Rowntree Montessori School

One of the best private schools. The focus is on the overall development of children and not just academics. The staff, students and the administration all of them are equally involved. Recently the school orchestrated Disney's Lion King jr and the results were outstanding.
Kudos to everyone. Keep up the great work.

This is our second year with RMS. The admin and staff take the time to get to know each child along with their parents. The teachers are so caring, loving and supportive with each child on a learning bases and most importantly nurturing bases. When I drop off my little one I know he is in good hands!

My wife and I are very impressed with the level of learning, care and attention the staff of Rowntree Montessori School provide. Very happy with the way our son is learning and he has so many stories each day about what he learned and how amazing his day was!! Thank you to the Rowntree Family!!

When we enrolled our then 3 year old daughter 4 years ago into the then SPS, now PKM program, we did so because we were disillusioned with what we perceived as a gradual deterioration of the public education system. We felt that rather than ensuring a macro environment of empowering all students, coupled with micro emphasis and care based on individual talents and abilities, the public school system was too distracted with ideological indoctrination, bureaucratic bickering and catering to the lowest common denominator.

Like any other parents, we wanted our kids to have opportunities better than we did, so they can accomplish with those opportunities, more than we did. With this vision, we enrolled older one into RMS Central Park where she started on the very first school day after the new year holiday, in 2015. And we cannot say enough complimentary or laudatory things about her and our experience with RMS Central Park.

Our older one was the first grandchild in her family (on either side), she came with tremendous potential, but also took a few months to blossom. From crying for the first 2.5 months, to falling in love with her teachers and then doing such a wonderful job at her first spring concert in May, 2015, it was so overwhelming and wonderful for us as parents to see.

And then when emphasis on education drastically increased in Kindergarten, and she taking a few months to get into her groove; give you an example: I learnt spellings by rote and the threat of "discipline", and not by understanding the basics of sounds that match to letters or groupings of letters. So, relearning in order to help her practice at home, was very enriching, to the point where she really shone over the course of that year. Ms. Briggs did a wonderful job (she is the authority figure in a lot of pretend play at our house) and we personally really love Ms. Deguire as well - her passion for the kids and the rewarding of desirable behavior and traits and the disciplining of undesirable behaviors and traits. Ladies Ayala, Briggs and Deguire really helped us raise and nurture her, at that very important time, with their love, affection, teaching, discipline and care.

Ms. Thawer to us really feels like extended family - I do not remember a night during Prep One, at bed time when Hanya did not bring up some story or incident about Ms. Thawer. Our older one just absolutely adores and cherishes Ms. Thawer. She excelled in developing her personality and also academically, she did excellently.

Ms. Ivanyushin has also been wonderful in really encouraging our daughter to be her own individual, unique person in Grade 1. The conversations that we have at the dinner table or in the car, from and to school, sometimes boggle us - because the level of thought clarity, critical thinking in her seems ahead of her 6.5 years. The evolution of this phenomenon over the last one year tells us that Ms. I has had a key role to play in this.

And Madame Del is just phenomenal - her amazing infectious optimism at all times, her energy - bringing out the creativity in Hanya and also helping our family have a French speaking member finally! We are so grateful to her for all these years of art, music and French.

Ms. Penrice runs the school excellently, she has been so accommodating to us on numerous occasions and we truly feel we are collaborating together in bringing up Hanya and now Tosha.

We love that excellence and respect are fundamental valuea of RMS. Respect for country, those that sacrifice for the country, respect for the individual, respect for our historical as well as recently integrated multicultural heritages are all appropriately promoted and embraced at RMS. We absolutely love that religion is kept out of the school at all time as are any other ideological biases. We personally love that RMS celebrates Christmas and not just winter holidays.

Hopefully, with the grace of providence, we will be able to continue to live our intention of one day having both our daughters graduate from Grade 8 at the Academy campus.

The staff (teachers), administration and executives at Rowntree are quite simply the most professional, caring and understanding professionals and it has been my pleasure dealing with them for the past 7 years.

The Academy is an elite school with a very strong and challenging curriculum that my wife and I have no doubt has and will set our daughters apart from their peers when they enter highschool and post secondary.

The Academy has such high and demanding standards that my wife and I, as parents, are constantly amazed at how quickly our daughters are growing intellectually and laying the groundwork for them to become successful in the future.

The school work, projects, assignments, science fairs and tests are all very challenging and competitive which undoubtedly has sped up the intellectual development of its students.

My wife and I truly feel that this is the best school and we are extremely happy with school. Aside from the reasons given above, Rowntree is like an extension of your family, the children grow up together, play together and likely make friendships that will follow them throughout their lives. Rowntree is a small community that offers a very comforting feel where the administration and staff take the time to know you (as a parent) and will always say "Hi" when you walk in.

It has and continues to be a very rewarding experience for our daughters and ourselves personally. I would highly recommend Rowntree to anyone who is considering the private school system.