St Therese School

Posted: March 23, 2026

When it was time to enroll for kindergarten, we looked at both our assigned public school in the highly rated Park Hill school district and at St. Therese (STS) and made the decision to move forward with STS for a few reasons. We have been thrilled with our decision and our child is thriving at STS.

Pros:
1. We have liked every teacher our child has had. Additionally, all teachers are good communicators. We have received weekly+ updates from every homeroom teacher and periodic updates from specials teachers letting us know what the class is working on. We didn't expect this and have been so happy to be in the loop.
2. Our child is both special needs and gifted and talented, and there have not been any issues with making sure needs are met in regard to both managing the diagnosis and ensuring a challenging enough curriculum.
3. We are continually impressed with the STEM projects that students work on. We did not see that level of engagement with STEM in the public school system and are thrilled that early elementary kids at STS are working on coding, animation, typing, AI, etc.
4. We love that Spanish is included in the early elementary curriculum. Our child started Spanish in preschool and we were disappointed to find that the local school district does not continue Spanish education until middle school. STS has all K-5 students in Spanish.
5. The visual and musical arts curriculum has been fantastic. Art work is shared with families via an online portal, and you can even order magnets or mugs or whatever with your child's art on them.
6. Opportunities for personalized learning: there is a gifted and talented program that begins in 3rd grade, but all students kindergarten and up can enroll in after-school enrichment courses that focus on their interests. There are STEM clubs, chess clubs, art and dance classes - everything you can think of.
7. Our child has found a true academic and social home at STS. It appears to us that behavioral issues are addressed quickly and fairly, and all students are given the chance to find community & belonging.

Considerations:
1. It is true that there has been a lot of turnover, but all organizations go through this and we are not concerned about it at this time.
2. Our review is specific for the elementary school, as we do not have experience with the middle school grades yet.
3. School leadership would benefit from a communications team to help address issues as they arise, as they will at even the best schools.

Posted: March 23, 2026

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Posted: September 10, 2025

This school cares about one thing MONEY! I was very sick, in fact terminal at one point.
In hospital for a year. Couldn’t pay for my daughter’s school. The school kicked her out and is now holding her school records so that I can’t get her into another school. My daughter has never missed a day of school. All A’s, very respectable and has now been at home for 2 weeks because I’m unable to enroll her because they won’t release the records.

Posted: September 10, 2025

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Posted: March 10, 2025

School has really gone downhill. Math is very poor at this school. Disxiplinary measures are odd - haircuts and hemlines are a main focus, but significant issues are swept under the rug. Newer principal is unapproachable and has lost both vice principals within 6 mos. Lots of teacher turnover.

Posted: March 10, 2025

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Posted: January 20, 2022

Unfortunately, this school has gone downhill. Teacher turnover here is high. The new teachers are mostly moms with kids at the school now. Or non-graduated teachers.

Too much of the school day is spent nagging students and not teaching. If you have raised your kids to respect others and follow directions, and you are expecting this school to inspire and teach your kids, prepare to be disappointed. Even if kids are well behaved, they are punished (or threatened to be punished) much of the day. Many teachers (maybe for lack of energy or time) resort to punishing the entire class, hoping that peer pressure will solve bad student behavior for them. Typical punishments are removing recess, forcing children to walk laps, making a student sit out in the hall during a class party, or threatening to cancel fieldtrips. But teachers in different grades have different methods of discipline. 3rd grade teachers line up all students in their class and hand out "walking tickets" to children who they think have unacceptable behavior. This is not a discipline policy mentioned in the school handbook. Individual teachers are allowed to create their own discipline methods. Some teachers blow whistles at the students inside the school like a military camp. Maybe these are the classroom management skills that are being taught to teachers these days. Sadly, it feels like the teachers and principal at this school have started to feel emboldened by the power and control they have over students. Teachers bark about uniform or mask violations all day. It feels like many have forgotten how to inspire or form relationships with their students.

