Chrysalis High School

Good

It's a decent high school, it is kind of small

After having attended Chrysalis for two and a quarter years (and graduating from there), I can say that I loved all of my teachers and my relationships with them were all very positive. I also made lots of friends and, for the most part, had a good personal experience. Why then, the poor review in stars? I think there are a few reasons why a student should consider attending Chrysalis, but there are also several potential concerns which may convince you to steer clear.

Starting with reasons to attend, if you require an extremely flexible schedule: Chrysalis can hook you up. There are students that only come in two days a week and it's easy to reschedule if necessary, not to mention it's relatively non-punishing to miss a couple of classes anyway. The other major reason students come to Chrysalis is because they're struggling in a different schooling situation. Oftentimes it's learning disabilities or anxiety that make it difficult to function and Chrysalis does offer help. Classes are one on one or in small groups which allows a teacher to more directly interact with their student(s) and make sure they understand the material and are equipped to do the work.

However, there are some caveats to the help they're willing or equipped to offer. While they are willing to be flexible, many teachers appear to lack the ability to help students beyond what the class structure offers. Other students I knew had issues with teachers not understanding their learning problems and thus they didn't receive the kind of accommodations necessary to function. I've seen the administration put the blame onto the student rather than the teacher in these kinds of situations. We'll come back to the administration later. There are also countless examples I experienced where a student wasn't pushed to do the best that they could. Teachers can more or less just give up on students and play games with them for the entire appointment, every appointment. If a student doesn't come in super self-motivated, they could come out of classes learning absolutely nothing and the school is fine with that. A common theme with complaints about the classes is parents saying their child wasn't prepared for college. I can confirm that a significant portion of my peers who had spent a long time at Chrysalis had substandard ability to do research, write essays, and give presentations.

The administration masks deficiencies by restricting parent involvement. Parents aren't even allowed to directly email their student's teachers under some perpetually reworded excuse that always boils down to the teachers being incapable of handling the pressure of parents questioning them. It's turned into a selling point that the school will internally deal with issues and build relationships between students and teachers. In practice, by intention or not, this just hides what they wouldn't want you to see. Another selling point is that Chrysalis is technically a for-profit school, so that they can make decisions more quickly. Whilst true, it also means that the school is ran like a dictatorship. By all non-staff accounts, the founder and owner thinks she knows what's best for the school and doesn't take any suggestions. This attitude drips down into the rest of the administration and they were notorious for being difficult to deal with while I was there. Another extremely important thing to note is that the owner is Christian and although not advertised, it has a very real impact. The most notable incident while I was there was them preventing a student from founding a Gay-Straight Alliance club (note that the school has many students who identify as LGBTQ). Rather than being straightforward, they gave a series of ludicrous excuses as to why it couldn't exist both formally and informally.

It's certainly possible to have a positive experience at Chrysalis, but it's through a minefield of potential problems with teachers and the administration. Unless it's an emergency or you can't go anywhere further away, you probably have better options available.