Sandown Central School

I can only give the TLC Center in Sandown 2 stars for the following reasons. While my daughter had a great experience there, it was before the major staff change. Ever since the brought on Jennifer Morino into the school and other staff, the place is no longer a place of nurturing, but a judgement of status and doesn't take into consideration as to the difficulties families with special needs kids go through. I found Jen's personality cold and disheartening and she constantly talked down to you versus talking with you to come up with positive solutions. I also found Jen to wear inalpropriate clothing such as a tight black leather mini skirt dress which I found to be appaulong for a principal to dress in such a manner. it started off positive with Christine Crocker however, once my son was placed in Sarah Lacroix's class, things turned south. My non-verbal son who once used to love going on the bus and going to school, no longer wanted to go and pulled major tantrums making it difficult to calm him. He is level 3 non-verbal autistic. I had attempted to talk to the school multiple times about our difficult situation at home but the school only seemed to want to push us out and even contacted DCYF on us since we were homeless for a year and things at home we're difficult. I had explained to them multiple times what we were doing to rectify the situation and while they said they would help, they really didn't. Sarah Lacroix and Jennifer Morino were the two that seemed to want to help the least, Christine was always supportive and the only reason why I can give this school a 2. At first we were being blamed for not getting my son properly ready in the morning because after a 45 minute bus ride, he would go pee in his diaper. A 5 year old has a larger bladder so the school blamed us for keeping our son in a dirty pull up/diaper when this wasn't the case. I had to call an emergency meeting with the school and had DCYF attend to confirm that the school would make sure he's regularly changed. I had also suggested to maybe start making the attempts to co-work on potty training however, his team was to quickly deny this because they claimed he wasn't ready eventhough he had shown much interest and would even retreat to the bathroom to go poop and we had been working on him to get onto the potty to do so. We had a few successes but it wasn't consistent due to the lack of effort by the TLC center. The mornings we attempted to drop our son off at school via car, we would get a phone call 5 minutes later from Jennifer Marino saying they couldn't get him to calm down and we had to turn around to go get him. I suggested brushing and agreed to sign whatever documents I needed to sign but the school failed to get me this paperwork and Jennifer claimed she didn't want the school to be blamed for sexual harassment. In the car after picking him up, he immediately calmed down. You could clearly tell something very wrong was going on at the school. I even asked Jennifer if I could walk him in to his class room to see if that would help however, this was quickly denied and I was treated as if I were the cause of Scotty's outbursts at school. My family, DCYF and myself all expressed concern as to why the school was not working with us but seemed to work against us but they seemed reluctant to change. I got much attitude from his team when bringing up genuine concerns. I honestly have to say thank goodness for the COVID-19 pandemic because once he was able to stay home, he developed new words, sings new songs,h willingly sits on the potty himself, he uses utensils, wants to wash his hands, throws some of his trash away. Please note we are working on him actually using the potty but sitting is a start. If you have a normal child, this place will be fine with them however, if you have a child with any form of special needs, beware and I would not suggest sending your child here. Also please be aware of you are a family that is struggling financially, you will be judged so wealthy families will be fine.