Chesterfield Montessori School

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I love this school! My passion is my children and their education is top priority for us. I have always been happy with responses from teachers and admin. My kids LOVE to learn and they ask so many questions about the world around them. CMS plays a large part in our developing kids and I couldn't be happier about the job they do!

We had the same basic experience as the one mentioned by Ryan below. Initially, this school was a nice fit for our children and we were very involved. But they lost some veteran teachers, replaced them with newer teachers (one being the daughter of the headmaster, which seems like a conflict) and the compassion and educational experience from there went downhill quickly. If you have a child who doesn't have near perfect behavior, I simply cannot recommend this school. They don't actively work to make situations like these better for the child, nor show any compassion, grace or reasonable levels of communication. They appear to only want children with perfect behavior so that they can claim that the Montessori Method works for every child. With us, they did the same thing of abruptly trying to pull us into a meeting to have our child (a kindergartner) not come back -- when we were already in the spring semester and getting him into another school at this point in the year would have been next to impossible. Our child's evaluation in the fall was also fairly good, and the interactions with the prior teacher were positive, which made the suddenness of this more unacceptable. When we didn't take it laying down, we were able to at least finish the school year, but then went elsewhere the following school year. I know as well that our story at CMS is not unique. In short, if you have a child who has ADHD (or some other disability) and are thinking about CMS, you should think long and hard about it.

My children have been enrolled at Chesterfield Montessori School for many years, from primary through elementary, and we could not be happier. This is authentic Montessori as it was meant to be, from toddler through middle school. My children are critical thinkers, confident, engaged, love learning and coming to school. The Montessori philosophy is based on hands-on, student-centered learning in mixed-age classrooms, allowing each child to develop naturally following their individual learning style. Montessori education has been proven through pediatric neuropsychology to follow the brain development of the child--just check out what Dr. Stephen Hughes has to say. As a parent, I have seen firsthand how authentic Montessori education promotes and fosters independence, confidence, and ultimately a lifelong passion for learning. CMS has been extremely successful in preparing children to go on to the best schools in the country for over 30 years. After an observation in any of the classrooms at CMS, you will see happy, excited, curious children who are truly engaged and loving the work they are doing.

Investigate carefully. We really loved their toddler program and the teachers there were phenomenal; however, in the primary program, we had an absolutely awful experience with the school's teachers and leadership. Terrible communication from the school regarding daily stuff as well as potential concerns. When an issue arose, the first time we heard about it was at the meeting when we were asked to find another program. We were then given 2 weeks to move our child. The school's only stated concern was for their classroom's environment and no stated consideration was given for the best interest of our child or a smooth transition. As far as we were told there were no issues with our child being violent or destructive and the reason the school gave for their action was that our kid "lacked focus." For context, our child was just 3 yo. The school is scheduled off 3-4 weeks every year without break care available, which is not easy as working parents. Also they started pushing for donations on top of the tuition, aftercare, break care, and lunches that already added up to around 1800/mo. All for the privilege of being in class with a ratio of about 26 kids for 2 teachers. Every time I post this review the school admin start posting to bury it. I hope other parents that have posted concerns in the past on other sites will continue to share their experiences.