say the principal leadership is lacking. There are plenty of extracurricular activities from Suvuka to staying after with teachers. There is a little bit of a lack of dicipline. There should be some stricter rules for fighting. I think that overall ARMS is an ok school with plenty of room for improvement.
—Submitted by a student