53 Emerald
Irvine, CA 92614

In my experience, the principal is non-committal with kids and families beyond politeness, and does the minimum to toe the law and keep his job. Not sure if it is attitude or incompetence. Ongoing bullying has not been addressed for years with the same offenders, so your kid may or not be lucky with bullies depending on placement. Support staff lacks empathy and are defensive and inflexible when discussing student issues or accommodations. Teachers for pre-K and K are good and care, but are outnumbered. The grade teachers we had seemed rigid and not emotionally available if your kid needs any extra emotional support or emotional connection. My experience is that grade teachers will not be proactive to help your kid, there is not partnership with the family, even when small accommodations are requested the attitude is "your kid is the problem, go fix it" rather than "we will make things be so all kids succeed". At least in one occasion a teacher retaliated on my kid after a small request from us parents to them. Minimal to no homework compared to other school districts, if your kid moves schools they will likely be behind. The PTA is cliquey, dysfunctional, and domineered by a group of people who seems to use it as their personal power toy - volunteers tend not to be there more than one term after seeing how things work. Many parents are 1st generation immigrants, so they do not know how to advocate for their kids and families in the school system. Nobody complains out loud because of fear of rocking the boat, we all live in the neighborhood and this is the assigned public school for this quadrant.