9110 Chalk Hill Road
Healdsburg, CA 95448

My experience at Mattie Washburn has been wonderful. This is our fourth year at the school and I honestly feel extremely lucky that my children have had this staff to care and educate them for their young years.

There are core's which allow students to explore different professions more in depth and allow the students to see first hand careers in that field. The staff are very helpful.

With my child's 6th grade year coming to an end, I'd say overall we are very happy with WMS. I think it's an excellent standard of academics, most teachers are very engaged and supportive (not all, keep reading), the sports program was great with amazing coaches. 6th grade doesn't have that many elective options, but my student and I are very excited for 7th grade electives. I wouldn't say that the absolute 'no violence' policy is logical, as it means a child cannot protect themselves without receiving the same punishment for self-defense as the student who made the initial violent act. When this came up for both my student and a friends student, the recommendation was to go get an adult. That makes zero sense if you're already in an altercation. For my student this was a very minor aspect of their year. Ms. Gonzales, ELA and History teacher, was truly a menace and caused so much anxiety and frustration for my school-loving child. They've never wanted to miss school until encountering Ms. Gonzales, who by all accounts seems to truly dislike children. She struggles with technology, but won't acknowledge her mistakes and tells the children to just figure it out. She'll change assignment parameters last minute, leave out information, etc and then criticize the children for not having all the information, but they aren't allowed to ask her questions she says she's already answered. She receives door dashes in class, cooks in her air fryer and eats during class time, and is known to have a bad day if she runs out of her cold foam creamer spray can. She also will mock children by name in other periods, or in their own period when they aren't around. The one time I reached out to her directly about something I was sure my student was misunderstanding, her response to me was so defensive and angry about the whole class's performance on the assignment and didn't even address my actual question, that I didn't follow up again for fear of retaliation against my child. By contrast, my student had an elective rotation with Ms. Mulligan who seems so organized, caring, supportive and kind. I wish my student could have experienced her first year at WMS in her environment.

This school by far is the worst educational experience I’ve ever hear of or experienced in my life. My son went to school here, for far too long. Every single teacher I met were rude, impatient, condescending, and didn’t care in the slightest about actually helping my son succeed. When my son was having trouble learning, rather than helping and encouraging. They battered and belittled him. If that wasn’t bad enough, they blamed my son’s learning disabilities on us the parents!!! When they are the teachers being paid to teach. The teachers were so awful to my son that I was forced to transfer him to a different school. And thank God I did. He is now going to a school with teachers who actually care about their students. I wouldn’t recommend this school to my worst enemy! I really hope these teachers turn things around, because no child deserves to be treated like this. Not now, not ever!

This is our first year at Brooks and we are so impressed. The school only has 3rd, 4th and 5th graders on campus which has huge benefits for this age group socially and academically - everything is geared toward the needs and interests of 8 to 11 year-olds; the principal and teachers encourage student-led projects and initiatives in class and around campus. The new 4th/5th grade building and brand new library are impressive. The principal just started humanitarian assemblies, recognizing and rewarding kids that are kind, helpful and exhibit important character traits that will help them be successful in Middle School and beyond. PE, gardening, computers, music class and art are all thriving programs at this school. It's an overall solid community and we are proud to be a part of it!