St Charles Borromeo Catholic School

Apr 28th, 2022

Our 12 year old son has been attending St Charles since pre K and for the most part, all was well until his 6th grade year 2021/2022. Our son's 6th grade teacher is brand new as a teacher and the new principal(introduced this school year) has only 4 years classroom experience, and lacks the leadership and communication skills to lead a organization like St Charles. We have never had any disciplinary issues with our son, who is a typical boy, but raised to be respectful and kind. Early in the school year, we had a conference with the principal along with the head priest due to a very minor and petty displinary issue regarding our son. This was his 2nd offense(first was understandable) and instead of pulling our son aside and asking for information or his side to the story, it was an immediate detention. We requested a conference with the teacher and principal and the teacher was not even present. The principal was not interested in a dialog with us as we wanted to address the poor communicaiton skills of the new teacher and to make sure all relevant facts, circumstances and impacts these actions have on our son(severly ADHD). Ever since this first conference(we had 1 more), the teacher and principal has deliberately attacked our son time and time again for incredible pettiness so that finally 2 months before the end of this school year, they expelled him! This is a private catholic school and not even the chief priest says he can do anything to intervene on behalf of the students.(thats another story). Our son was expelled after I sent a very firm and blunt message to the principal and teacher regarding our opinion of their administrative/leadership style, and so its quite obvious its really about our firm committment to fairness and transparency that has ruffled their feathers. At this time, we would definately recommend looking elsewhere for private schooling due to the incompentancy of the current principal and political pettiness.
Apr 27th, 2022

Nov 26th, 2021

My family has been part of this community for about 17 years now. I attended SCB for ten years from pre-k to eighth and I loved my teachers, friends and the experiences I had there. Everything went downhill after fifth grade once the former principal, Mr. Hill, had left and Brian Bradish and the current vice principal replaced the administration. Both were unprofessional and did not meet the standards of a Catholic school, especially St. Charles. My junior high years here were very memorable but the religion teacher was a major problem she was very problematic and was not liked by many students for fair reasons. I am surprised she is still a teacher at this school. If youre a parent who is reading this and your kid is planning on attending Bellarmine, definitely send them here. I liked all of my teachers but specifically Mrs. B, Mrs. Larson (former 2A teacher), Mrs. Adams (former 3A teacher), Mr. Senko (former 4A & 5A teacher), Mrs. Koon (former 6A teacher), Mr. Mohrbacher, and of course the legend himself, Mr. Steve McCoy (former 7/8 history teacher). Overall this is a great school and I have heard the new principal who stepped in in 2021 is a great replacement. Other than some past experiences with unprofessional teachers and being harassed by a former lunch lady in eighth grade, I do miss my years here and I do not regret coming here.
Apr 5th, 2022

I am an alum so looked forward to sending my daughter to St. Charles as well. With a few notable exceptions, such as Mr. Senko, the school has changed over the years and not for the better. The curriculum was limited with little to no arts program but most distressing was the amount of bullying that took place. My daughter was bullied by a classmate and when I took it up with the school administration another teacher, totally uninvolved with the situation, took it upon herself to pull my daughter to one side and caution her of the consequences of spreading "untruths." In my opinion it is hard to misinterpret another child making an "L" sign with her finger and thumb on her forehead every time she came in contact with my child. It turns out that the mother was a personal friend of the teacher that tried to muzzle my daughter. The psychological impact to my child for being reprimanded by an authority figure for voicing an incident of bullying have been far reaching and in some instances life-threatening. She lost trust in the system and shut down, refusing to communicate for fear of future retaliation. I tried to voice my concerns to the principal and was met with, "she comes from such a wonderful family. Her mother has volunteered here for years." The message was clear, if you were a parent who was part of the "right" group then the child's behavior got a pass and the faculty would actively work to repress any further complaints. To the best of my knowledge the student that bullied nor the teacher were ever counselled or disciplined. Our daughter has now done years of counseling following her 3 years in this particular faith community and will probably need many more. During her time at St Charles my daughter learned to fear reprisal from authority figures, to feel that bullying is justified, to dislike school and, most heart-breaking for me, a firm distaste and entrenched dislike for any kind of organized faith community. Should you consider this school for your child I caution you to ask probing questions in advance and carefully monitor your child's emotional health.
Dec 7th, 2021