My daughter has been accepted to Idyllwild for 9th grade. She did not apply anywhere else and has her heart set on going. I have read a couple of reviews that raise concerns about high teacher turnover and that the competitiveness and family wealth have created a toxic environment. My daughter needs an arts community that is accepting and supportive. She has only experienced social rejection. She is ASD1 and has ADHD. She is VERY bright and is eager to make social connections. Any advice or insight into Idyllwild would be most appreciated. Thank you.
Have you shared your concerns with the school? They likely don’t want anyone there if they think it would cause concerns - so they might be honest with you about the social aspects.
I don’t have any connections to the school so can’t help you there.
You might want to look at a site like Glassdoor to see if folks have posted there about why they left. Turnover at BS isn’t terribly unusual - those positions tend to be lifestyle decisions, and not everyone is cut out for that lifestyle. It can sound great - good kids, housing, no commute – but it can also be stifling, and it’s really important that the community be right for the faculty for them to be happy. Very different from “going to work every day.” Just saying that while this may not be ideal, it may not be awful. Sometimes even when a beloved , long tenured teacher leaves - someone everyone adored and thought was irreplaceable– there is subsequent excitement about what the new person brings. If, otoh, the school has lots of openings, that’s a different thing!
My insight is limited, as my middle child applied there a very long time ago.
However one of the things that made it attractive to us was that it felt like an environment where my kid found her tribe. Its not unusual for real music-nerds to be outsiders, and that was not the case at Idlewild in our experience. Now, we were just going through the admissions process, and this was a very long time ago so we didn’t have a proper lived experience of the place, but things were positive on that front.
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