Jose Antonio Vargas Elementary

We chose this school for my son when he was starting preschool and he is now in middle school and we are still here! Overall we are impressed with the teachers, the individual attention the kids receive, very effective mandarin learning and the principal is really great with the kids. The middle school is very small and I was worried they might cut corners with so few students but that is not the case at all! My son is more excited than ever about humanities (keeps talking about Shakespeare at home), the Chinese instruction is very organized and catered to individual needs, math seems advanced and they cover a wide range of topics in science. But my son’s favorite subject is “Creative Design Bootcamp”. The teacher was trained at IDEO and is very close to the founder, who is also a professor at Stanford d.school, and they learn about human design and designing with empathy. Anyways, it was a really pleasant surprise to see that not only do they continue much of the stuff we already liked about the school into middle school but they also add some unique learning that I don’t think you can find elsewhere. Of course there are some things, like competitive sports, that you can’t get with a small school and I do wish the class was a bit bigger. Overall we are very happy with the school, especially middle school, and highly recommend it!