419 Heenan Way
Placentia, CA 92870

I am a 7th grader going to 8th grade next year in the G.A.T.E. program who attends Kraemer Middle School. Kraemer is overall a great school. There are three levels of classes your student can take. They are college prep (average), honors (above average), and G.A.T.E. (accelerated). Students are given two elective options. I am in the Spanish program and Choir program as of this year. The Spanish program is ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC. The teacher's teaching methods are amazing and truly effective. We learn by watching Señor Wooly videos and doing skits. You may be skeptical of this teaching method, but I am one of her top students and can proudly say I would have never been able to learn so much Spanish from learning from a textbook. The Spanish program is two years long and you must take it both years (Spanish 1A and 1B). So, when your student takes this course, they will not be required to take Spanish 1 and will be bumped to Spanish 2 in their freshman year. The choir program - it is a bridge class, meaning that your student will have to walk to and from Valencia High School, where the classroom is located. I personally dislike the teacher's music taste as she always picks out the songs we must sing. There are 5 concerts each year. They may also have opportunities audition for a solo or small group performance in the show with their friends or in the choir song with the entire class. However, the teacher does unfortunately play favorites when it comes to students and it is quite obvious the way she does this. To summarize, though, this class is fairly good, especially if your child is a gifted singer like me. Keep in mind that your child will have to sing EVERY SINGLE DAY. Before the concerts, there are after school rehearsals and the teacher may pull them out of their classes to rehearse in the auditorium. I will say that unfortunately the underprivileged students (sadly mostly Hispanic) are not interested in learning but this is NOT THE TEACHERS' FAULT! It is tiring to have teachers blamed for "not teaching well" when it is the uninterested students who are given so many opportunities to learn that don't take advantage of what they have and simply don't care. If your child is in GATE, most students are very civilized and respectful. Sadly the same cannot be said for the Honors and college prep kids. All in all, Kraemer is honestly a great school. Your student's experience will vary in class, though, based on their classmates. All the electives are fun.

Valencia High School claims to be the best academic school in PYLUSD, but it's not. There are some good teachers but the most of them don't really care about their students and refuse to help. If students don't have good connections with certain groups of students or teachers, you are pretty much doomed. The information and opportunities are only given to certain students. It's not fair and not transparent. For those parents and students who praised about VHS it's probably because they were in the inner circle and got all the benefits from it. In order to keep students from going to their neighbor high school, VHS starts several programs like IB, Tech, Cambridge, SciOly, Robotics. Academic Decathlon.... But VHS doesn't really put much effort in them. If you don't have the connection with the certain teachers or upper class students, you will probably not get into those competition teams. And their goal is not to win the competition. They just want to sound nice to have those programs and teams in their school. If you want your kids to keep good grades, make sure to sign your students up with outside school review programs or hire tutors. VHS offers a lot of AP, IB classes but doesn't have good teachers to teach. You will have a student receive As in the AP classes but won't pass AP tests. Or teachers just gave a lot of homework to make the classes "harder" but don't really care about the quality of the homework. There are teachers who won't update the grades and grade students base on their impression. So the student either get a surprised A or a surprised B or C. Most of my friends who sent their older child to VHS do not send their younger ones there. The only few stay are those who have good connections with the school or their kids insist to go there with their friends.

Really gone down hill recently I agree with the last couple reviews of the recent ones. Make sure you know your rights for parents and your kids. Don’t believe everything you are being told just because of who the person I saying it. More about discipline and taking literally everything away than academics and fun. Most of the teachers are great but the overall morale has bottomed out.