Chrysalis High School

After having attended Chrysalis for two and a quarter years (and graduating from there), I can say that I loved all of my teachers and my relationships with them were all very positive. I also made lots of friends and, for the most part, had a good personal experience. Why then, the poor review in stars? I think there are a few reasons why a student should consider attending Chrysalis, but there are also several potential concerns which may convince you to steer clear. Starting with reasons to attend, if you require an extremely flexible schedule: Chrysalis can hook you up. There are students that only come in two days a week and it's easy to reschedule if necessary, not to mention it's relatively non-punishing to miss a couple of classes anyway. The other major reason students come to Chrysalis is because they're struggling in a different schooling situation. Oftentimes it's learning disabilities or anxiety that make it difficult to function and Chrysalis does offer help. Classes are one on one or in small groups which allows a teacher to more directly interact with their student(s) and make sure they understand the material and are equipped to do the work. However, there are some caveats to the help they're willing or equipped to offer. While they are willing to be flexible, many teachers appear to lack the ability to help students beyond what the class structure offers. Other students I knew had issues with teachers not understanding their learning problems and thus they didn't receive the kind of accommodations necessary to function. I've seen the administration put the blame onto the student rather than the teacher in these kinds of situations. We'll come back to the administration later. There are also countless examples I experienced where a student wasn't pushed to do the best that they could. Teachers can more or less just give up on students and play games with them for the entire appointment, every appointment. If a student doesn't come in super self-motivated, they could come out of classes learning absolutely nothing and the school is fine with that. A common theme with complaints about the classes is parents saying their child wasn't prepared for college. I can confirm that a significant portion of my peers who had spent a long time at Chrysalis had substandard ability to do research, write essays, and give presentations. The administration masks deficiencies by restricting parent involvement. Parents aren't even allowed to directly email their student's teachers under some perpetually reworded excuse that always boils down to the teachers being incapable of handling the pressure of parents questioning them. It's turned into a selling point that the school will internally deal with issues and build relationships between students and teachers. In practice, by intention or not, this just hides what they wouldn't want you to see. Another selling point is that Chrysalis is technically a for-profit school, so that they can make decisions more quickly. Whilst true, it also means that the school is ran like a dictatorship. By all non-staff accounts, the founder and owner thinks she knows what's best for the school and doesn't take any suggestions. This attitude drips down into the rest of the administration and they were notorious for being difficult to deal with while I was there. Another extremely important thing to note is that the owner is Christian and although not advertised, it has a very real impact. The most notable incident while I was there was them preventing a student from founding a Gay-Straight Alliance club (note that the school has many students who identify as LGBTQ). Rather than being straightforward, they gave a series of ludicrous excuses as to why it couldn't exist both formally and informally. It's certainly possible to have a positive experience at Chrysalis, but it's through a minefield of potential problems with teachers and the administration. Unless it's an emergency or you can't go anywhere further away, you probably have better options available.

I've been attending chrysalis for 2 years (currently a Junior), and this school is life changing. PROS -To begin, group classes are 12 kids or less which allows for the teacher to help every kid, if necessary, and gives a chance for all to ask a question and be heard. There is always an option of taking certain one-on-one classes if a student learns best in a more intimate environment. -This is a small school filled with diversity and acceptance, so if you are an introvert and/or feel unsafe at your current school chrysalis would be a great place for you. -Teachers are caring, helpful, and never bothered by a student's questions. You never have to feel scared to confront a teacher or staff member in this building. -Because class sizes are so small students are able to absorb more in the time of a session compared to other school systems. My experience with public school is that there was a lot of wasted time getting students to quiet down or listen, and there was just too many kids to all help in the frame of time given. Because this is not an issue at chrysalis, students have schedules that can run four days a week or even less! For students with other activities that require a great amount of time this is perfect. CONS -Tuition, to say the least, is a lot. But understandably it pays for all the great things listed above. -The school is small, which holds benefits, but because there aren't a million kids squished together in various situations it can be hard to make friends "naturally." If you are more outgoing or fine with separating school from your social life you have nothing to worry about! But I could imagine other people finding it lonely. -Lastly, because classes aren't as often (compared to public school) and each student absorbs more in every class, there is not much repition or practice. I'm sure some kids have no issue retaining what they learned right off the bat, but I personally do and I notice I retain less info here than I did at public school. Because of this, I just take the free time chrysalis offers to work on memorizing lessons on my own. So for me it's no problem, but I'm just putting it out there so others can know. All in all I love chrysalis. It's minimized (to a major extent) my anxiety for school. Hope this is helpful because I was looking for such reviews when researching this school a couple years ago :)

It's a decent high school, it is kind of small

Good