Academy (The)- SF @Mcateer

Wonderful school in Noe Valley neighborhood. Engaged parents who help put on many events. Great, warm, but no nonsense Principal. Teachers seem to work together collaboratively. My son is excited to go to school every day and is learning a ton! If you are searching for a school, add Alvarado to your list for sure, but to be honest, parents love elementary schools throughout SFUSD. I encourage you to look beyond test score ratings and talk to parents whose children attend schools. Join the Lottery Support Group to get questions answered from other parents. There are so many great schools in the city that families love.

My daughter is a 5th grader at Glen Park and we have had a wonderful experience. My daughter loves learning and going to school and has had excellent teachers and one good teacher out of her six years there. Many teachers have been there for a long time, and some even went to school at GP themselves. The principal, Ms. Zarr, and PTO are doing a great job, and I don't have anything bad to say. The community is strong and supportive, and we all weathered the pandemic together even though it was difficult. The students, educators, and staff are diverse, and equity is paramount. You are not asked for money constantly, and all activities and lunch are free. The PTO does a great job supporting teachers, staff, parents, and kids with a back-to-school BBQ, fall festival, Halloween dance, teacher events and gifts, and many other activities throughout the year, which are all free for students and often include dinner. The on-site aftercare program is fun, comfortable, affordable (it is subsidized by the PTO), and if they ever come close to capacity, they hire more teachers so nobody is turned away. It was started by parents at the school over 20 years ago. Around 80% of the students go to aftercare so it is a seamless transition, and my kid loves going there. They have clubs on Friday they choose for a few months at a time including Rock Band with the vice principal, Mr. Michaels, and Mr. Jairo; cooking; robotics; arts & crafts; garden with the gardening teacher; martial arts; etc. I am so grateful my kid has gotten to go to school there and loves going to school.

We have been part of the Miraloma community for 5 years now. We have felt proud and lucky to be part of such a supportive, warm, and friendly community. Our children have thrived at Miraloma and love going to school. The neighborhood is awesome and the children feel very connected to each other and to staff.

Rooftop is an amazing school with an amazing community. Many of the teachers have been there for years, and the principal sent his own kids there and was formerly a teacher at Rooftop. We love the garden, the views of the city, the diversity of the school, and the arts focus. CASA, the afterschool program, is also wonderful. The only downside to the school is that the facilities are a bit dated, but that’s pretty common in California, and my kids don’t seem to notice. I'm happy knowing my kids can go there from TK through 8th grade.

During the pandemic, we pulled our child from private school when we got word she got into Clarendon and we couldn’t be happier! My son is now there too. There was some turnover in the Principal’s office for a couple of years, but that has settled down and we love the teachers! There is a great, active parent community and a wonderful group of childcare folks. Before and after care there is worth every penny. I can’t forget the students: both of my kids have great and positive friendships at school. I would take the negative reviews with a grain of salt as most of them were written during the worst of the pandemic when the school board was failing to do their job and Clarendon was adjusting to remote school.

My child was mercilessly bullied and this was hardly noticed by staff, in our few years here we saw allot of teachers and coach jam leave, some of this came with budget cuts but some is just the changing culture of a “rising school”. The individualism of families in million dollar homes driving German cars and switching their kids out to private is very evident, this is a magnet school for lower performing zip codes and a parking lot for its own zip code, parents openly talk about getting out of public before jr high, we found that our kid (though getting good grades) was way below his grade level at private. Though sunnyside won’t admit how many kids should be repeating grades due to learning loss, the entrance tests tell a different story.Rough kids are never disciplined, the school social worker has them signing contracts for behavior that don’t hold any weight. We had reports of open threats of violence at least weekly. Stuff that would be a felony for an adult is glazed over with a “restorative conversation” among 7 year olds. It will help if you play soccer, have your kid wear shin guards all day as kicking is a common salutation among peers. I felt like I needed to deprogram my son from the casual violence in this school. Kids are constantly telling each other to “shut up” or worse and the bullying is out of control particularly after returning to in person. As this is one of the better SFUSD schools they get some good teachers (we were there k-3) but they don’t stay, I don’t think the new principal is bad, I think the school was a mess when she stepped in. I think there are a handful of involved parents willing to do the uncomfortable work a mixed income school needs and allot of checked-out parents who shuttle their kids from this free option to a screen. The school adjusts to the non existent attention span of techies children with busy work, there is little room for collaborative work or individual growth in a school this size, moving to private we see longer projects and more collaboration but we are also repeating a grade by moving our child as the school will not hold kids with obvious delays back. We were constantly told our son was “doing fine” when he’s a full year behind.This was a working class neighborhood school. Today this is majority single income homes with a few diversity hires, it actually reminded me of my first Silicon Valley job in the early aughts, utopian but an unstable environment with a revolving door