Downtown

Durham is a good school with good teachers who teaches brilliant students

I have had three children attend Our Lady of Guadalupe School (aka :OLG)--one is now in high school, and two are still there. If I had to describe OLG in only one phrase, I would say the it is a special place. In fact, "a special place" is how other current and former students, parents of students, faculty and former faculty have most commonly referred tp the school as well when we've discussed it. The school is small but has energy and a sense of community far beyond its size. It is amazing how much it offers for a small school, including a Chess Club, Choir, school band (and Music and Art classes as part of the curriculum for all students), and a wide variety of extracurricular sports through the CYO. There is even support for students with learning disabilities (although if your child's special needs are more severe, of course, you will need the services of a public school). One nice traditional OLG has is "Faith Families" in which students from different grades meet monthly in small groups so that older students are encouraged to care about younger ones. By the way, another wonderful thing about OLG is that it returned to fill-the, in-person learning a full year before Fremont Unified schools did so! That saved our family's sanity not to mention our children's educational progress. You do not need to be Catholic to atteOLG also offers reasonably-priced before- and after-school care, and even if you pay the full cost of tuition, it is a bargain compared to any other private school, religious or not, in the area. However, if you are worried about the cost, OLG also offers good sibling discounts if you have more than one child enrolled and also offers scholarships and financial aid.I am saddened that the previous principal, who was there for several years, contributed in a major way to the decline of enrollment of the school, which it is still recovering from. She was simply a deeply unpleasant, unkind person, and she turned off a lot of parents. (We loved the teachers and other aspects of the school so much that we kept our children enrolled despite her.) However, the good news is that the current principal is excellent--she has also been a teacher at the school for several years and has her own children enrolled there, so she truly cares about and is passionate about the school and its students. I strongly encourage anyone looking for a safe, caring alternative to public school to check out OLG.

I have kids in both upper (6-12) and lower school (tk - 5) for 3 years and I am pulling them out because it’s not worth of the tuition. Facilities: The upper school is just several rooms rented from the neighboring church and very crowded. There is no field for kids for any sports activities and the only MPR room is shared with the church, which means the school cannot use the room for events during the weekend if the church needs it. Most kids do extracurricular activities outside of the school because there is not much opportunity for school-wide team events. Several rooms smell terrible and the teachers had to spray scented mist onto cover it because the school did nothing to improve the condition. Teaching quality: The curriculum is pretty advanced but the teaching quality varies a lot depending on the teacher. The teacher gets paid very low and the only incentive for those good teachers is the heavily discounted tuition they get for their own kids. Those good teachers will leave once their kids graduate. Several teachers are pretty incapable. For example, one of the algebra math teachers grade homework based on completion rather than quality. He also does not provide answer keys to students often, so the students ended up not knowing how well they learned until the quiz time. The middle school physics teacher barely teach. His class is most of YouTube watching and free recess. He also gets mad when kids ask him questions. Parents had to step in teaching their own kids. Parents had repeatedly complained to the administrative about these teachers with nothing achieved because the principal does not want extra work needed for hiring new teachers.This is the first year the school has 12th grade graduating. The college acceptance looks good, but you have to remember all these top kids are a selected group and most of them probably will do well in decent public schools with family provided resources and support. Definitely not worth of the money paid to the tuition. There aren’t many school-organized clubs, so you had to pay additional often higher fees for vendor provided extracurricular activities because school charges the vendor for using the space.