Basalt Way
Antioch, CA 94509

I believe that there are so many open-minded staff members and teachers that have less bias than other teachers would. It's really nice to see that kids that would be labeled "bad kids" are actually accepted as just having louder and larger personalities than some and teachers do have the patience to get them on track. There are fights but security does their job and comes right away to split people up. The main issue I have is that I feel like I've taken freshman English all 4 years. I actually learned new terms and how to annotate properly in freshman year but every year after that felt like going back to middle school even. The teachers hold your hand too much and can take points off your essay for just not structuring it like the outline they gave even when it's a sound essay. I think the books we have read have actually been really good and talk about other races, cultures, and walks of life. I know it's difficult getting students to actually do the work but in the process of trying to persuade them with easy work you've completely lost even the motivated students' interest. I felt pretty aware of the fact that we were behind schools just by these things. I really believe that no one is really college-ready at the end of it. What's lucky is that many of the students are strong and know how to deal with things like paying off bills for their family or just trying to survive their neighborhood so you know that they can persevere but it's a shame that this is the best they can get. When I took AP classes I finally felt like we were on the level we were supposed to be on. Making it too easy for students just makes them unmotivated and struggle at the basics. If you change the perspective of what easy is then they can do better. When it comes to bullying I feel like it will only help those who will report it and can be bad at identifying the signs when someone is too shy to speak up about it. You constantly see teachers trying to get good with the popular kids so they can be the cool teacher. Time and time again films and stories have shown that the more popular kids are usually the bullies and yet they seem to be getting only praise here. I feel like the students who get good grades and are valedictorian are just received as "...who even is that?". Overall, the teachers are pretty great people and have mostly effective teaching styles but what they are actually teaching hasn't really helped. Also, too much smoking and not enough people stopping it.

I would rate this school 5 out of 5 stars.

I had to take my child out of this school due to theft and bullying. The school did nothing to help. The staff and principal are not sympathetic to any of these issues and act like they don't exist. Safety of the students is not a concern to them. It's a zoo up there unfortunately.