2675 Appian Way
Pinole, CA 94564

The school has much improved in recent years. The change in the principal has been a very positive change. Principal Mapes cares about the the students and wears it on his sleeve. Teachers and staff have done a much better job of building a positive environment for students, so there has been an increase in student learning and a decrease in fights and behavior problems. The school is very diverse, and they offer a great selection of elective classes, including tech, music, culinary arts, two languages, and leadership. The quality of teachers has also improved in recent years. It is definitely a school making a big turnaround.

This school was marginal before Covid. Now after it has subsided, it is much worse. Many teachers left or constantly call in sick so my son had different substitute teachers nearly every day. They use several different computer based teaching platforms like Power Schools, Google Classrooms and others so you need to have a fistful of logins and knowledge of how to navigate each of the individual platforms to understand what your child's assignments are and what has or has not been completed. Some teachers updated things fairly quickly others rarely updated them at all. Most assignments were done through these platforms so as a parent you have little chance to help your child if they are struggling with a subject. It mostly turned into guess the answer, guess the answer again and it you get it wrong it skips to the next questions leaving the lack of understanding in place with no chance to teach or help them comprehend. My son had lots of assignments that were 100% completed that he only got a small percentage of the questions correct because guessing quickly to get through it was the preferred method, yet to me the assignment looked completed. The teachers seemed to not be interested in teaching and use every possible Covid excuse to be absent from the school. There is not an environment where learning and education are shown to be important and worth working for. Rather the teachers response to Covid was to demonstrate that they just didn't care about teaching and education wasn't worth the effort. That is what my kids learned in the 2 years they attended util we moved to get them into a better school. Councilors were difficult to reach and didn't seem to care about anything. Formulaic, boiler plate responses were all you got if they responded at all. There were a few good teachers but they were in a sea of mediocrity. Add to that there was a lot of violence and fighting at the school. It was not a safe place that fostered learning. We could see clearly that our kids would not be successful if we stayed in this school. Leaving was the only choice we had.

Whew, where do I start?! Stewart School has so much potential. When they launched their Dual Immersion program I felt that it was a GREAT move so long as the school had the resources to go along with it. Fast forward years later, handfuls of students are ending up YEARS behind their peers academically due to this program and it isn’t being communicated that the child is behind until years down in their educational journey. They are not following the 50/50 model presented years ago, instead the just have gone full throttle with incorporating Spanish language and culture heavily into the school as a whole. The principal seems unhinged likely due to lack of resources, teachers, subs, etc. The middle school kids have been screamed at so loudly by him, that “his voice was cracking” is what was described by some of the students. Inexcusable behavior coming from a principal. They are throwing out more 0 tolerance policies and fundraisers to find the teachers classrooms (which I understand to an extent) rather than redirection when there’s over stimulation, and a sign up sheet for parent volunteers. The teachers are too busy to confirm volunteer emails, I’ve experienced this first hand. If your child so much as speed walks through the halls, it will grant them a call home and detention. All the way down to our TK & K littles. Post-pandemic, all elementary school teachers no matter the ratio, should either have an aide or volunteer present. Especially dual language teachers. They’ve incorporated a ton of new curriculum likely to raise these test scores, but if the kids are unhappy with the environment the scores will suffer either way. I hope that things shape up with the administration soon because Stewart itself is such an amazing, family oriented place to be if it’s led by the right person.