Alice Vail Middle School

Do not send your children to this horrid school. Let me review our 3 years with Alice Vail Middle School. My eldest daughter was in the full GATE program. This was the closest middle school that had the program. (TUSD puts the GATE program in the lowest scoring schools in an attempt raise the scores.) The first 2 years weren’t that bad, but the principle quit in protest after they stripped away all of the electives. The new principle made a bad school even worse. My daughter was bullied constantly, as were her fellow GATE friends. We received no help from the school, the counselors were cut along with the electives, and counseled our daughter ourselves. My daughter and her friends had to eat outside because there was no seating in the cafeteria. Any open seats were banned from them by the little brats sitting there. Instead of chastising that behavior, the «monitor» yelled at my daughter and her friends for eating outside! What happened to teachers monitoring the cafeteria? We didn’t have «monitors» when I was in middle school, we had teachers, and this kind of nonsense never happened. I didn’t grow up in a small town either, I grew up in Houston, Texas. The «monitors» pick on the good kids and do no nothing at all to the students who are causing the problems. TUSD can’t afford real books, but we can pay for these useless «monitors»? When we attended my daughter’s concerts, we were treated horribly and spoken to like dirt by the «monitor», so my daughter was spot on in her complaints. What a waste of our tax dollars. I have more, one day my husband had car trouble on his way to pick up our daughter. She didn’t have her phone that day, so she went to the office to call home. The phones had been shut off for the day! Not one person offered their cell phone. My daughter was then sent outside while the office staff closed up and left. They left a young girl, on her own, outside! Our tax dollars are paying for this, ladies and gentlemen. Luckily, my husband got the car working and was there soon after she was kicked out from the building. That behavior is absolutely disgraceful from people who are supposed to be looking out for our children. If anything had happened to her, we would have filed a lawsuit that would have completely bankrupted TUSD. I can’t express my outrage enough about this incident. As for the teachers, we had to stay on top of her grades constantly. We lived on the TUSD Stats page. I can’t count how many wrong grades were entered or how many were overlooked. Aside from that, it’s a good thing that my husband and I are educated, because we pretty much taught her throughout middle school. Now for orchestra. The beloved teacher passed away at the beginning of my daughter’s 8^th grade year. They replaced him with someone who cannot play any string instrument. Seriously, they have someone teaching orchestra who can’t play any of the instruments! Well, he started a glee club which seems to be his only interest, so I guess that makes him an expert on all things musical. At the end of the school year, the Asian, African American and Hispanic kids who had done well were given certificates for their accomplishments. The certificates were worded specifically concerning their race. The other students who excelled got nothing. Racism, perhaps? Honestly, I could go on and on, but hopefully you’ve got the message. ETA: I received a message from a supposed former student, defending the school and attempting to refute my review. It’s quite odd that I was the first reviewer of Alice Vail in the several years of Unilocal Tucson and somehow a former student located my review and became so offended. All I can say is that I’ve written the absolute truth and I stand by every word. Do not send your children to this school.