Orange County Preparatory Academy

Unless you are one of the PTSO henchmen you can forget about acquiring your mandatory 10 hours of volunteer time, and that’s IF you are even notified of the opportunity to volunteer. Yes, part of having your student at this school is that you, as a parent, have to volunteer for a minimum of 10 hours.
I am used to a school that reaches out to the parents that have particular skill-​sets in order to avoid wasting money on hiring «experts» to evaluate the simplest of tasks but this doesn’t happen. Relying on these «experts» has put this school in the negative.
Communication is way behind in the times (they still send papers home instead of emailing) In order to figure out what is going on you have to comb through their outdated website, check their Facebook page, hope they email you and hope that they call you or possibly get a paper sent home. Nothing is streamlined or delivered in a professional manner, which is sad because these are college educated people.
The classes are extremely small, 9 – 10 students per teacher, and yet you get very little to no feedback concerning your child. My daughters previous school had 24 students in the class and her teacher was a master at providing daily AND weekly feedback, up to and including phone calls, texts and emails. I NEVER once had to beg for info or was told to go to a website (parents are busy and most have information provided to them in a professional environment).

Awful school. Third grade reading teacher is horrendous. Her entire class is failing, yet the «teacher» and principal blames the students. School had had three principals in a year and a half. Stay far far away from this school.

If I could give a 0 I would. The principal is incompetent and blamed my daughter for being bullied
This is not why we put our children in charter schools, we put them in because we expect them to have better staff and a better education. This place is totally mismanaged. They had her enrolled in 6^th grade and continued to send her to 6grade classes even after it was brought to their attention. Nothing is set up correctly and nothing was handled on time. Even after my husband explained the custody arrangement for my stepdaughter, they handed her mother a car pass without even checking ID. But this bullying episode was the last straw

Awesome school, my daughter is in the 1^st grade and she loves it! She moved over from the Renaissance charter school not to far from this one and that school was under performing. It was a blessing to have the opportunity to have my daughter attend this school the teachers are very involved and so far everything is going great!

Orange County Preparatory Academy opened last fall in the old Page Private School facility. I decided to transfer my youngest child from the public school she was attending after a few bad years. Getting the postcard in the mail telling me that OCPA was opening was honestly one of the best things that could have happened.
Before I switched my daughter I did my research about charter schools and the company that manages OCPA, Charter School Associates. I’d recommend any parents that are considering it do the same research. I found that they had several good schools, and I was hopeful that this new one would follow in those same footsteps.
So, as for my review of the school… the beginning of the school year was rough, with the expected growing pains and some unexpected ones. Traffic was a nightmare, the principal left, and loads of other little things. Now, at the half way point in the year it appears that most things have been smoothed out. And I am very happy we switched.
I love that this school is a K-​8 school (currently to 7^th, but 8^th is supposed to be added next year). The school is supposed to focus on STEM, and in the fall all grades participated in a school-​wide science fair.
For a new school they have really hit the ground running with awesome events for the kids. At Halloween they had a trunk-​or-​treat, which was loads of fun. They also did a storybook day and had a school-​wide fairy tale bowl with questions about the stories.
The school provides after school tutoring and several clubs. The addition of clubs came later in the year than I would have liked, but we are really happy about the options.
My daughter is in the after care program. One huge perk over the public school she was at is that they only charge you for days the child attends. Since my daughter only has to go to after care a few days a week I save money by not having to pay for the whole week like I used to.
Since this is a charter school they wear uniforms. They had a few sales events at the school where we could purchase them and I had no problems with the uniform company. So far my daughter really likes wearing the uniform, and it makes getting ready in the morning super easy.
That’s all I can think of. I’m assuming if you are reading this review you may be thinking about switching to the school, so feel free to send me a note and I’ll answer questions.