1339 Thompson Ave
Glendale, CA 91201

My kids have had an incredible experience here at Balboa. The administration team is phenomenal, very supportive and understanding. The school is secure, making it a safe environment where my kids felt safe going to school. The teaching is excellent. GUSD's most recent Teacher of the Year is a Balboa teacher. All of the teachers are caring, teach to the standards, and have high expectations. I recommend this school to everyone out there.

The staff and students discriminate against minorities and LGBTQ students. There is no anonymous reporting system for bullying. If the students want to report bullying anonymously due to retaliation from staff they cannot do so. And a lot of the prejudice come from staff who protect the students who do the bullying. How can you report bullying to the same people who enable it? It just doesn’t work that way. That is why this school has a serious bullying issue and a lot of fights. It’s the administration who should address this but willfully fails to.

My Son, now in 7th grade loves Toll! It was a struggle to get the hang of Jr. High in 6th grade after two academic years distanced learning (4th and 5th.) We worked with his counselor, I taught him to communicate with his teachers and advocate for himself and is now taking advanced classes, highly motivated and loves his most his teachers. I went to my first in-school open house recently and thought the teachers were all great! you could tell they are excited to teach which is so important. The school was clean, the Principal is super friendly, front office staff is always lovely. Overall it felt really welcoming and like everyone was energetically hyped for the year, including the parents I met. My advice for parents is to stay on top of your kids through portal and goggle classrooms, If I didn't stay on top of my son's grades and advocate for him during that adjustment period, which was more social than academic we might have a completely different 7th grade experience currently. This is where the academic, mental health, social aspects of this very important transformative period can feel very intense for kids, but given what I've seen so far from the staff I have no concerns that that helping the kids and parents balance this all out to achieve their highest academic success is the priority.