709 E 68th St
Tacoma, WA 98404

I have now had kids in this school for the last 8 years. There have been alot of ups and downs. The first principle was fantastic. He was loud, assertive, and brought joy to every student that crossed his path. When he retired we were left with a meek, rarely outspoken priciple who rarely reached out to parents or intereacted with kids. Over time she had gotten better about talking with the kids but her meek nature still persists. The front office has litterally the kindest woman i have ever met. Dont ever change Diana. Every last teacher has been fantastic with my two daughters. The non-educational staff are fantastic role moddles and are a pleasure to be around. Covid was a bit of a challenge for the online stuff but my daughter's teacher did a fantastic job maintaining order and teaching her students what needed to be taught. I have watched the old school get torn down and built back up. This school is a hidden jem for sure.As for the Special Ed ranking i have no experience with it so i cant properly evaluate it.As for Safety i ranked it as a 4/5. because even though they added a security system for the school it very much could use an officer pressent daily. in my 8 years the school has had 15-20 shooter scares(1 not so much a scare and 5 of them were post school security upgrade) and 3 deranged drug users wandering onto the school grounds after climing the school fences. we have only had one "parent on parent" physical incident.the only gripes i have for this school is its waste system seems to vent poo stank right in front of the main door to the left and none of the staff seem to know why that is. As well the parking area for parents is tiny. there is about 24 spots 6 disabled spots and 2 Ev spots. the parking area is also tied directly into the pick-up loop. this loop also stretches out of the school for about 2 full blocks shared between 3 directions. if you arent super early to get in line your going to be late picking up your kids. this makes me just park on the street and just walk up like quite a few other parents. there is so much wasted space on crapy quality dirt grass that could have had the loop be more of a "U" shape or even have the loop go out the back side of the school.

-The teachers cared. Whether their class was a core education requirement or an elective, they cared as much as you did. I remember my teachers (some of them) being enthusiastic and passionate about what they were teaching and that was contagious. -The classes were not challenging. I took general classes, honors, and AP. The AP classes were considerably more difficult than either of the other two. Even in the honors classes, it didn't take much effort to succeed. -The student body was apathetic. When it came to academics, my fellow students couldn't seem to care less. School was a place for them to hang out. Some of them obviously did their work alongside socializing. I don't believe there was any inspiration to learn. The teachers may have cared but I didn't see them pushing the students who did it. There was a stark difference in the AP classes, where people were there because they wanted to be, and general and honors classes. Very few of the students around me seemed to care about their education.-Seeing the average test scores doesn't surprise me in the least.It's hard to rate some of the things this website is asking me to.Homework? Depends. I'm of the belief that homework should be what isn't finished in class. Some of my classes were like that. Others gave homework assignments and refused to let you work on them in class. Others still were somewhere in the middle of that. Was any of it effective? Again, I point to the test scores.Teachers? Obviously not if the test scores were so low, but I think more than a handful of them were still really good teachers.Leadership? Hard to say really. I didn't have much interaction until later and even then, I didn't see much interaction between students and faculty. The only time I witnessed interactions were when students were in trouble. I believe effective leadership is being around more than just when people are in trouble. Are we talking about student leadership? Then no, because they had literally no effect on me.Character? I didn't see any effort being put into making young adults successful members of society. However, if you took the initiative to join a club, that's a different story. But the ones who need the help aren't the ones seeking it.I don't have enough experience to make an in depth comment on the last two.

Terrible. Ive heard from other parents that the vice principal has talked down about my daughter to other students and parents.