Newmeadow School, Clifton Park | Fees, Rankings, Address, Admission, Vacancies, Reviews & More

Don’t know why I didn’t think to review this sooner. It has been a couple years since my child left the school but this is my experience. My son has autism and is nonverbal. He started in the Clifton Park/Malta school and was there for a couple years with no issue. However they have a second site in Fort Edward that I notice is somehow not listed and never had been. When switched to Fort Edward because it was a smaller classroom we began to have issues. My son came home with finger shaped bruises on his arm with a note about how he got bruised because he wouldn’t do something (walk the track). I have never left bruises on my child trying to get cooperation, no one else should be. He then came home multiple times with bruises over the following weeks with no communication. No one in the school cared. Had meetings about it, got no where. Even reported it to the police. My son can’t even tell me what happened. Pretty much this school teaches compliance and fitting in a box and if your kid isn’t then apparently they’ll injure them to get that cooperation. Would never recommend this school to anyone because clearly my child wasn’t safe there.

While the staff that work with the children do a lovely job, the policies set forth by OCFS often run counter to your child’s best interest. The policies for Covid-19, will keep your healthy kids out of school for weeks. Unfortunately, there are limited amount of programs for special needs children in this area and they are all funded by OCFS. If it is possible for you to bring your child further south to a program that is not under OCFS, I highly recommend that you do so. Those of us that cannot are struggling to keep our children in school and managing the issues with regression/behavior that we’re encountering as a direct result of these policies.

My three year old daughter attended this school for three months in the fall of 2021, with multiple incidents showing their ineptitude. Not once, but twice she was given food that she was intolerant to even after we filled out paper work and personally spoke to the teachers and school nurse about the food intolerance. She came home from school with a bruised lip and we were told that she collided with another kid. The thing that really made us pull her from the school were when they made a false accusation to Child Protective Services which were unfounded. This caused a lot of emotional stress that was completely unwarranted for our family.