I have no doubt a lot of thought went into the model and it all sounds great in practice. But the facts on the ground/implementation have been subpar. There is a lot of unhappiness among the faculty — many feel they were dropped into this model without support and on the heels of two extremely difficult years. Kids report that teachers are frustrated and often run out of ways to fill the time as students lose focus in 2 hour blocks. My daughter will be starting calculus this fall and her last math class was in early march. They failed to make time for groups like orchestra to practice — kids have to give up their lunch period if they want to participate. What kind of school doesn’t make time for orchestra? The mod system also doesn’t not always play nicely with the IB diploma program requirements. It’s just a real mess right now.
As for the Head leaving, he is a very nice man but the situation is a more complicated. The Board was not happy with his leadership and he did not feel supported by the Board. The highly visible incidents in discipline, safety, athletics, etc have led to a lot of handwringing and the sense that it was time for new blood. Current HOS also lacked faculty support.
We know so many people like you with kids who graduated before us who were so happy with GS. If you are a current parent though, you know how much unhappiness there is right now. The current situation is not great and it’s OK acknowledge that. There ARE a lot of unhappy, disengaged GS students and families — but many are afraid to speak up for fear of being shouted down or having their concerns invalidated. If that’s not you/your kid, I’m very happy for you — consider yourself lucky, but please do not try to negate the experience others might be having. We will stick it out but have been very disappointed with our experience. I truly hope the new head can right the ship. I agree that fit is paramount. We picked GS and felt it was a good fit before they completely upended the entire program, tried to cancel major sports programs and had enormous discipline roundups. It’s just a different place than we thought it would be.