12th Avenue
Sacramento, CA 95820

Hi. I am a student here at this school, and just wanted to give you a simple review on why you really shouldn’t send your kid here.- The education here is ABYSMAL. If you aren’t in AP/honors courses, community college classes, or even an academy, your student will be bored/unstimulated throughout the whole year (especially if they’re looking for more advanced work). The teachers don’t give out homework, and some don’t even teach all that well (I am in standard courses). I find myself coming home, and wondering what I just spent my whole 6 hours learning. There is an astonishingly low amount of APs/honor courses, and I feel like this school does not adequately prepare the population to handle college.- There is NO student pride at this school. Absolutely none. During rallies, there are many people who don’t participate (since we’re forced to go to rallies) and just scroll on their phones. Students recognize that this school is one of the forgotten schools in the district, and know that this is a “bad” school. Many people just come here because this is their neighborhood school, and I’m one of those folks.- the phone problem is that evident. In all of my classes, many students just spend the whole period on their phones, and honestly, the teachers either don’t notice or they do notice, and they don’t care anymore. - the community isn’t that close-knit. Family engagement is non-existent, as we don’t even have open house. We have back to school night at the beginning of the year, but even then people don’t show up. - the fights here aren’t that bad. Many of these fights happen before we’re on break for school (summer, winter, spring).- one of the pluses here, is that the school has adequate psychologists/nurses/mental health professionals/community resources on hand. As we are designated as a community school, we have a lot of resources that serve the students here at HJHS. It’s honestly amazing.All in all, just come here if you don’t really care about what you’re learning and just want to get your diploma. Otherwise, find somewhere else to go to school, because this ain’t it.

My daughter has an IEP. this school is REFUSING to honor her IEP AFTER suspending her and NEVER notifying any parent of her suspension. Their front office is unprofessional and I can understand why after my one and only interaction with their principal. She's so unprofessional I really don't know what questions they asked in her interview for the position that made them think she was a good fit to be in any space with children. Avoid at all costs

If I could give this school a 0 I would. Over the course of 10 years my children have attended Mark Twain. In that time we have had multiple disagreements with the principal over incidents that should have been handled better. This year my 6th grader has dealt with harassment, bullying, verbal assault, threatening, and that was just from his teacher and the principal. When confronted by his principal in her office he asked for his parents or his trusted adult and was told flat out no we are kit calling anyone, all the while he was held from class in the office for over 2 hours. This is the least of concerns at this school.