This past summer the principal implemented a whole new system of "infraction cards" that students are required to carry around with them all day. If a student receives 5 infractions, they receive a detention. If a student loses their card, it's an automatic detention. Even at the school's parent night in August, they spent a majority of the time touting their new "infraction cards". To spend this much time talking about new discipline policies, it seems that this school has a discipline problem that they can't solve. They used to talk about their reward system using "gotcha slips" to reward good behavior, but not anymore. The sad part is that all of this has created an atmosphere of stress and anxiety at school. Students end up feeling like they are bad. And no amount of boom box music at morning drop off is going to fix it.

Posted: January 20, 2022

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Posted: June 13, 2016

I feel that the teachers here are very effective in the lower grades and some in the upper grades. Just because a teacher has been here for 15+ years or longer, does not make them effective, in my opinion.

Posted: June 13, 2016

For the most part, I feel homework was on a good level. However, the 8th grade math homework seemed to be extremely excessive. After many parent complaints, the homework levels decreased from around 2-3 hours per night to 1 hour or less.

Posted: June 13, 2016

The school has a demerit system that rewards students based on behavior. Sometimes it appears to not work out exactly as intended as some teachers enforce it more than others.

Posted: June 13, 2016

My opinion is that the elementary teachers are very encouraging and great teachers! You will find none better. Especially 2nd-5th grades and some (but not all) of the teachers in 7-8th. I feel that the negative side of this school is that administration seems to be blind to serious parent complaints (serious bullying) or other matters that warrant attention. It seems that their philosophy is "we are a good Catholic school, that surely can't be happening here!" Instead of dealing with the issues head on, administration seems to hide from the issues. Secondly, many, many families feel, myself included, that the math program suffers immensely. Once you hit 7th grade, forget it. You are at the mercy of someone who will confuse your kid to no end. Good luck. It appears that many families yank their kids out after 6th grade. The enrollment tends to go down after this sadly. Honestly, it wasn't always like this. But it seems to be the reality now.

Posted: May 10, 2016

I attended St. Therese from 4th-8th grade, and I had a great experience. I took algebra in 8th grade, and I was ready for geometry and algebra II in high school, and I later took trig, math analysis, ap calc ab and ap calc bc. I felt prepared in every other subject as well, and I was even able to skip Spanish 1 and continue straight to Spanish 2.

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Posted: August 2, 2014

The last of my three children just graduated from 8th grade at St. Therese. My children now attend public high school. When they started high school, many students who came from public grade schools complained about the amount of homework expected in high school. In contrast, my kids were prepared for the rigor of high school thanks to the higher expectations at St. Therese. In fact, my kids were ahead in most subjects, particular science and language arts (lots and lots of reading and writing assigments at St. Therese).. Candidly, they needed to catch up in math, but they did have a good foundation in math such that my two oldest finished Trig by the end of sophomore year and are schedule for AP Calc by senior year. Aside from academics, St. Therese instills stong values in children. As an example of behavior expactations at the school, in the upper grades, the students are assigned a locker. There are no locks on the lockers. Yet, they have no problems with theft. In summary, it is a great school with very committed teachers and an administration who do a good job educating kids with a budget that is significantly lower than the public shcools.

Posted: February 1, 2014

We have been very happy with the staff and the values and education received at St. Therese. Our children have done very well in the public high schools, and they were very well prepared to take the advanced placement classes offered in that setting.

Posted: January 29, 2014

The families and children that attend this school are great. However, there is little to no help for students who don't "fit their idea" of what a child should be. If you have a child with special needs, forget about this place.

Posted: December 21, 2013

this school is awesome!!!they teach algebra and the donations is about your heart and voluntary

Posted: August 13, 2013

Great for younger kids, giving them a good background in right and wrong. Older kids aren't well-prepared for high school; they don't even teach Algebra. Administration of the school struggles to control costs and frequently asks for additional donations. Most teachers are above average.