Kenwood Elementary School

If I didn’t (obviously) know better, I might think that Kenwood Elementary was a private school. The attention and love that every teacher shows the kids and the amount of involvement of the parents & families is on a scale I have never seen in an urban public school. To be fair, my comparisons are in Philadelphia and NYC but even compared to other public Minneapolis schools, Kenwood is head & shoulders above the rest!
I’ve just returned from their annual back-​to-​school open house and BBQ. After the summer off, it was like a family reunion. My daughter will be starting 1^st Grade and we are just thrilled. While waiting for our ride home, a dad and his son and my daughter and I were playing at the park across the street. The man told me that with the bus rezoning, his old address was no longer in the Kenwood bussing zone. So he checked out Jefferson… and then moved. To a new home, within the Kenwood bussing zone. That’s how dedicated you and yours will become to this old-​fashioned-​in-​the-​right-​ways and cutting-​edge-​in-​others fabulous school. Every year they consistently score above every other school in the city– and they also take their arts education just as seriously as all the book-​like studies.
I once had a parent of a girl in my kid’s kindergarten transfer her child to another school. When I asked why she said she thought it was «too clique-​y». I highly and wholeheartedly disagree! Kenwood welcomes everyone, with open arms, regardless of ethnicity, race, religion or socio-​economic circumstances. And I may be one of the few, but I do not like school uniforms and thankfully Kenwood does not use them.
The one thing that kept me from giving a 5-​star review are the school hours. 7:30 a.m. start time is just sooo early… ugh!
I’m editing this review as my kid is now in 5^th Grade at Kenwood and I feel it’s only fair to follow up in case parents of kids are considering Kenwood as an Elementary choice. Let’s just say that the bloom has gone off the rose a bit since my last posting. To be fair, Kenwood and it’s staff/​educators are bound by the limitations that the Board of Ed put on them so I always try to keep that in mind – and because of that, and that the other complaint is actually more of a parent/​neighborhood issue, I kept the stars at 4. I wound up having to hire outside tutors to supplement my daughter’s education but because she is dyslexic. If your child isn’t learning different, then thank your lucky stars and enjoy their curriculum (that sadly, since my last posting, is no longer geared as much towards art – they’ve lost their «Arts» status) but still has loads of cool things like an African drumming workshop, Taiko drumming workshop and field trips to cool places like museums and nature conservatories. The 5^th Graders go on an overnight trip to Eagle Bluff which my daughter has been excited about since kindergarten. The media center uses iMacs that seem about 3 years old on average. The teachers are, for the most part, friendly and competent but sadly for you dear reader the very best, Mrs. Kohanek, retired the year after my kid had her. I’m sure you’ll find your own favorite however. As for any special help your child might need, Ms. Kelly is very nice and has helped my daughter as best as she can but, we just now are only beginning to understand how the dyslexic brain «sees» and what a dyslexic student needs to thrive and, for my kid, and I feel confident in saying, any other kid, it’s not Kenwood. But, to be fair, it’s not any American public school that I know of.
The social side of Kenwood is kind of brutal. Ironically, I mentioned in my first posting about a lady who said Kenwood was «clique-​y». I didn’t see it with Kindergarten. The kids didn’t care who lived where or had what. The parents were all just meeting one another. It was wonderful. But by 1^st Grade the lines were drawn. If you live in Kenwood, you are top tier as far as social status goes, and most of those parents are running the volunteer show – PTA., yearbook, Newsletter, helping with school plays, etc. If you’re rich but live elsewhere, you’re 2^nd tier – of course being good looking helps too but not necessary. And the only color that matters at Kenwood is the color green. They are very «liberal». If you live outside Kenwood and aren’t flaunting wealth– 2 bad. Those kids are at the bottom. You can try to volunteer, like I did, but I didn’t get far. I never got replies to inquiries on times of meetings etc. Whenever I would email an exciting thing that my kid was doing (she acts in a troupe that brings awareness to homelessness) that they might want to mention in the school newsletter, I wouldn’t get a reply much less get it run. A confidence boost like that would help my kid a lot.
But who knows, maybe you’ll get warmer neighborhood parents. I hope so.