Reviews of Pinehurst School (School)

Jamie Neely

Sending my child to this school was one of poorest choices I made in my life. At the first glance it appears as a well regulated and organized place and upon your first meeting principal leaves you with very strong impression that he knows what he is doing, however reality is very far from that initial impression. In order to make your child comply, school will resort to very severe punishments, for example losing dorm privileges for whatever reason (in my son's case possessing call phone) results in sleeping in the corridor. This "school" allows bullying by students and staff until it escalates to the point where someone gets hurt and then deals with it by applying severe consequences within the school walls and concealing everything from parents and authorities. They are however keeping all incidents in their own records so they can use it later as leverage and force you into enrolling your child next year. In our example they removed our son from football team since we were not ready to commit paying for next school year. It is not only bullying by staff that you should be worried about, children are encouraged to smoke and even given numerous smoke breaks during the weekday. The only time my son smoked was in this terrible institution since he wanted to fit socially and do what others do. If you want your child to graduate with few credits and many social issues, including substance addiction then send them to this place.

Yugo Acimovic

Sending our child to this school is one of the best choices we’ve made. Our child has been at the school for four years and has made many positive behavioural changes in that time. Discipline at the school is admittedly unconventional but a child is generally at Pinehurst because conventional discipline has failed. Students are well aware of the consequences of misbehaviour and suffer those consequences when rules, big or small, are broken. Consistency and follow through are the keys and are consistent with the philosophy of the school and with the literature we have read on dealing with difficult children. We are not in favour of allowing students to smoke but it is an unfortunate reality at any high school. Our child doesn’t smoke and younger children require parental permission to smoke. Thank goodness there is a school with teachers and staff willing to devote themselves to working with these kids. We’ve tried many other schools, public and private, and our child was lost.

Drew Casey

Unfortunately, a month of so after the postings below the principal and corporation of Pinehurst closed the school without warning. They sent an email out Fri at 4pm in Oct telling us not to send our children back. They didn't pay the staff and never refunded the tuition of any of the parents who had paid at least $21,000 for the first semester alone. These special kids were left without a school mid-term with zero closure or explanation. Please be very wary...he took advantage of parents and children in need.