Florence Bilingual School

Formerly known as Kindergarten, the school fills a niche for Italian students wanting B1 English instruction.The school started a high school in September 2022. On 1/25/23, the school announced the high school would not continue. As a result, current middle school students and the first year high school students had only 3 business days before the regional deadline to enroll in other alternatives for September 2023 onward.Parents and students, many who’d been with the school since elementary, were in a panic to find suitable alternatives. There were international students who rushed to get SPIDs over the weekend to be able to enroll and, as nothing is done quickly in Italy, the school’s late communication, made for a lot of unnecessary stress.With the announcement of the closure, the school offered no assistance to parents or students to actively place kids into appropriate schools such on-site open days or information sessions. This left families, especially international ones, hurriedly researching and translating local options as well as understanding the complexities of the different tracks (linguistico, scientifico, esbac, etc) leading to different university or career tracks.Parents had 3 business days to determine their children’s future.When we enrolled, desiring to integrate, we were promised the English language classes would be at the appropriate grade level. The school is not, however, equal in its education of native English speakers. Italian literature is offered whereas English literature is not. English is taught as a second language. They learn “ing” endings in terza media (8th US/7th UK). It's barely A2 level. Per the school, native English speakers are not allowed differentiated instruction for true bilingualism. Those in intensive Italian are pulled out of English or Science classes to attend the intensive language class, missing in-class didactic material. Marked tests, legal documents of the school, are not returned to children for review or tutoring. The pricey school does no more than as required by the Ministry.Upon our enrollment and months following, we did not learn important aspects of daily school life: the class parent secretary, the homework app, or clarity of list of books needed for class. For example, the book list said “don’t buy” listing books under that column. We learned 3 months (!) later there were books carried over from the prior year. RE the app: the school mentions they send communications through there but no communications exist. Furthermore, the secretary did not communicate the student email addresses until a month into school and without that our children had no idea what to do.The parent/teacher conferences are 6 minutes long once a year, if at all as there are insufficient slots for every kid. Parents are not allowed to email the teachers. The school provides an overall mark (ottimo, buono..) and a generic student summary created with generic sentences selected from a pre-populated drop menu. There is nothing specific to the student in either achievement or areas for improvement. When requesting official transcripts for high school, the school did not provide them. School handed out “fake” diplomas at a ceremony centered on the school’s 50th anniversary.Lastly, after a tragic incident last year involving a student, a psychologist came to talk to the school and in the days following, all assistance and communication was in Italian with kids translating for the non native speakers. We felt this was an unequal treatment of students. Our children said they felt like they were treated like second class citizens.While better this year, there continue to be translation discrepancies in communications or all verbal communications are only in Italian.With the exception of equality, there are some excellent teachers. Math, science, english, history, spanish, music, Italian, and technology all are taught by enthusiastic and personable teachers.That said, the school is, in our opinion, bilingual for some and woefully mismanaged with terrible communication.