24639 Varese Ct
Santa Clarita, CA 91355

I went to Hart and graduated in 2006. Back then, west ranch didn’t exist. I originally went to Valencia high for my freshman year and then we moved to Stevenson ranch where I had to start Hart my sophomore year. The BEST high school ever!!!! The teachers were mostly all supportive and extremely helpful. I think I had a hard time with maybe 2-3 teachers. I felt so much racism and class issues at Valencia high. At Hart, I fit in right away. I felt like there was more diversity. My first day at Hart, and students were already approaching me to be their friends. I could not say the same about Valencia. I was a better student at Hart. They prepared me well for college and had a ton of extracurricular activities. If I lived in Santa Clarita again, I would send my children to Hart. No questions asked.

My daughter is in the Special Education program at Placerita for the last 2 years. She loves the school and so do we. The staff is very helpful with any concerns and the principal is very welcoming. This school has been great both academically and socially for our daughter.

AOC has to rethink its policies and create a student-focused school environment and it especially needs to readjust its policies and treatment of special needs students.There is too much unnecessary homework at this school. The instructions are confusing, sometimes conflict, and the instructions change without email notice to the students.Most weekends and holidays have to be spent doing homework and projects and studying for tests for AOC and COC classes. There is not much free time or time to develop a students' individual interests and goals that would help them in their college applications. Too much group projects where some of the students try to dominate and mistreat others and/or do not do their fair share of the work. Some of these students even use profanity and encourage each other to do sex and drugs in group texts.The large clique of group of students exclude and bully some of the students. Some of the teachers can be rude, mean, and incredibly unjust in their policies. A teacher even made threatening comments to students. But not much is done about issues when it's reported.In order to even attend this school, special needs students' parents have been required to sign away their rights to special needs services such as speech and language therapy or resource therapy. AOC sometimes does not follow the IEP accommodations such as extra time that is stated in their IEP (as is mandated by IDEA law) during the regular school year or summer school. For example, during the Summer Honors Geometry, students with special needs were not granted extra time as stated in their IEP and they felt forced to drop out of this class when they worked so hard to qualify for this class (when they got As in Honors Algebra 1, Honors Algebra 2/ Trig classes that they had to take prior to Summer Honors Geometry. This summer geometry teacher emailed that even if a students fails one test the student would fail entire geometry course (even because of an illness or internet issues). In fact they got all As in their classes were not allowed to move onto COC precalculus in the fall (whey they qualified with their A grades and COC algorithm for math) and now are forced to take regular geometry over the school year (because AOC does not have summer geometry over the school year) where they are not being given complete test reviews with problems and solutions (as the rest of the math classes are for AOC or other jr. high and high schools in the district have been given)

We did not have good experiences at this school.Considering Covid lockdowns and mental health for the children we felt the 6th grade teacher was not mindful and kept raising her voice on my son and her harsh discipline gave him anxiety to attend school. We also had issues with safety and bullying - one time there was a homeless man going to the bathroom outside of the fence then we also had issues with really rough kids bullying my son who's a huge 5'5 11 year old basketball player they kept bothering him at the basketball court and when things didn't go their way they waited for him in the park next door. Thankfully I ran fast at pick up to break a possible jump on my son. After 2 months we left this school. It was a combination of a strict 6th grade teacher that was over the top yelling for minor issues and embarrassing him infront of the class and also the rough kids. I was also concerned regarding academics coming from a Charter school in the Valley the first few months of 6th grade were easy for my son because he learned in 5th grade already so, that was an other reason for leaving - I hope this review is helpful.