Poughkeepsie Day School

I went to PDS for 10 years (Pre-K-7th) and my experience there was awful. First off, there are only about 67 kids in the middle school, so you know everything about everyone. Secondly, a lot of the kids there are very rude, and will throw a fit if you get assigned reading more than one chapter, or an article longer than three short paragraphs. There is not a lot of social, racial, or economic diversity there. Also, the people there are so high strung its hard to function. When you go to PDS a certain amount of years, you lose basic social skills. Also, the campus is not nice. They need a new roof, if it rains, some classrooms need to put buckets because it leaks through, and don't even get me started on the great lockdown drill plan that they have. In middle school, you get morning music, which is where you "get to decide" which music you can learn, for example chorus, flute, guitar, drums, etc. I put "get to decide" in quotations, because the old dean Laura Graceffa, said, "Actually, I think you should go into this music class, not the one YOU want to do." Most of the music teachers there are not good, and are jerks, to put it simply. The athletes are awful. When you are in 5-6th grade, the only two sports you can do the entire year are Soccer or Basketball. When you get into 7-8, you can do Soccer, Basketball, Softball, Ultimate Frisbee, and sometimes Tennis. With Softball, you can join, but you can't play in actual games, because its varsity Softball, because middle school is too small. Same with Ultimate. With Tennis, you can occasionally play, but when I was in 7th grade, you couldn't, because High School had enough people. Overall, PDS is really missing things such as Wrestling, Football, Golf (if you count that) and countless other things. But that isn't the worst part, the administration is completely awful. The board of the school is run by crazy parents, and the head of the school can't really do anything to help that. The new head of middle school, "JJ," has absolutely no past skill in running a middle school, and the closest thing that he's gotten to be a head of anything, was that he was the head of an all boys school DORMITORY. Also, the lunch that they provide students is awful. Countless times I have found weird items in my food, like strangle lumps, and other UFOs. If you go to anyone in PDS, more than half of the students want to leave that awful school. DO NOT ATTEND!!!!
9 years ago (20-06-2017)

Have fun during the GRA
9 years ago (03-10-2017)

It's a horrible school they don't accept your child they wanted donation/money to take my child
9 years ago (31-05-2017)

Meh
9 years ago (24-05-2017)

I've gone to this school for 7 years and the teacher's are friendly and the staff is nice
11 years ago (03-09-2015)