3631 Buena Park Dr
Studio City, CA 91604

My kid went to highly gifted magnet here. A couple of major issues I see.Good:Kids get good grades and few teachers are good and truly want to help kids.Bad:Some teachers are extremely bad. They dont teach and spew a lot of liberal filth on to kids. During the COVID days online education days, I had opportunity to see what goes on in the class. In most of the classes they do not teach the real academics. Instead, they teach extreme liberal ideas. They do not just teach about LGBT, but they encourage kids to try out being LGBT. They get kids confused with their extreme liberal ideology push. The kids are pushed to the limits on the Highly gifted magnet program. From my kid, I found that a lot of kids talk suicide in normal conversations. Whether the kids mean it or not, you hear things like "I am going to jump of the building if I dont get an A" . The school counselors are a bunch of incompetent people who always blame the parents instead of finding solutions for emotional issues. It is common to see kids smoking (and drugs) in bathrooms and the staff do not do anything about it. Probably they are short staffed or just plain ignorant. Conclusion:If you just need good grades and do not care for your kid's emotional well being (or) your kids have good social habits, this school is perfect for you.

I'm noticing that most of the reviews for Reed come from IHP parents and students. We do like this school but are NOT in IHP and I notice quite a chasm between IHP and other academies. The school overall is very nice but there is not a sense of community in the other academies. Moreover, there is a stratification at this school that is very disturbing. Hard to miss that the richest kids/families are all in IHP and all other students are then scattered into different academies. Is this because only well-off families have highly gifted students or because only well off families can afford tutors and can advocate for their students? Not sure about the whys of this, but it is noticeable how much more cohesive and nurturing the IHP program is as compared to the other tracks. It also seems that they have more exclusive events including IHP parents arranging get-togethers and even a dance night on campus just for IHP students. An exception to all of this though, Walter Reed has an amazing music program that is a feeder school into North Hollywood H.S.'s music studies. If your child is interested in music or already plays an instrument and wants to continue on, this is definitely the school for you. The classes are amazing and the opportunity to play an instrument priceless. This is where you'll find community outside IHP.

The school has an outstanding reputation in the valley because it has a dynamic, strong principal and an active parent community. The principal is a great leader and my son as well as other kids look up to him. The school welcomes parent participation and as a result many parents are very active -- fundraising for enrichment programs, volunteering for carnivals/special events, organizing assemblies/school activities. The child's experience in the classroom can vary greatly depending on the assigned teacher -- there are some teachers who are genuinely enthusiastic to be leaders in the classroom, but there are others who have lost that passion .... one of my son's teachers said to me privately that she needed to retire because she was "done with [teaching]." It was a very mediocre academic year with little support from that particular teacher. As much as I like the community at Carpenter, I believe that it teaches to the median as other reviewers have mentioned. They do not have GATE classes and rely on GATE clustering, which is dependent on the teacher assigning enriching projects/assignments for the GATE kids (unfortunately depending on the teacher, these assignments can feel like busy work). After being designated gifted or highly gifted, some parents decide to transfer their children to magnet programs which can provide a more challenging curriculum.