Forest Trail AcademyReviews of foresttrailacademy.com

I think most of these reviews were written by staff or owner. This is a self pace school, which is nice depending on what you're looking for. My son was assigned a teacher, but there's no contact with her or anything. I'm the teacher. They had an issue where the systems were down and my son wasn't able to do any work for two days, the school failed to notify me. When I called to inquire about what was going on, I was met with attitude and disrespect by Ken, the admissions associate. Ken explained he was upset about the system issues as well and that's why he was yelling at me, the consumer. He apologized for his tone, but continued to address me the same disrespectful way. I still don't understand why he had the right to be mad, when I was the one being cheated out of time and money. I reported him and haven't heard anything back yet. My son has already been accepted into another school next year and I can't wait to be done with FTA. DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY! There are better options for online education than FTA.

The curriculum is pretty good, but the support is lacking. The incident that really rose my ire was the fact that 3 months before end of semester, the school staff put Trigonometry on "hold". Our daughter came to assume it was not a required course (neither was it taught in high school fifty years ago when I went to high school), so she paced her completion of the other courses. At the semester end, we paid the fees to have her transcript and diploma (another expense we did not expect.) A few days later, we were informed that she could not graduate because she did not complete Trigonometry. But since the term had ended, we were told to pay hundreds of dollars more for a month extension. I was livid, because they took Trig out of her curriculum--it wasn't our decision. Unfortunately, the school held her diploma hostage until we paid the additional unexpected sum and then the unlocked Trigonometry and she worked diligently for the next month to complete the course. The incident was quite upsetting for my daughter and this whole situation caused her to lose another month of time where she should be moving on to finding employment. In addition, there was little to no teacher support, and requests for support were followed by 24 hour delays, which made the whole process twice as long as it should have been. We have tried to get the school staff to respond to our complaints, but they just ignored us. Since the matter is in an ongoing legal investigation I cannot say any more.

Hard to meet up with teachers, and most of them do not analyse the work correctly or in depth. Not suitable if you want to learn many things, but it’s pretty affordable. The links on the school assignments or contents do not work, so you have to research most of the things yourself.

I had high hopes when enrolling in Forest Trail Academy for my 11th grade year, however they were not reached. While the classes and curriculum were decent, the Administrative Offices and Student Services were terrible. Once I finished all my classes I was given the wrong information twice about how to obtain my transcript. Despite telling them on two separate occasions that I was not a graduate, Student Services insisted I fill out "Graduate Forms" to obtain my transcripts. Once I did this, I had to wait an entire week before receiving a response that I had filled out the wrong forms and I needed to do something else. I was also told I needed to submit a withdrawal form, 3 days before my student account expired. On top of all of this, Forest Trail Academy sends emails and closes the ticket so you cannot respond to their emails. Since correcting their mistake, I have requested transcripts from Parchment where it has been five whole days without a response from Forest Trail. Additionally, I have called the school multiple times and they always seem to be "busy". I feel as if my questions and calls were always answered when I was initially inquiring about the school, but now that I am leaving I am a low priority. On another note, Forest Trail Academy charges for every inconvenience and fee. I was told that I needed to pay if I wanted to keep my student account open and I needed to pay to obtain my transcripts. Additionally, I had to reach out to Forest Trail about every little detail of my academic interests. I was enrolled in an Advanced Placement (AP) class and I was not given any direction as to registering for the final exam. I had to reach out to my teacher who redirected me to student services when she did not know what to do. I find it surprising that an AP teacher would not know how to register for a test that most students in her class would've taken. While Forest Trail told me I would have a counselor, I have never met her because she doesn't exist. They think that replacing a school counselor with student services is an acceptable replacement. But they are extremely wrong. Many different people work in student services and there is no continuity of who is responding to your emails. For example, I sent them an email regarding leaving the school and two different workers sent me a response that contradicted each other. Forest Trail is definitely not the type of school I would recommend to anyone due to their terrible customer service. Now onto the decent classes. My classes are Forest Trail were not engaging, interesting, or informative. I was given no feedback from teachers when I needed it most. Additionally, I received more emails about my physics teachers vacation and cancelled office hours, than I did receive her support in the class. While the academics were subpar, a few teachers caught my eye and made me feel supported. These teachers are were my Health and Precalculus teachers. If Forest Trail would ever like to reach out I can go more in depth of the support they provided. Forest Trail should invest in finding more teachers like them rather than the other ones I had. Going along with the classes, there was always several links or labs that were outdated and did not work. It was very obvious that teachers copy material from the internet and use other resources in an attempt to "teach" us. Overall, my experience at this school has been less than decent and I am extremely excited to be leaving.

I tried to speak with them about enrollment I’ve chat and they said the art/music were not included. I was confused because it shows on the online course 5th grade summary that it is so I called them. When I called them they said the same thing as the chat and that online is incorrect. Well don’t you think you should fix the online information? I ended up narrowing my choices down to Bridgeway and Ignite Learning Academy. Update: they called me and have now changed their website to match what they actually offer.

I have absolutely NO insight into my child's work at all. I get an email every time he finishes an assignment, which is fine, but I cannot look at the essays he writes or find a list of work that is due and turned in or not turned in. I have used other parent portals that give a dashboard with all the critical academic info necessary for a parent to gauge how their child is doing and where they may need assistance. I would like to see a little more effort go into transparency for parents. My son recently wrote and essay that I would really like to read, but I am unable unless I am not using the website correctly...

my son attended online for about a year approximately 6 or 7 years ago. i don't know why they are now asking for me to review their program, but i will spend a few minutes to enlighten folks . he found his history program was directly copied from an online college course. he was able to google needed answers to coursework without bothering to use the school programs/activities in this course and the spanish course. the only class worthwhile, in my opinion, was the english course . he had to write is own papers, though, to be truthful, i don't know if he could have skated through this too if he'd tried. he was able to work the courses at his pace, but really had no contact with live /online teachers. this worked as he could not attend on a schedule. still, i think there are much cheaper and better programs available to the public these days. would not recommend.

INTENSE PROGRAM AND DIFFICULT TO REACH TEACHERS WHEN ASSISTANCE WAS NEEDED.