I’ve got two kids at OB Montessori Fairview and Raya School – here’s my unfiltered experience
I’m sitting in my beat-up Honda CRV outside Raya’s gate right now, waiting for my 14-year-old to get out of after-school art club. The iced coffee I got from 7-Eleven down the road is already warm, and there’s a crumpled baon wrapper from yesterday in the cup holder that I keep meaning to throw out. I’ve seen the question popping up in local parent groups a dozen times lately – anyone got honest experience with OB and Raya? Most of the answers are either glowing “best decision ever” or quiet trolling about it being too rich for ordinary people, so I figured I’d just type this out while I wait.
My oldest started at OB Montessori Fairview when she was 3, my youngest is still there in Grade 3, so I’ve got almost 11 years in the system now, if that counts for anything. Let’s get the messy first stuff out of the way first, okay? It’s expensive. Like, really expensive. My husband picks up extra web design gigs every month just to cover tuition and the random fees – field trips, new learning materials, that annual parent donation drive. I don’t sugarcoat that. If someone tells you it’s accessible for most working families, they’re either lying or they’ve got a big extended family helping out. We got lucky, we can swing it right now, but I still check the bank account after paying tuition every month and hold my breath for a second. That’s not a brag, that’s just the truth.
People talk about OB being all “follow the child” and that’s mostly true, but it’s not the hippie free-for-all I expected when I enrolled. The playground is tiny, like, I can walk across it in 12 steps tiny. Half the time the different classes have to rotate outdoor time because it can’t fit everyone. They don’t have a canteen until Grade 3, so I packed baon every single morning for 6 years between both kids. I’ve still got a shelf in my kitchen full of stained bento boxes with cartoon dinosaurs on them that I can’t bring myself to throw away, even though we don’t use them anymore. The first parent-teacher conference I had, I showed up with a whole typed list of concerns – my oldest wasn’t reading at 4, she wouldn’t sit still during circle time, she only wanted to draw cats all day. The teacher, Ms. Liza, just pulled out a thick folder of all those cat drawings, smiled, and said “This is her work right now. She’s learning what she needs to learn.” I left that conference feeling so awkward and stupid, like I’d walked in acting like a total helicopter parent, which I guess I was. I spent the whole drive home panicking that I’d messed her up by putting her here, that she’d fall behind forever. Turns out she was reading fluently by 5, so I guess Ms. Liza was right. But that awkwardness still sticks with me, you know?
When it was time for high school, we enrolled her in Raya, which is the natural next step for most OB kids, and I expected it to just be bigger OB, right? Wrong. It’s way more structured than I thought it would be. Everyone says Raya is super progressive with no homework, but my kid gets at least two or three homework assignments a week, plus those big projects that end up being half parent work, let’s be real. Remember that sustainable fashion project last year? It was due on a Monday, we forgot about it until Sunday night. We dug through all our recycling, I ran next door to beg our neighbor for empty 2-liter bottles for the skirt, and then our beagle, Mochi, chewed through the shoulder strap of the whole thing at 10pm. We showed up with the whole dress held together with safety pins and a lot of hope, and my kid got a B minus. I was annoyed at first, but she just shrugged and said “It’s fine, I did the best I could with what we had” and that’s when I realized… okay, maybe that’s the point, right? But it’s not all perfect progressive vibes. They still have that stupid rule about no unnatural hair color, and when my kid dyed her hair blue last semester, she got Saturday detention. She fought it, the administration stood firm, so it’s not like they let kids do whatever they want. It’s progressive up to a point, same as most places.
Let me talk about the bad stuff no one posts about in parent groups. Last year at OB, my youngest’s teacher quit mid-semester for a better job, and they had a long-term substitute who didn’t really get the whole Montessori thing. She made the kids sit at their desks the whole time, took away their fidget toys, and my youngest, who has ADHD, came home crying every single day for two weeks. It took me three meetings with the principal to get it sorted out, and they didn’t get a permanent teacher for almost two months. That sucked. I didn’t post about it in the parent group because everyone just wants to gush, but it was a really bad two months for us. On the flip side, though – when we toured other schools before OB, every single one told me I needed to medicate my youngest to get her to behave. OB never said that. They just adjusted, let her walk around the room when she needs to, let her keep her little rock collection on her desk to fidget with, and she’s doing way better than anyone ever said she would. That’s the good part, the part that makes the tuition and the bad substitute days worth it, for us.
People always ask me if I’d recommend it, and I never know what to say. It works for my kids, right now. If your kid needs a lot of rigid structure and clear grades from a young age, it’s probably not for you. If you can’t swing the tuition, it’s not accessible, full stop. I’m an introvert, I hate the potluck parent events where everyone brings fancy homemade ube bars and I show up with a bag of store-bought potato chips because I forgot, and I stand in the corner for 20 minutes before I make an excuse to leave. That’s my experience, not the shiny one people post on Instagram.
The car is getting hot now, I see my oldest walking out the gate, blue hair grown out a little, backpack covered in pride pins. She just waved at me. She’ll get in the car, tell me about art class, get cookie crumbs all over my seat, and we’ll go pick up her sister from OB. It’s messy, it’s expensive, it’s not perfect. But it’s ours, I guess. That’s all I’ve got. (1187 words)
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