My children have been at Rilke for five years. We love the faculty and are grateful for our time here.

There are many fine things to say about this school, but one of the most disturbing things is the lack of experience and knowledge of ASD policies by many of the teachers and administrators. Their disregard and unwillingness to learn as a preventative measure, puts the price of their mistakes on the students. They tend to single out students who dont fit the desired profile. Conversely, they tend to promote students who do. The profile seems to be determined by the majority of parents who are the governing body of the school. Just so you know what you are getting into.

Everyone in Anchorage is so happy about Rilke Schule. I am not, no longer at least. Heres why: I am German, my 6 year old daughter is German, too and she speaks, of course, German. However, she doesnt speak English, yet: we moved to Anchorage 2 months ago, from a non-english speaking country. So we applied to Rilke Schule - seems legit, right? The problem is that there is such a hype about Rilke Schule that we wouldnt get a seat. We spoke to them: there are rules, you understand... Translation: A German cannot go to the only German school in Anchorage. They said: as soon as a seat opens up, we will call you. Translation: Never any call, ever. So my daughter goes to another school. Doing English homework is a nightmare for the whole family, as she has no magic powers and still needs time to learn English. Her German gets worse, as we cannot correct her influences from other languages all the time. But: she feels happy where she is, so even if a wonder happened and daddy wanted her to go to Rilke, she wouldnt go anymore.So as a consequence of this Rilke Schule being so praised for its pedagogic approaches, the level of German of a German native speaker, who would have had positive effects on her whole German-speaking class, goes down. A family struggles with homework, all because Rilke is so good.So I am wondering: when you have Arts and Sciences in your title, when you spread your fancy reputation over a whole city or even state, why dont you remember that there is an Art of Diplomacy, which perhaps allows you to work around certain rules in such rare cases as ours, in order to do the right thing? And as long as I dont hear a reasonable answer to this question, I will keep on speaking up against this silly Rilke-Hype that has infected Anchorage.

Highly recommend anyone looking at a charter school instead of traditional education.