Patton Ter
Fremont, CA 94538

Hirsh Elementary is small school with tight-knit Community. School has very active PTA, also Principal Arroyo is deeply involved and genuinely cares for Children’s educational journey and sense of community. PTA organizes free courses/clubs for kids to explore like Robotics, chess clubs, debate, music etc. Hirsh’s proximity to Horner Middle School has added advantage for shared infrastructure and also it’s easy to drop kids with different age group.

Good school, motivated teacher and good campus

I’ve been at this school for four years since 2021. I’m giving this school two stars, not because it is a terrible learning experience, but because of how it is run.There is a break period during school days called Advisory. They were basically made to give students a break, study on other subjects, work on other assignments, or chill and look at their phone if they have nothing to do. Now, the problem that the school was dealing with was phone usage; the teachers complained about how many students watched their phone during lectures. So when the new law passed in California allowing schools to make rules about phones, we all thought Irvington would implement them during class periods. Nope, they put the rules only on Advisory, the one period that students favored mainly because it allowed them to have a break. Afterwards, so many people’s phones got taken away. Even the teachers complained about the rule, saying that is a was completely useless. And it was. People still used their phones during lectures.What really pissed me off about this school was the way it communicated information. Really important information. Before Spring Break, the school requires that all of the seniors sign a contract to ensure that they don’t do anything stupid before they graduate, like skipping classes. This made sense and was completely reasonable. The problem was, almost nobody knew anything about it until the couple days before it was due. Not even half of the seniors in my classes knew about it. The only other way we could get information about it was from an email the school sent that only mentioned its due date. Nothing else. Not what it was about, how to get it, or how important it was, only that it was due. We needed our teachers to tell us about it; if it wasn’t for them, hardly any of us would be graduating.Buying the prom tickets was a huge problem. There were no emails about how to get them, none of the posts on Instagram from the school said anything as well. I had to learn from my friend, who learned from another friend, who probably learned from a teacher or counselor that the prom tickets would no longer be available before Spring Break. And me nor my parents could figure out how to get one. Luckily we finally bought one, somehow after the deadline, and we bought it off of the school app that barely anyone looks at.If you like a good learning experience, go here. If you don’t want to miss graduation because of terrible communication, don’t.