Oriole Beach Elementary School

STAY AWAY FROM THIS SCHOOL My family moved to this area specifically for its blue ribbon standards. My son is special needs and was enrolled in OBE's ESE class which turned out to be a disaster! His teacher was condescending, dismissive and quick to remind us that she has years of experience with special needs children. My son was enrolled late in the school year while I was deployed, during which my wife was forced to deal with her antics on a daily basis which did nothing to alleviate her concerns. The problems with this school are endless; for starters the principal in the pocket of the teachers and refused to help my family with our challenges with the teacher, and the vice principal is nothing more than a henchman for the district. Over the two years my son was enrolled at OBE we NEVER received one email in regards to our son and had to beg for ONE MONTHLY phone call from his teacher just to get an update on our son's progress. She was always too busy to email or call students as she never had a break throughout her busy day of watching seven children with a para-professional (who was equally as charming and as helpful as a brick wall). My family was only able to visit our son's classroom once and it was on a VERY specific timeline. Even trying to set up a meeting with the teacher to address my son's IEP was a nightmare, what teacher would go to such great lengths to be so difficult? Daily progress reports and updates are a joke; our son was having vision issues resulting in him needing glasses, when we addressed this concern his teacher's response was Yes, we have noticed his eye turning inward for three weeks didn't you. When we were potty training him and asked the school to keep him in regular underwear versus pull-ups we received a plastic bag with his big boy underwear in it FILLED WITH FECES (if you don't believe me I have photo evidence). This was feces that could have been easily disposed of. The school did NOTHING to rectify this matter except for pairing us with the vice-principal, who consistently tried to remind my family how busy our teacher was (I am also a teacher with 100+ students, yet I find time contact family members should problems or things need to be addressed). My son had to ride on the school bus with this feces filled underwear in his book bag on two occasions. This was the teacher's passive aggressive way to reminding us that he was not ready to be potty trained (although he was 100% of the time in our home). I wish I could say something positive about the school, but I can't, they are the most vile and unsupportive members of the Gulf Breeze community. If you have a special needs child and are looking at Oriole Beach, run as fast as you can from this nightmare. Some of you may say that I am disgruntled or being biased, but I have no other choice. Our IEP sessions felt more like inquisitions as Principal was conveniently at both of our son's IEP meetings, often stifling the process and supporting their sub-par teacher who should have retired/quit teaching years ago. Our son may have enjoyed his time at the school, but we did not. Once we transferred out of OBE to a new school district we saw immediate improvements in our son's behavior, demeanor, and overall skills. And even now with him attending the new school for over four months, he's been accident free with potty training. And we don't require a monthly phone call in his IEP because this amazing teacher actually communicates with us. And we don't have to communicate with her on a mandated phone call from the assistant principals office. Overall, If you have a special needs child DO NOT enroll your child at this school! They are unsupportive, oppositional and condescending, to say the least.

My son has attended OBE since Kindergarten and is now in 5th grade. I have always found the staff very helpful and interested in the students. He only had one teacher that was somewhat difficult to communicate with, she always seemed willing to pass the buck. But he still did very well in class. I will greatly miss the staff when he starts middle school next year. OBE is a very community involved school and goes the extra mile to do fund raisers to supplement for lack of state/federal funding that all schools have been dealing with. My son enjoyed the music and art programs and participated in extracurricular clubs that are available including running club, junior optimist, and chorus.