Beacon College — Local services in Leesburg

We really thought Beacon was going to be a wonderful place for our child to go. The tours, the drop off, the communication was all wonderful.

As we were leaving the parents conference, the school administration told us that we did not need to be helicopter parents. We could trust them to let us know if there was a problem. We felt a huge sense of relief!

A month in, we heard about some drama, and classes seemed a little challenging, but we didn’t hear anything from the school and told ourselves not to worry. All the forms for parental disclosure had been signed, so we should’ve received any relevant information.

Shortly before midterms, without receiving really any communication whatsoever, we started probing a little bit. We were told the information was on the parent portal, which was buried in several menus, but there were no notifications to be enabled. I started asking more questions. No response.

To be honest, I’d had reservations about the effort my child was going to put in since the beginning. Motivation has been a struggle since the whole Covid lockdown. But we had talked to administration about these things while interviewing and were ASSURED it would be handled by the weekly meetings with the academic counselor.

Finally, one day, I texted during an academic conference to say I wanted to speak with the counselor. I called and was quickly told that “it’s not how they do things.”

Maybe I should’ve jumped in the car, but I told myself not to be a helicopter parent and that they would call me if there was a problem. They never called.

Finally, it was too late. By Thanksgiving, there was no possibility of passing classes. No communication whatsoever from the school.

So the first semester came to close, lots of money down the drain, and there was NO MORE academic communication. There was no word from the administration, nor from the many paid advisors and counselors.

However, the billing department, staffed by friendly people, communicated frequently and was always...

I am a Beacon College parent. I just left my son there and we are in the car driving home. I don’t know why I can’t stop crying. Maybe it’s because after 18 years of loving harder than I’ve ever loved, hundreds of sleepless nights, fighting for him at meeting after countless meeting to get him what he needed to grow, many hours of driving to and seeing specialists, and an enormous number of fights about homework to only name a few, he made it!! Since he was about 6, I was asked what I saw for his future. I couldn’t see his future, no matter how hard I tried. Then the director of Gateway School, Jill Berry, told me one day: He will go to college. “Really?” I said. We had just received the results of his new psychological assessment. The psychologist at that meeting said, “I knew he was special, but I didn’t realize how special”. The difference between his ability to learn visually and his ability to learn auditorily was staggering. Basically, anything you show him visually he can understand almost immediately and retain. He makes 1000 piece puzzles without looking at the box 98% of the time, masters video games in a day, solves algebraic math problems in his head, etc. He’s also incredibly creative. Unfortunately, most schools need you to have “good listening ears”. He needed something different. And we found Gateway School and Jill gave me hope…and a mission! He was going to college! Exactly the same thing I saw in the futures of my other children! We made it, Jill! Beacon is his new home. He has found his people. He will learn and grow at this very special place where they also see his strengths, where it doesn’t matter if it takes him a few seconds longer to get his thoughts out…they’ll wait, everyone…the professors, the students…they’ll all wait. And they’ll applaud for his good ideas when he’s done. He’ll become more comfortable and it will become easier to share. He’ll won’t just grow at Beacon, he’s going to thrive. Thank you, Jill and Beacon College! You gave my...

The classes and teachers are great but when it comes to maitenace they are a flat 0. The maintenance is lazy, only does half ass job when fixing problems, they allow students to spend entire semesters living with black mold in the appartments until it becomes obvious the mold is there. There are bugs infesting an appartment currently because the maintenance falied to replace a fallen screen which was a small 5 minute task which is now a huge problem. The state of specifically the beacon commons apartments is literally the worst I have ever lived in. The bathtub is a sick rust color because the tub is that old it is rusting, nothing has been done about that in a year. Someone needs to be fired this entire commons complex needs to be demolished and rebuilt rather than try to house students in nearly toxic environments. These apartments are very close to section8 housing. Its sad that students have to pay over $50,000 a semester (not including housing and food cost) to live in a housing complex which makes the students feel like they are just a step up from homeless. Parents really have no idea how gross these appartments are and if they did beacon probably be facing several law suits. This needs to change, because i sure as hell would never send a child to a school where A/c units break and burn often, the maintenance takes months to tackle even the tiniest of tasks, and as students we are not supposed to fix...