2831 Tara Hills Dr
San Pablo, CA 94806

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.

Raised in a background early child development and having the tools and family to go to about what I witness and heard and seen. I want the best for my child so I will continue out this year, but hope and praying for a better district.